Translation strategy.. between necessity and reality

Ezedin Enaya

The translator has a big role to play in empowering the local culture with new perspectives and different experiences. It is a vital necessity of a culture that strives to develop and renew itself. Therefore, even cultures that are thriving and strongly represented on the international stage are indispensable for translation. There is no doubt that today’s Arab culture has a great need to attract foreign business, stimulate local culture and connect it to the global stage. Communication with a global product occurs in two ways: the form of direct use of a foreign language and the form of translation. The first form is elitist and excluding, and it is difficult to convert the opinions and literature of others. A popular and widely distributed consumer material, and the second way is the way of translating and transferring knowledge from one language to another. The translated work becomes a widely consumed product.
In the contemporary Arab context, a problem often arises among intellectuals about how to take Arab culture out of the unbridled monotony of its expressions, the weakness of its proposals and the narrow vision of various fields. In fact, this rupture will only lead to structural changes involving various sectors, including strengthening the transfer of knowledge, literary and artistic experiences from others and discussing with them, and then following what is happening in the global cultural movement. and show your footprints. There is no doubt that we have many fields of knowledge with archaic and fragile foundations, mainly in the human and social sciences and in the fields of knowledge of other civilizations and religions. Various approaches emerged and a set of training programs was created behind the Arab Culture Incubator. We didn’t follow his work and we didn’t follow the controversy because of him, which didn’t help us to make good use of his skills. For example, it is not enough to study sociology and its history in a weak school way, as is common in our universities, but to follow the news, know our urgent needs, get in touch. The experience and inspiration of others based on their abilities, to address the functional Arabization of this science and others, and we intend to put cognitive tools at the service of our reality to understand its consequences, transformations and challenges.

A tributary of civilization.
In the efforts of Arabic translators and funding institutions, it is notable that the percentage of translation of novels and short stories, due to limited quantity and quality, is what dominates our Arabic translation achievements. Purely commercial considerations. The market for novels translated into the Al-Dhad language is in the hands of private publishers, which are governed by the law of supply and demand and cannot adopt a national translation strategy under current conditions. . Therefore, the revised, intellectual and analytical foreign literature and basic references in the study of literature, history, religion and philosophy, complain of an evident deficiency in the list of works that should be translated and complemented by Arab culture.
Based on this fact, I have always argued that translation, as a tributary of civilization, is essentially a state strategy and the private sector cannot assume its responsibility or entrust itself with a small contribution, since the institutions supported by the State are the ones that they can better formulate specific and clear structural projects, such as the translation of dictionaries, encyclopedias and basic references from international blogs for different areas of knowledge in thought, cinema, literature and other arts. In the case of the current Arab publishing industry and its confusing conditions, directed translation cannot be charged or taxed by publishers, and its conditions are similar to grocery products in relation to goods and consumers.

Priority hierarchy
The resolution of the structural problems of translation dictates the definition of a translation strategy. What we mean by strategy is a culture’s awareness of the importance of its presence in the world and its drive to take into account what is happening in other cultures, which is vital for the interaction of all cultures with the world when and wherever it happens. The flame goes out, the local culture enters a kind of hibernation and stagnation. When discussing the translation strategy, we do not lose sight of a question that is worth asking, namely: how does a set of priorities in the field of translation arise along the lines currently adopted by Arab publishers? This is evident in the domain of literary translation, which boils down to the translation of the novel, and is guided by Western best-seller lists and the selection of popular names in the publishing market, although sometimes absent. Civic or literary topics that are important to us, except they are popular in the arena. It is worth noting that private Arab publishing houses have regressed significantly since the 1980s and later, a period in which important foreign works were translated that contributed to the popularization and development of Arab thought. Several Arab publishing houses and research centers conveyed a clear and specific intellectual message, drawing on the skills of Arabic translators and leading them in that direction. Nowadays, this reference has become lethargic due to the reduction of incentives and the loss of the main objectives, not to mention the subordination of publishers to a logic of completely commercial competition, so that most of those responsible for Arab publishers are more closer to the world of commerce and business than to the world of culture and intellectuals, although many of them are disguised, originally poets and writers, etc.
Faced with this decline, it is necessary that official, national and national organizations pay attention to trace paths and once again assume the responsibility of raising awareness of the Arab personality, to connect the reader with what is happening in the globalized world. arena of creativity, intellectual, philosophical and literary, until graduating in “my wanderer and confused state translation”.

a painful reality
In my experience in the field of translation and proofreading, especially in the humanities and social sciences, I do not see the desire or enthusiasm of private publishers to publish “heavy” works. And if the owners of these houses agree to publish this kind of book, the process often hides disaster: violation of rights, theft of effort, small remuneration for the translator – if possible – leading to disappointment and non-repetition. experience. A serious violation of the translator’s rights forces him to submit to a regime of forced labor instead of fulfilling a noble civilized role.
This resentment, which has plagued the Arabic translator for decades, was fueled by the Kalima Project in Abu Dhabi from its inception because it wanted to value the efforts of the translator and the author, and therefore the project posed a challenge to unfair traditions in the translation industry. that did not protect the minimum rights.
As a result of the loss of the translation strategy, we have lost a professional translator and perhaps someone who aspires to develop a translation project to the best of their abilities and ambitions. Therefore, Arabic translators tend to migrate between artworks and works, and translation accomplishments are a marginal aspect of their concerns and do not represent their permanent work or pet project.
I asked a talented Arabic translator: Why don’t you translate so as not to waste your efforts and save energy? He replied, “An Arabic translator must diversify his sources of income to earn a decent living, otherwise poverty will overtake him.” Therefore, you will find that most of our translators, in the area of ​​literature transfer, research and studies, often work suddenly and urgently if they get a contract with an institution to complete the work, let alone lose them. Own projects focusing on a specific area or involving the creativity of a specific writer.