Lost in (Mis)Translation: Paratextual Framing in Selected Arabic Translations of Orwell’s Animal Farm

Abstract

Paratextuality plays a key role in cultural stereotyping and ideological framing of the translated texts and pre-positions the reader by setting certain expectations (Baker 2006). They also serve as a tool of adaptation (Genette 1997), superimposing certain interpretations of the author’s intentions and ideologies. Here, George Orwell’s Animal Farm is an optimum example. The rising interest in its Arabic translation, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings bears on the politicized readings of the text, as manifested in the paratextual elements accompanying its translations. The present study investigates the role of paratextual renderings of Animal Farm in mainstreaming ideological frames and cultural stereotypes about the narrative. Drawing on Genette (1997), we close-read peritexts of the Arabic translations and probe potential paratextual functions. So far, sixteen plus Arabic translations of the novel have been published. This recent translational influx reflects, besides literary and cultural significance of the novella, an increasing interest in reading it as symbolizing the recent socio-political change. As a process where content transfer and transform(ation) overlap, translation involves an inevitable degree of bias (Venuti 2012). Orwell’s novella was largely appropriated by Arabic translators as a political manifesto, to the disregard of its other literary and cultural valances. For Arab readership, Animal Farm belongs to a long line of allegorical tales, not so much different from works like Kalila wa Dimna (The Panchatantra), where the political largely prevails over the literary. The present study thus draws on Lefevere (1992), Genette (1997), Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), Van Dijk (2003), and Baker (2006) in exploring paratextual elements as potential sites for translatorial/editorial intervention, ideological framing, and cultural appropriation of the translated text. It investigates the use of paratextual elements as sites for contestation of agency and validity, and also for interpretive foreclosure in ways that suppress/miss potential layers of meaning in the novella.