Lost in Translation? Unpacking Paul Bowles' Approach to Morocco's Literary Gems through a Case Study of For Bread Alone

Abstract

This study aims to scrutinise the method of translations that Paul Bowles opted for while rendering Moroccan literary texts. The researcher adopted Mouhamed Choukri’s autobiographical novel Al Khubz Al Hafi (2000) and its English translation For Bread Alone (2002) as an example. This research takes Peter Newmark’s communicative and semantic translation as a theoretical background to approach the target text. The research examines the translator's rendering of the source text's form, meaning, and culture and whether they were rendered semantically or communicatively. The researcher read both the source text and its translation, then nominated 24 sentences and their English translation. The selected sentences stand as examples for many more in the novel. After selecting the sentence, the translation method adopted by Bowles is determined. The study’s results suggest that communicative translation was employed more frequently. The analysis reveals that the translator opted for communicative translation to clarify culturally bound terminology or omit certain features linked to the source text that the translator designated as unnecessary to the target reader. The results showed that employing communicative translation led to an awkward translation and mistranslation. The translator resorted to semantic translation to maintain the feature of faithfulness. However, due to cultural and linguistic barriers, the translator could not produce a clear translated message. This research shows that communicative translation cannot reflect the implicit message of the source text, while semantic translation must always be associated with footnotes or glossaries.