Professor Paola Bacchetta gave a talk in April at the Fourth Annual Maghrebian Book Fair Conference in Oujda, Morocco entitled "Towards Decolonial Translating: Reflections on francophoning-anglophoning 'Les Lionnes''." At the center of the talk was "Les Lionnes" (The Lionesses), a previously unpublished co-authored film project by the Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist Fatema Mernissi, psychiatrist Jalil Bennani and film-maker Hamid Benani, which Professor Bacchetta translated (French to English) and which is forthcoming in the book she co-edited with Professor Minoo Moallem, Fatima Mernissi for our Times (Syracuse University Press). The talk addressed questions of: creating a decolonial translation in and in spite of colonial languages (French, English); the place of elements from subalternized languages prior to the text which Bacchetta calls the pre-translation languages (here Darija or Moroccan Arabic and Amazighe languages); kinds of intentional and non-agentic silences in the source and translated text; translational pauses; and post-translational reception. Over 50,00 people came to events at the Book Fair.
April 23, 2024