TRANSLATING FEMINIST TEXTUAL ACTIVISM IN POST-ARAB SPRING LITERARY DISCOURSE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF DIMA WANNOUS'S THE FRIGHTENED ONES AND SHAHAD AL-RAWI'S THE BAGHDAD CLOCK

Abstract

At the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, the Arab Spring, an anti-government revolution, emerged in Tunisia and spread across the Arab region. Arab nations were affected by that event and women, in particular, showed active engagement in the uprising. The current study looks at the literary discourse after the Arab Spring and offers critical discourse analysis of the feminist-political discourse in Arabic novels and their English translations. It investigates the textual activism in literary discourses and the translation process and provides a reading on how Arab feminist ideologies move across cultures. The study, therefore, selects novels written by young contemporary Arab women that reflect on the impact of the Arab Spring. The first novel is Al-Khā’ifūn الخائفون by Syrian author Dima Wannous (born 1982), daughter of renowned Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous, and its English translation The Frightened Ones (2020) by Elizabeth Jaquette. The second novel is Sāʿat Baghdād (2016) ساعة بغداد, the debut novel by Iraqi writer Shahad Al Rawi (born 1986), which is translated into English by Luke Leafgren as The Baghdad Clock (2018). Both authors emerged as significant voices in post-Arab Spring literature, with Wannous writing about the Syrian conflict and Al Rawi reflecting on Iraq's post-2003 transformation through the lens of the Arab Spring uprisings. The study's main objective is to systematically identify the strategies translators use to convey the political feminist discourse. In addition, the study explores whether the strategies used have led to any change in the original meaning of the source text. To bring a new perspective to translation studies that deal with gender and political issues by offering a feminist reading, the study employs a combination of CDA frameworks and Feminist Translation theory to reveal the ideological manipulation in the translation of literary works. The findings demonstrate that Arab women writers express their political engagement through textual activism, employing various textual devices and literary practices. Through comparative analysis of English translations and original texts, the study reveals frequent ideological manipulation in the representation of Arab feminist ideology. This manipulation is attributed to multiple factors, primarily the structural limitations of the English language and the challenges in representing Arab feminist textual activism.