Crossing Linguistic Borders: Translating Democracy in the 2012 Egyptian Constitution

  • Barbara Quaranta University of Molise, Italy

Abstract

The transfer of political concepts into different places and cultures happens first and foremost through translation. Far from being a simple transposition of meaning into a different language to facilitate border crossing, it also entails a process of adjustment to a different cultural context and a change in what is perceived to be the original meaning of the concept. Translation should also include the analysis of the social contexts that cause a political concept to be modified. Through Baker's social narrative theory, all these aspects can be integrated to analyse how the concept of democracy moves from place to place and from language to language leading to more complex understandings of it. I will examine the meaning of the concept of democracy in the 2012 Egyptian Constitution to outline the main features of an intercultural translational process of the concept of democracy. 

Author Biography

Barbara Quaranta, University of Molise, Italy
Barbara Quaranta holds a BA in Translation and Interpretation for Specific Purposes from the University of Naples 'L'Orientale', an MA in Translation in English and Arabic from UNINT University in Rome, and a PhD in Intercultural Relations and Processes from the University of Molise. She is a Lecturer in English Language at the University of Molise, and teaches Translation and Interpretation at SSML - Molise.  Her research interests include translation technology, the use of CAT tools and Machine Translation with Arabic, the translation of political concepts, democracy and translation and the political implications of translation.

References

Alvarez, R. and Vidal M. C.-A. (eds., 1996), Translation, Power, Subversion, Topics in translation 8, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Ayubi, N.N., (1993), Political Islam. Religion and Politics in the Arab World, Routledge, London & New York.

Baker, M., (2006), Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account, Routledge, London & New York.

Baker, M., (2013), Translation as an Alternative Space for Political Action. Social Movement Studies, in "Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest", 12, no. 1(2013) : pp.23-47.

Bayat, A., (2007), Making Islam Democratic. Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn, Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Bell, A.D., Brown, D., Jayasuriya, K. and Jones, D.M., (1995), Towards Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia, St. Martin's Press, Oxford.

Browers, M.L., (2009), Political Ideology in the Arab World. Accommodation and Transformation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New York.

Burgat, F., (2003), Face to Face with Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, London & New York.

Chatterjee, P., (2011), Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Post-Colonial Democracy, Columbia University Press, New York.

Cronin, M., (2006), Translation and identity, Routledge, London & New York.

Dunne, M.D., (2003), Democracy in Contemporary Egyptian Political Discourse, Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia.

El-Ghobashy, M., (2005), The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, in "International Journal of Middle East Studies", 37 (2005), pp. 373–395.

Esposito, J.L., and Voll, J.O., (1996), Islam and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York.

Hermans, T., (2014), (ed), Translating Others, Routledge, London & New York.

Ismail, S., (2003), Rethinking Islamist Politics. Culture, the State and Islamism, I.B. Tauris, London & New York.

Kaviraj, S., (2005), An Outline of a Revisionist Theory of Modernity, in "European Journal of Sociology", Vol. 46, Issue 03, Dec. 2005, pp. 497-526.

Khalaf-Allah, M., (1973), Legislative Authority, in Kurzman, C., (1998), (ed.), Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford.

Kothari, R., (2005), Rethinking Democracy, Orient Longman, Hyderabad & New Delhi.

Kurzman, C., (1998), (ed.), Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford.

Mignolo, W.D., (2000), Local Histories/Global Designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking, Princeton University Press, Princeton & Chichester.

Moussalli, a.S., (2001), The Islamic Quest for Democracy, Pluralism, and Human Rights, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Pioppi, D., (2014), Fratelli Musulmani e Potere nell'Egitto del Post-Mubarak, in "Rivista di Politica", Aprile-Giugno 2014, pp. 75-84.

Polezzi, L., (2012), Translation and migration, in "Translation Studies", 5:3, pp. 345-356.

Quijano, A., (2000), Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America, in "Nepantla: Views from South", Vol.1.3, Duke University Press, Durham.

Sakai, N., (2009), How do we count a language? Translation and discontinuity, in "Translation Studies", 2:1, pp.71-88.

Santos, B.de Sousa, (ed.), (2007), Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon, Verso Books, London & New York.

Sheth, D.L., and Nandy, A., (1996), The Multiverse of Democracy : Essays in Honour of Rajni Kothari, Sage Publications, New Delhi & Thousand Oaks.

Somers, M.R., and Gibson, G.D., (1994), Reclaiming the Epistemological ‘Other’: Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity, in Calhoun, C., (1994), (ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, Blackwell, Oxford & Cambridge, pp. 37-99.

Sulaiman, O.J. (1996), Democracy and Shura, in Kurzman, C., (1998), (ed.), Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford.

Taha, M.M., (1987), The Second Message of Islam, in Kurzman, C., (1998), (ed.), Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford.

Tymoczko, M. and Gentzler, E., (eds.), (2002), Translation and Power, University of Massachusetts Press, Hamherst & Boston.

Venuti, L., (1993), Translation as Cultural Politics: Régimes of Domestication in English, in Textual Practice, Volume 7, Issue 2, 1993, Taylor & Francis, London & New York.

Zaki, M., (1995), Civil Society and Democratization in Egypt, 1981-1994, Ibd Khaldoun Center, Cairo.

Zubaida, S., (2011), Beyond Islam. A New Understanding of the Middle East, I.B.Tauris, London & New York.

Published
2016-06-15
Issue
Vol 1 No 1 (2016): Borders
Section
Comments and debates

Authors who publish in this journal agree with the following points:

  1. The author(s) guarantee(s) that the article is original and that it has not previously published nor sent to other journals for consideration.
  2. The author(s) declare(s) that the article does not violate the copyright of third parties and assume(s) the full personal and financial responsibility for any legal action which may be brought by third parties against the ICSR Mediterranean Knowledge
  3. The author(s) retain(s) the rights of the article. The ICSR Mediterranean Knowledge is allowed to publish it in digital edition with licence Creative Commons Attribution Licence 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) or in any other form that the publisher considers opportune. The licence allows others to share the article, provided that the authorship and the initial publication in this journal are reported.
  4. The author(s) can establish arrangements with non-exclusive license to distribute the published version of the article (eg. deposit it in an institutional archive or publish it in a monograph), indicating that it was first published in the Journal of Mediterranean Knoweldge.
  5. The author(s) can distribute the work online (eg. on their website) only after that it is published by the Journal of Mediterranean Knoweldge (see The Effect of Open Access).