الأدب الجزائري المكتوب باللغة الفرنسية من منظور ما بعد استعماري

Abstract

"For a long time, most of the theoretical reflections on translation focused on the source text and the target text. However, translation took with the cultural turn and postcolonial theory, another dimension. Indeed, translation appears today as a process and a place of ""in-between"", that is to say, recent work on translation theory and practice indicates the need for translation studies for more flexibility , in order to explore the implications of new concepts and practices of translation and to update the conceptual and ideological data on hybrid identities and cultural hybridity. This study, lies under the scope of Algerian francophone postcolonial studies, and examines a french writing by a bilingual Algerian author: Assia Djebar, the work “ La Disparition de la langue Française (2003) “The disappearance of the French language” . The novel evokes the storie of man who return to Algeria after a long exile. The main protoganist Berkane, almost fifty years old being exile from Algeria for twenty years returns to his native land and he attempts to retrieve his personal memories and the city of his youth . This research, aims to explore the analogy between the writing and the translation emerging from three principal observations: The first was about the hybrid feature of postcolonial Algerian literatury texts, the second tackles the similarities that seem to be common to both the writing strategies of the Algerian authors with French expression and the Foreignization strategies in translation. The third and the last one is related to the mediation role of the writer as a cultural translator who tells the Self using the language of the Other. These observations required the collection of some theoretical data in Translation Studies particularly ranging in postcolonial tendencies, and which revealed the Conception of Translation as a Metaphor of Postcolonial Writing; so as to tackle the question: Is it possible to talk about a postcolonial-author-translator? And assume that the distance between the text to be translated and the translated one is reproduced in the hybrid text scene. 201 Thus, it came up with the analysis of interaction between translation and the world of postcolonial literature. Our research on the relationship between postcolonial studies and translation confronts us to two approaches: a. Postcolonial studies as catalyst in thinking the deconstruction of translation, instrument of the propagation of colonial ideology. b. Translation as a nodal point of reflection that explains postcolonial phenomena like hybridity. From this point, the theoretical research allowed us to explain the previous routes by the following:  The deconstruction of translation: translation must be deconstructed and redefined into an anti-colonial strategy, since translation has been mobilized in the past to spread the colonial discourse.  Analogy between postcolonial writing and foreignization strategies used in translation.  Translation as metaphor of in-between . A clarification is required: The objective of this study is not to analyze a linguistic translation of a postcolonial work, or try to compare it to other translations In fact, the postcolonial writing as 202 translation is based on a meta text which is not written but often an imaginary one, an oral source. The analogy between the hybrid writing and translation involves placing the text in the center of the analysis. Our study is based on analyzing postcolonial writing that is sprinkled with foreign words. The present dissertation is divided into two sections, a theoretical section comprising four chapters and a practical one. The first chapter is devoted to Acculturation as a phenomenon that leads us to consider the nature of interactions people and the consequences of this contact on the cultural and linguistic level, particularly the linguistic hybridization and borrowing. In fact, cultures and languages do coexist, by this they simultaneously borrow from each other, meet, attract or resist to each other, still they do not mix into a homogeneous and stable entity. The second chapter evokes Writing in a foreign language; in this case: the problematic relationship between the Algerian author and the French language. In the third chapter, the postcolonial project, including postcolonial literature, is discussed. The fourth and final theoretical chapter , divided into three parts , is devoted to explain postcolonial approach of translation and to talk about the current reflection on the role of translation, which is related to identity construction underlying hybrid postcolonial text. 203  We draw a parallel between the hybrid postcolonial texts and foreignization translation. Four approaches dealing with foreignization strategies in translation will be developed:  Friedrich Schleiermacher  Antoine Berman  Lawrence Venuti  Jean-Paul Vinay et Jean Darbelnet Further, Maria Tymoczko, in her article ""Post-colonial writing and literary translation"" deals directly with this issue, in fact she thinks that understanding the postcolonial literary phenomenon could be gained from literary translation. In fact, interlingual literary translation provides an analogy to the post-colonial writing, thus translation is used to describe the writing at the intersection of languages: “Maria Tymoczko suggests that there are strong similarities between these two types of textual production. Both are concerned with the transmission of elements from one culture to another, both are affected by the process of relocation, hence it is hardly surprising that so many postcolonial writers have chosen to use the term „translation‟ metaphorically. Tymoczko focuses on the way in which African writers such as Ngãugãi wa Thiong‟o have consciously chosen to import African words into their writing, which creates variations in the standard language 204 and highlights the hybridity of the text. She points out that in translation studies a distinction is always made between whether to take an audience to a text, or to take a text to an audience, and argues that the same distinction applies also to post-colonial writing. By defamiliarizing the language, post-colonial writers can bring readers face to face with the reality of difference, and call into question the supremacy of the standard language  Similarity is observed between the role of translator and the role of the postcolonial writer. The writer GABRIEL OKARA is usually cited when there is a link between the roles of both writer and translator. “As a writer who believes in the utilisation of African ideas, African philosophy and African folklore and imagery to the fullest extent possible, I am of the opinion that the only way to use them effectively is to translate them almost literally from the African language native to 1 Tymockzko, Maria, «Post-colonial writing and literary translation». Dans: S. Bassnett & H. Trivedi (eds), Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (1999). Londres: Routeledge, 13. 205 the writer into whatever European language he is using as his medium of expression  Translation as a metaphor for post-colonial writing: we were inspired to deal with this part by Gauvin, Berman, Homi Bhabha, and others works. The fifth chapter consists of the corpus analysis. As a corpus we chose the novel entitled “The disappearance of the French language written by the Algerian writer Assia Djebar The choice of this novel was not random as far as it expresses the sufferings of people during the Algerian war of independence, and the feeling of dizziness of that devastated young people at that period, this narrative seemed to be an interesting case to study hybridization throughout characters who find themselves between two worlds, two cultures and two languages In his novel The disappearance of the French language Djebar describes postcolonial identity issues that each individual is necessarily confronted to when he lives between two languages and two cultures: the sense of dislocation, the desire to take root again which faces considerable difficulties when all 1 OKARA G., 1963, « African Speech.. English Words », dans Transition, n° 10, pp. 15- 16. 206 components shaping the identity are not well assimilated. Self defining search is one of the main topics of French speaking literature. Djebar tells the story of the return from exile of Berkane, the principal character, who lived his last twenty years in France. Feeling of belonging to nowhere and having no more purpose in life, Berkane decides to come back in Algeria. Back in the natal country, Berkane does not recognize places anymore, nor people whom he left behind him when he left in banishment. But worse still, he does not succeed in finding himself, that‟s how begins the search of the “Me” lost somewhere in the past. Back to the fourth chapter, where the approach conducted by the imminent Indian scholar Homi Bhabha is discussed Bhabha conceptualizes translation as a hybrid “third space” which turned upside opposition between the ""source text"" and target text allowing the emergence of new positions. In his work The Location of Culture, Bhabha agrees with the postcolonial perspective theory, which rejects hegemonic will to bring multiculturalism into a unity of a universal progress In this regard postcoloniality almost involves a cultural and linguistic hybridization and also involves confrontation language set up by the domination of metropolitan languages on the vernacular languages of colonized nations It is in fact the unstable space of transnational culture which is behind the theoretical reconceptualization carried out by Bhabha. 207 We should note here that, Hybridity has been variously defined in social sciences and cultural studies, especially in postcolonial theorizing . Our Interest lies in the social construction of hybrid culture , in particular the postcolonial hybrid literature. Bill Ashcroft explains that « Hybridity [..] is the primary characteristic of all post-colonial texts whatever their source.»1. In order to understand Bhabha approach, it should be noted that the cultural and linguistic hybridization does not mean that the representation of cultural difference is ignored: « The representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, ongoing negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that merge in moments of historical transformation» 2 The new space of culture identified and explored by Bhabha is a space of transition between languages, of crossing identities and of cultural destabilization references This space negotiation defines subjectivity of in-between and according to Bhabha 1 Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths et Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature (London: Routledge, 2e édition, 2002), 182. 2 Bhabha, Homi . (1994) The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge.p2. 208 mechanism of translation is similar to the mechanism for negotiating differences. In fact, translation tends to lose its linguistic dimension to actually become a metaphor for in-between So when Bhabha evokes a transnational and translational culture he referred to a place of cultural creation and emergence of new hybrid culture In conclusion, to the interrogation related to possibility of considering postcolonial writing as a translation, the answer is yes, because of several reasons:  Similarities are noticed in both the poetic of postcolonial writing and the foreignization strategies.  Similarities are noticed in both the role of translator and the role of postcolonial writer.  The ethical and aesthetic approach of francophone algerian writers like Djebar contribute in the identity mutations in the world. We can read the same position claimed by Berman “translation is a primer molder of languages, literatures, and cultures.” « la traduction est façonneuse primaire des langues, de littératures et de cultures» 1. 1 Berman A. (1995). Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, Paris, Gallimard. p65. 209  In La Disparition de la langue française novel , Djebar draw a parallel between two historically connected spaces, France and Algeria, and periods, the years of the Algerian war of independence and the rise of terrorism in 1990s Algeria. The movement between the two spaces and periods constitutes in a literal and figurative sense a third space that contributes to the protagonist‟s hybridisation.  Hybridity is also shown in the literary genre, by connecting the past and the present through individual and collective reminiscence, this novel reinterpret history while transgressing the frontiers of classical genres: the fictional, the testimonial and the autobiographical intertwine with the historiographical. The languages different transcultural influences are shown in La Disparition de la langue française in the light of Homi Bhabha‟s theory of cultural translation. The only place where the protagonists can negotiate and express their hybrid subjectivity is constituted in and through their writing.  The new space of culture identified and explored by Bhabha is a space of transition between languages, of crossing identities and of cultural destabilization references This space negotiation defines subjectivity of in-between and according to Bhabha mechanism of translation is similar to the mechanism for negotiating differences. 210  Post-colonial peoples are the bearers of a hybrid identity and caught in the discontinuous time of translation and negotiation” as a result of which they are “now free to negotiate and translate their cultural identities in a discontinuous intertextual temporality of cultural difference.langue Française (2003) “The disappearance of the French language” . The novel evokes the storie of man who return to Algeria after a long exile. The main protoganist Berkane, almost fifty years old being exile from Algeria for twenty years returns to his native land and he attempts to retrieve his personal memories and the city of his youth . This research, aims to explore the analogy between the writing and the translation emerging from three principal observations: The first was about the hybrid feature of postcolonial Algerian literatury texts, the second tackles the similarities that seem to be common to both the writing strategies of the Algerian authors with French expression and the Foreignization strategies in translation. The third and the last one is related to the mediation role of the writer as a cultural translator who tells the Self using the language of the Other. These observations required the collection of some theoretical data in Translation Studies particularly ranging in postcolonial tendencies, and which revealed the Conception of Translation as a Metaphor of Postcolonial Writing; so as to tackle the question: Is it possible to talk about a postcolonial-author-translator? And assume that the distance between the text to be translated and the translated one is reproduced in the hybrid text scene. 201 Thus, it came up with the analysis of interaction between translation and the world of postcolonial literature. Our research on the relationship between postcolonial studies and translation confronts us to two approaches: a. Postcolonial studies as catalyst in thinking the deconstruction of translation, instrument of the propagation of colonial ideology. b. Translation as a nodal point of reflection that explains postcolonial phenomena like hybridity. From this point, the theoretical research allowed us to explain the previous routes by the following:  The deconstruction of translation: translation must be deconstructed and redefined into an anti-colonial strategy, since translation has been mobilized in the past to spread the colonial discourse.  Analogy between postcolonial writing and foreignization strategies used in translation.  Translation as metaphor of in-between . A clarification is required: The objective of this study is not to analyze a linguistic translation of a postcolonial work, or try to compare it to other translations In fact, the postcolonial writing as 202 translation is based on a meta text which is not written but often an imaginary one, an oral source. The analogy between the hybrid writing and translation involves placing the text in the center of the analysis. Our study is based on analyzing postcolonial writing that is sprinkled with foreign words. The present dissertation is divided into two sections, a theoretical section comprising four chapters and a practical one. The first chapter is devoted to Acculturation as a phenomenon that leads us to consider the nature of interactions people and the consequences of this contact on the cultural and linguistic level, particularly the linguistic hybridization and borrowing. In fact, cultures and languages do coexist, by this they simultaneously borrow from each other, meet, attract or resist to each other, still they do not mix into a homogeneous and stable entity. The second chapter evokes Writing in a foreign language; in this case: the problematic relationship between the Algerian author and the French language. In the third chapter, the postcolonial project, including postcolonial literature, is discussed. The fourth and final theoretical chapter , divided into three parts , is devoted to explain postcolonial approach of translation and to talk about the current reflection on the role of translation, which is related to identity construction underlying hybrid postcolonial text. 203  We draw a parallel between the hybrid postcolonial texts and foreignization translation. Four approaches dealing with foreignization strategies in translation will be developed:  Friedrich Schleiermacher  Antoine Berman  Lawrence Venuti  Jean-Paul Vinay et Jean Darbelnet Further, Maria Tymoczko, in her article ""Post-colonial writing and literary translation"" deals directly with this issue, in fact she thinks that understanding the postcolonial literary phenomenon could be gained from literary translation. In fact, interlingual literary translation provides an analogy to the post-colonial writing, thus translation is used to describe the writing at the intersection of languages: “Maria Tymoczko suggests that there are strong similarities between these two types of textual production. Both are concerned with the transmission of elements from one culture to another, both are affected by the process of relocation, hence it is hardly surprising that so many postcolonial writers have chosen to use the term „translation‟ metaphorically. Tymoczko focuses on the way in which African writers such as Ngãugãi wa Thiong‟o have consciously chosen to import African words into their writing, which creates variations in the standard language 204 and highlights the hybridity of the text. She points out that in translation studies a distinction is always made between whether to take an audience to a text, or to take a text to an audience, and argues that the same distinction applies also to post-colonial writing. By defamiliarizing the language, post-colonial writers can bring readers face to face with the reality of difference, and call into question the supremacy of the standard language  Similarity is observed between the role of translator and the role of the postcolonial writer. The writer GABRIEL OKARA is usually cited when there is a link between the roles of both writer and translator. “As a writer who believes in the utilisation of African ideas, African philosophy and African folklore and imagery to the fullest extent possible, I am of the opinion that the only way to use them effectively is to translate them almost literally from the African language native to 1 Tymockzko, Maria, «Post-colonial writing and literary translation». Dans: S. Bassnett & H. Trivedi (eds), Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (1999). Londres: Routeledge, 13. 205 the writer into whatever European language he is using as his medium of expression  Translation as a metaphor for post-colonial writing: we were inspired to deal with this part by Gauvin, Berman, Homi Bhabha, and others works. The fifth chapter consists of the corpus analysis. As a corpus we chose the novel entitled “The disappearance of the French language written by the Algerian writer Assia Djebar The choice of this novel was not random as far as it expresses the sufferings of people during the Algerian war of independence, and the feeling of dizziness of that devastated young people at that period, this narrative seemed to be an interesting case to study hybridization throughout characters who find themselves between two worlds, two cultures and two languages In his novel The disappearance of the French language Djebar describes postcolonial identity issues that each individual is necessarily confronted to when he lives between two languages and two cultures: the sense of dislocation, the desire to take root again which faces considerable difficulties when all 1 OKARA G., 1963, « African Speech.. English Words », dans Transition, n° 10, pp. 15- 16. 206 components shaping the identity are not well assimilated. Self defining search is one of the main topics of French speaking literature. Djebar tells the story of the return from exile of Berkane, the principal character, who lived his last twenty years in France. Feeling of belonging to nowhere and having no more purpose in life, Berkane decides to come back in Algeria. Back in the natal country, Berkane does not recognize places anymore, nor people whom he left behind him when he left in banishment. But worse still, he does not succeed in finding himself, that‟s how begins the search of the “Me” lost somewhere in the past. Back to the fourth chapter, where the approach conducted by the imminent Indian scholar Homi Bhabha is discussed Bhabha conceptualizes translation as a hybrid “third space” which turned upside opposition between the ""source text"" and target text allowing the emergence of new positions. In his work The Location of Culture, Bhabha agrees with the postcolonial perspective theory, which rejects hegemonic will to bring multiculturalism into a unity of a universal progress In this regard postcoloniality almost involves a cultural and linguistic hybridization and also involves confrontation language set up by the domination of metropolitan languages on the vernacular languages of colonized nations It is in fact the unstable space of transnational culture which is behind the theoretical reconceptualization carried out by Bhabha. 207 We should note here that, Hybridity has been variously defined in social sciences and cultural studies, especially in postcolonial theorizing . Our Interest lies in the social construction of hybrid culture , in particular the postcolonial hybrid literature. Bill Ashcroft explains that « Hybridity [..] is the primary characteristic of all post-colonial texts whatever their source.»1. In order to understand Bhabha approach, it should be noted that the cultural and linguistic hybridization does not mean that the representation of cultural difference is ignored: « The representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, ongoing negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that merge in moments of historical transformation» 2 The new space of culture identified and explored by Bhabha is a space of transition between languages, of crossing identities and of cultural destabilization references This space negotiation defines subjectivity of in-between and according to Bhabha 1 Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths et Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literature (London: Routledge, 2e édition, 2002), 182. 2 Bhabha, Homi . (1994) The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge.p2. 208 mechanism of translation is similar to the mechanism for negotiating differences. In fact, translation tends to lose its linguistic dimension to actually become a metaphor for in-between So when Bhabha evokes a transnational and translational culture he referred to a place of cultural creation and emergence of new hybrid culture In conclusion, to the interrogation related to possibility of considering postcolonial writing as a translation, the answer is yes, because of several reasons:  Similarities are noticed in both the poetic of postcolonial writing and the foreignization strategies.  Similarities are noticed in both the role of translator and the role of postcolonial writer.  The ethical and aesthetic approach of francophone algerian writers like Djebar contribute in the identity mutations in the world. We can read the same position claimed by Berman “translation is a primer molder of languages, literatures, and cultures.” « la traduction est façonneuse primaire des langues, de littératures et de cultures» 1. 1 Berman A. (1995). Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, Paris, Gallimard. p65. 209  In La Disparition de la langue française novel , Djebar draw a parallel between two historically connected spaces, France and Algeria, and periods, the years of the Algerian war of independence and the rise of terrorism in 1990s Algeria. The movement between the two spaces and periods constitutes in a literal and figurative sense a third space that contributes to the protagonist‟s hybridisation.  Hybridity is also shown in the literary genre, by connecting the past and the present through individual and collective reminiscence, this novel reinterpret history while transgressing the frontiers of classical genres: the fictional, the testimonial and the autobiographical intertwine with the historiographical. The languages different transcultural influences are shown in La Disparition de la langue française in the light of Homi Bhabha‟s theory of cultural translation. The only place where the protagonists can negotiate and express their hybrid subjectivity is constituted in and through their writing.  The new space of culture identified and explored by Bhabha is a space of transition between languages, of crossing identities and of cultural destabilization references This space negotiation defines subjectivity of in-between and according to Bhabha mechanism of translation is similar to the mechanism for negotiating differences. 210  Post-colonial peoples are the bearers of a hybrid identity and caught in the discontinuous time of translation and negotiation” as a result of which they are “now free to negotiate and translate their cultural identities in a discontinuous intertextual temporality of cultural difference."