Translation as an Arena for Contesting Narratives: A Study of Rajaa Al Sanea’s Banat el-Riyadh/Girls of Riyadh

This article addresses two works written by a Saudi woman novelist, Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Sanea. The work represents a unique position in the field of the translation of literature because it is in part self-translation while involving the collaboration of a translator as well. Sanea’s text, however, started as a translation by Marilyn Booth but the translation was later revisited by the author who made major changes herself. The activity of the translation led to the construction of two narratives related to the production of a text in English. The article will not address the process of translation by embarking on textual comparison between the Arabic and the English versions, but will rather deal with translation as a product and hence focus on cultural issues (Peter Conner 427) and on the nature of the encounter of author as translator and translator as author.
The article will discuss the experience of self-translation/ co-translation in the two novels in terms of the framing of the translation via paratextual and extratextual elements. It explores the impact of prefaces, afterwards, glossaries, and footnotes, on the one hand, and the role of interviews with authors/ translators or explanatory/ critical articles by translators with respect to the reception of this ‘bilingual’ text (using the term of Hokenson and Munson in The bilingual text: history and theory of literary self-translation). The second element explored is the influence of the involvement of the original author in translation and the extent to which the involvement of the self in translation arises from a desire to ‘have a say’/ a ‘voice’ in the translation compared to surrendering oneself completely to a translator who could be driven by a different set of norms for translation. Finally, the article examines the impact of the nature of the relationship between author and translator on the reception of the final product and its crossing to the other language/ culture.