Erotizing Nabokov’s Lolita in Arabic: How Translation Strategies Shift Themes and Characterization of Literary Works

Theoretical Background

Censorship in Arab Countries

Oral and textual violation of constraints imposed by political, religious, sex, or social taboos in Arab countries may result in serious consequences. Censorship, therefore, even self-censoring, in most Arab countries is a tool utilized to prevent the circulation of not only Arabic production but also translated works (Al-Qudah). Violation of taboos sometimes results in the ban of such works, imprisonment of their authors, or even worse scenarios. For example, the Saudi writer Rajaa Al Sanea’s novel Girls of Riyadh was initially banned in Saudi Arabia on the grounds of violating prevailing social norms by bringing out to the public social topics that are only discussed within private feminine circles (Booth ““The Muslim Woman” as Celebrity Author and the Politics of Translating Arabic: Girls of Riyadh Go on the Road”; Booth “Translator V. Author (2007) Girls of Riyadh Go to New York”). In another case, the Jordanian writer Nehez Hatter was assassinated in 2016 for violating religious taboos (Aljazeera).

With regard to translation, Allan and Burridge distinguish two types of expurgation, namely, censoring and censorship. Censoring refers to expurgation as a result of self-imposed compliance to social constraints, while censorship refers to institutionalized monitoring such as that imposed by the state. Therefore, writers and translators in Arab countries are expected to obey constraints imposed by taboo topics to avoid experiencing repercussions.

Empirical Studies

Investigating strategies employed in translating literary works from English into Arabic and vice versa has attracted the attention of researchers over the years.

Alwafai conducted a study on two Arabic translations of the novella The Old Man and the Sea to find out the strategies employed in the process. The data were analyzed based on Baker’s theory of equivalence at the word level and equivalence at the collocation level. The findings showed that the strategies used the most to render the untranslatable culture-specific items were paraphrasing, rewording, and cultural adaptation.

In the same vein, Farghal and Bazzi examined the translation strategies employed in rendering English fiction titles into Arabic. One hundred English titles were collected and compared with their Arabic counterparts. The study revealed that literal translation was adopted when the title was lexically and culturally transparent, such as rendering “Presumed Innocent” into البريء المفترض. When the title included culture-bound references or allusions, adaptation seemed to be the most appropriate strategy as in rendering “The Green Mile” into اللحظة الأخیرة (Lit. The Last Moment). In some cases, titles were rendered in a more attractive way by using related words and explication, as in translating “Slumdog Millionaire” into الملیونیر المتشرد (Lit. The Homeless Millionaire). Flat and unnatural titles were produced when paraphrasing was used, as in rendering “The Enemy” into لا يمكنك الهروب من العدو (Lit. you cannot flee from the enemy). With proper nouns, transliteration seemed to work well but had to be supplemented by other procedures in some cases, such as descriptive phrases as in translating “Christine,” into كريستين: السيارة المسكونة (Lit. Christine: The Haunted Car).

Rahmani as well explored the rendition of Moroccan cultural terminologies into English in Leila Abouzeid’s novella, Ām al-fīl. The study followed the approaches proposed by Newmark, Baker, and Ghazala. The results showed that these items were mostly replaced by cultural substitutes to familiarize the target readers with the source culture (SC), as in rendering لعبة الحجلة into “hopscotch.” In some cases, information was added as notes to facilitate the understanding of Moroccan culture-specific items to target readers. In the case of the nonlexicalization of some terms in the target language, the translator used more neutral/less expressive words by close alternatives or paraphrase even if they do not deliver the same meaning from source language (SL) into the target language (TL), as in translating the word النقاب into veil.

Similarly, Zayed et al. investigated the strategies used in translating the idiomatic expressions in the novel Men in the Sun from Arabic into English by adopting Baker’s and Newmark’s models. The study calculated the frequencies of each strategy to determine the mostly used in rendering the idioms in the novel. The results showed that paraphrasing was the highest in frequency and proved to be the most appropriate to render Arabic idioms into English, as in the Arabic idiom الأمر لا يد لي في, which was paraphrased in English as ‘I have had no choice in the matter.’ Moreover, literal translation and translating an idiom with a TL idiom that is similar in meaning but different in form were also employed, such as the Arabic idiom أنا عتيق في هذه الصنعة, which was translated into English as ‘I am an old hand at this game.’ Idioms that are similar in form and meaning were rarely used.

In the same token, Rababah and Al-Abbas explored the strategies adopted to overcome different translation constraints imposed in rendering the Arabic novel Saq Al-Bambu into English in light of Baker’s taxonomy. Examples were collected and categorized thematically into social, political, religious, and cultural constraints. The analysis showed that the translator used general terms to refer to specific concepts in the original novel, such as the word البومباي (Lit. Bombay), which was translated into ‘the Indians.’ Translation by omission was only used in rendering religious and cultural terms, as in the translation of ثلاثة مبشرين أمريكيين into ‘three Americans.’

Although there is a multitude of studies that investigated literary translations of different works, this study is different in that it examines the translation strategies employed in the translation of Lolita by Mola (2011) and Jubaili (2012) and how they handled the controversial themes in their target texts.

Why Nabokov’s Lolita?

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was written in English in the United States in 1955, but it was banned from publication there for its pornographic and erotic nature. It was first published in Paris in 1955 and then appeared in New York in 1958 and in London in 1959. It soon acquired its status as a classic and was translated into other languages. The novel is narrated in the first person by the main character Humbert, a French professor of literature, who is described by critics as unreliable, and who passionately details his obsession and sexual encounters with Lolita (Hepburn).

The content and taboo themes in this novel (e.g., pedophilia, incest, and adolescent sexuality) have generated controversy from the beginning, even within its source culture. Lolita was banned for different periods of time in many countries, including Arab and Islamic states like Iran, where violation of social constraints can incur strong penalties. In fact, Azar Nafisi, an Iranian female writer and university professor, describes in her memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran (2004) how she and a group of her students risked their lives by defying the authorities and breaking religious and social constraints when they gathered at her house to read forbidden Western classics, including Nabokov’s masterpiece, Lolita (Tymoczko).

The disagreeable nature of Lolita’s themes and content, which made it repulsively intolerable in Western, as well as Arab and Islamic societies, might be best described in The New Yorker by Malcolm:

It is the horrific rather than the comic aspect of the novel that has captured critical attention. This is not surprising, since Mr. Nabokov has coolly prodded one of the few remaining raw nerves of the twentieth century … he (the modern reader) is apt to find himself wholly disconcerted by Mr. Nabokov’s restrained and witty chronicle of the lust of a man for a child. Such a lust, it must be admitted, is monstrous.

In the novel, there are two main characters, namely, Humbert and Lolita. A brief description of the two is outlined below:

• Humbert is an erudite, mentally unstable, talented British professor of French literature who is, beyond control, sexually obsessed with minor girls, whom he calls “nymphets.” He is exceptionally charming, sarcastic, and endowed with an enticing, extraordinary linguistic competence that makes him seductive, as much to his readers as to other characters.

• Lolita (Humbert’s pet name for Dolores Haze) is a stereotypical stubborn 12-year-old American girl who reminds Humbert of his childhood crush. Although she is not exceptionally beautiful nor charming, she remains his favorite type of girl with her skinny arms, freckled face, vulgar language, and unladylike behavior.

Investigated Translations

In this study, the researchers examine two Arabic versions of the novel; one published in 2011 by Osama Publishing House in Damascus, translated by Ali Mola, and the other published in 2012 by Al-Jamal Publishing House in Beirut, translated by Khalid Jubaili.

To the best of our knowledge, no prior research, or any other kind of feedback, has been done on these Arabic translations, which grants this study its importance. No information could be found regarding sales, readership, or the reception of these translations in the Arab world. Only at the end of his translation does Mola provide an afterword, an Arabic message to the reader in which he states that “the novel is just a love story which hypocrites find shameful and intimidating, whereas it is nothing but a real story full of all sentiments of love … a unique work … that places lovers under social examination like other classical love couples.”

Research Procedures

The researchers carefully and thoroughly read the English version of the novel and spotted the scenes that might be controversial in Arab society. Then, they examined how these scenes were rendered in the two versions of the translation. The source text examples are extracted from the English edition published in 1991, called The Annotated Lolita. Focus is placed on scenes with erotic content and stretches of speech describing Humbert’s fantasies about Lolita. The examples are categorized according to the translation strategies employed in rendering the concerned scenes. They are then examined for the purpose of how they are dealt with in the translation. The translations of Mola and Jubaili are compared to highlight their approach and strategies for converting the text into Arabic.

Omission

Omission, as a translation strategy, is proposed by different theorists for different purposes. Nida, for example, suggests using it to avoid redundancy. Newmark proposes the utilization of this strategy to cater to target reader preferences and for the sake of clarity and brevity. Omission is the most frequently used strategy in Mola’s translation when compared to that of Jubaili (Table 1).

In his translation, Jubaili proves very loyal to the source text. He rarely employs omission, and when he occasionally does, his omissions are limited to single words and phrases, as Example 12 in Table 1 shows, with no significant impact on the understanding of the novel, nor on the characterization of its main characters.

Mola, on the other hand, employs omission on a wide scale. His omissions range from single words (Examples 1–3) to short phrases (Examples 4–7) to complete passages (Examples 8–11). In Example 1, Humbert threatens Lolita that if she left him, she would be taken to a foster home where she would be given “rancid pancakes,” using the word “rancid” to beg a repulsed and a subsequent submissive reaction from Lolita. Mola deleted “rancid” and rendered the word “pancakes” as قطائف, which is a loveable kind of Arab desert. Such deletion and substitution would hardly produce the repulsive effect aimed at in the source text.

Another example is the word “nymphet” (Example 2). Humbert repeatedly uses this word to denote his favorite type of girl between 9 and 14 years of age. This recurring presence of the term demonstrates Humbert’s pedophiliac, perverted nature (his sexual attraction and obsession with 9- to 14-year-old girls). Deleting the term on occasions and adding مسعورات (Lit. rabid) to it on other occasions help diminish such characterization of Humbert and consequently shift the sexual obsession from Humbert to those nymphets. Jubaili, on the other hand, renders both Examples 1 and 2 literally as فطائر فاسدة (rancid pancakes) and حورية (nymphet) consecutively.

Examples of longer omissions are the French phrases and sentences that Humbert uses every now and then to show off his European origin and education (see Examples 4–6). This frequent code-switching is a factor that contributes to the building of Lolita’s rejection of Humbert in the later weeks of their relationship. While Mola deletes most of these phrases (Examples 4 and 5), he does translate some (Example 6). But when he does, he keeps the Arab reader unaware of their French origin, thus deleting a critical layer of their meaning. While the foreignness of these phrases is evident in the English text (making Humbert’s self-pride more evident), their obscured foreignness in Arabic may conceal Lolita’s gradual rejection of Humbert.

Similarly, Jubaili literally translates the French elements into Arabic, but without noting they are French. He also employs transliteration in rendering some foreign words (see Examples 3 and 4). Example 7 shows phrases that are deleted by Mola but retained by Jubaili. Their deletion significantly affects Lolita’s characterization as a child.

Longer multi-page passages are completely struck out. Chapter 30, where Humbert rambles on about how he would decorate the walls of the hotel dining room where he once stayed with Lolita, is completely deleted (Example 8). Other passages (Examples 9–11), including Lolita’s class name list, which Humbert views as a poem, Lolita’s long talk about her camp activities, and whole paragraphs describing places, events, or people are also deleted or significantly downsized. Talking about Lolita’s class name list (Example 9) shows how insanely obsessed he was, not only with her body but even with her name. These omissions drastically impact the characterization of Humbert’s and Lolita’s personalities, diminishing Humbert’s depravity and boosting Lolita’s playfulness as a teenager.

On occasions, long passages are reduced to a simple sentence (Example 10). Humbert’s long retelling of the efforts he exerted and the pains he endured to appear like a normal father in people’s eyes, such as seeing Lolita off to school, dining out with her, taking her to the dentist, and other father–daughter activities, is reduced to one sentence.

On another occasion, Humbert, having lost Lolita and is now traveling with a girl called Rita, describes over two pages his passing through Briceland, where he had stopped with Lolita a year before at the “The Enchanted Hunters” hotel, to relive the time he spent with her. This description shows how desperate he is to see her again. This is reduced to a simple sentence, as Example 11 shows.

Jubaili, on the other hand, proves loyal to the source text, rendering these passages literally with extreme caution in order not to mess with or make changes to the target text. Very rarely, Jubaili employs omission in his translation, as Example 12 shows. However, such sporadic deletions do not affect the events of the novel, nor the characterization of Humbert and Lolita, in the manner Mola skillfully employs this technique.

Addition

Addition is a translation strategy whereby translators add extra words, phrases, or sentences to the target text that are not part of the source text (ST), as Dickins et al. suggest.

While Jubaili does not employ this strategy in his version of Lolita, Mola, on many occasions, adds words and phrases that are not in the ST, aiming to shift attention from the novel’s pedophiliac and incestuous theme by deliberately violating the sex taboo and making the novel more erotic. As Example 13 in Table 2 shows, when Lolita accidentally hits her mother with a tennis ball and apologizes, “Pardonnez, Mother. I was not aiming at you,” Humbert remarks “Of course not, my hot downy darling.” Mola, to portray Lolita as playful and manipulative, adds the phrase اللعوب تقصدني كانت الجنية (Lit. The playful nymphet was aiming at me), which is not in the source text.

In addition, almost every occurrence of the word “nymphet” is associated in Mola’s version with the adjective مسعورة (Lit. sexually wild or rabid), and occasionally with the word المراهقة (teenage) in the Arabic text, as shown by examples 14 a and b. This association, which is maintained in Mola’s version, shifts the connotative meaning of the word “nymphet” from a chaste spiritual creature, as implied by Islamic tradition, to a wild female driven by sexual desire. Such lexical choices make Mola’s intentions more noticeable.

Example 15 is another instance of the addition strategy employed by Mola. As Charlotte, Lolita’s mother, recites to Humbert some sexual habits she had with her late husband, Mola adds the phrase فقد كانت عادات جدية (Lit. they were serious habits), emphasizing their importance. Furthermore, as Example 16 shows, Mola adds the phrase الذي ضاجع لوليتا (who fucked Lolita), which is not part of the ST.

Dysphemism

Dysphemism, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is the utilization of a disagreeable, offensive, or a disparaging expression instead of an agreeable or inoffensive one. While translators usually apply euphemism when translating texts loaded with tabooed topics and language from a liberal society into more conservative society, Mola, counter to expectations, applies dysphemism in his translation, thus shifting the source text euphemistic language into a more sexually explicit one.

The examples in Table 3 show how Jubaili consistently abides by his literal translation method while Mola opts for dysphemism. In Example 17, the phrase “sparing her purity” is rendered by Mola as على ان لا أدنس عمليا بكارتها (Lit. not to practically defile her hymen …), and by so doing, a more erotic layer of meaning is added, and the defloration act is summoned in the reader’s imagination. Similarly, in Example 18, the phrase ‘Restraint and reverence (with Lolita) were still my motto’ is rendered as أجل أنا لن أضاجعها مضاجعة كاملة (Lit. Yes, I’m not going to fuck her completely). Such rendering, in addition to repeatedly rendering the words “purity” and “chastity” (Example 19) here and elsewhere in the novel as virginity/عذريتها, aims at making the Arabic text even more erotic.

Dysphemistic use of many expressions evidently serves the translator’s purpose of making the novel more sexually inviting and making Lolita seem more complicit, more sexualized, and less of a victim. As mentioned earlier, instead of literally rendering the recurrent words in Example 19 “chastity and purity” literally as طهارتهن (purity), Mola uses the more erotic words عذريتهن أو بكارتهن (Lit. their virginity or hymen).

Similarly, in Example 20, Mola translates the sentence “The rapist was Charlie Holmes” as ان الذي انتهك عذارها اجراميا هو تشارلي هولمز’ (Lit. The one who illegally breached her hymen was Charlie Holmes), thus avoiding the use of the word مغتصب (Lit. rapist), which in Arabic directs the reader’s attention to the violent part of the act rather than its sexual side and replacing it with the phrase “breached her hymen,” which is more suggestive. By so doing, Mola manages to remove the violence from the act, and generate the image of breaching Lolita’s hymen in the reader’s mind, instead.

On another occasion, and to portray a “brute of forty” (Example 21) marrying a very young girl in the ugliest possible way, Mola renders the word “brute” using the two adjectives عتل زنيم (Lit. a massive intrusive bastard), which are part of a Quranic verse, to describe the staunchest enemy of Prophet Mohammad. The words not only describe the beastly nature of the man but also characterize him as a child of adultery and bring forth the image of the historically hated infidel in Arab Islamic culture, which transcends the connotations of “brute.” By accentuating Humbert’s disfavor of such an act, Mola endows him with an image of a more decent man.

Substitution

Substitution is a translation strategy whereby an expression or a phrase in the source text is replaced by another in the target text. Baker calls it cultural substitution, which involves replacing a culturally specific item with a target language, one that has the same impact on the target reader, making the target text more natural, familiar, and understandable. However, examples in Table 4 show that substitution, particularly as employed by Mola, serves other purposes than achieving familiarity and facilitating comprehension of the target text.

Table 4 shows a few of the numerous examples of substitution, particularly in Mola’s translation. While Jubaili upholds his policy of loyalty to the source text, Mola utilizes the strategy of substitution to a great extent. Examples 22–25 in Table 4 show how literal Jubaili’s rendering is, thus maintaining Nabokov’s repulsive incestuous and pedophiliac themes. Mola, on the other hand, changes “pollutive dreams” into الاستمنائية احلامي (masturbatory dreams), as in Example 22; “child” in Example 23 becomes “teenager”; Lolita’s “childish fidgeting” becomes “responsive fooling around” and “feel her skin through her boy’s shirt” becomes “my hands could run under her pants to feel her soft skin” in Example 24, and all the metaphoric descriptions of menstruation in Example 25 are turned into mother nature pushing Lolita “down the path of the mysteries of pleasure and sexuality.”

With these and many other similar substitutions, Mola distances his translation from the ST’s incestuous and pedophiliac themes toward a more pornographic theme by introducing explicitly more erotic expressions and phrases into his text, thus making it more inviting and less revolting to the Arab reader. He creates sensual scenes by turning Lolita’s childish actions into playful manipulations of an innocent old man, thus switching their roles as victim and victimizer.