Abstract:
This five-chapter study aims at analyze the Arabic translations of three novels by the Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf: Léon l’africain (Leo Africanus) translated by AffifDemachkia, Le rocher de Tanios (The Rock of Tanios) and Le périple de Baldassare (Balthasar’s Odyssey) translated by Nahla Baydoun. Indeed, the transferring of these novels from French to Arabic does not take place according
to the traditional process of translation which consists in bringing back a totally foreign text, since the Arabic translator maintains a linguistic and cultural complicity with the original French-speaking text. Generally, the novels of French-speaking writers of Arabic origin, like Maalouf, carry elements of Arab cultural identity imbedded in the language of writing (French). Thus, we have tried to describe and analyze the process of translation into Arabic, which can be assimilated to a return trip to the origin (a repatriation), and this through examples which concretize this ""repatriation"". In addition, we tried to follow the evolution of the relationship “language / cultural identity” among Frech-speaking writers between the ""colonial"" and ""postcolonial"" periods. The study was able to demonstrate that the Arabic translations of Amin Maalouf's novels can be considered as a journey back to the origin (a repatriation), especially if the translator manages to find balance between the process of returning cultural elements to their nurturing environment, and that of the recreation of the aesthetic, stylistic and artistic novels in the Arabic language. Finally, for postcolonial Francophone writers that writing in French, stems from a free and assumed choice, and in no way reflects an abandonment or denial of the original language and cultural identity, but this choice is experienced as an affirmation of oneself in a writing which deconstructs the French language, in order to reconstruct it in a process of interbreeding with their languages and cultures of origins.
