Colonialism and race in Arabic translation: the case of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Abstract

Despite the Arab world’s long experience with colonialism and racial and ethnic othering, there is a dearth of research on issues of colonialism and othering in Arabic literary translation. To fill this gap, and drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), specifically Norman Fairclough’s (1992) three-dimensional analytical model, the present article analyzes the Arabic translation of Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, by Harb Shaheen. Focusing on the themes of colonialism and racial othering, the article argues that while the novella is characterized by ambivalence and a tension between the colonial and anti-colonial discourses, Shaheen’s discursive choices undermine the former and foreground the latter, thereby resolving the tension in the source text and producing a target text that is less ambiguous in its denunciation of racism and colonialism.

Keywords

• Race
• translation
• CDA
• Heart of Darkness
• colonialism
• Oliver Nyambi, English, University of the Free State, South Africa