Presentation during the "Literature and Social Issues in the Middle East" online Seminar course: Investigating the Translation Techniques of Culture Specific Terms and Idioms from Arabic into English in Habib Selmi's Goat Mountain and The Scents of Marie Claire

1. Investigating the Translation Techniques of
Culture-Specific Terms and Idioms from
Arabic into English in Habib Selmi’s Goat
Mountain and The Scents of Marie-Claire
Student: Salah Mhamdi
Supervisors: Dr. Shada Bokir & Dr. Mohammed Almahfali
Course: Literature and Social Issues in the Middle East
The New University in Exile Consortium
22 December 2023

2. Habib Selmi
• Habib Selmi is a Paris-based Tunisian writer.
• He wrote 12 novels and 2 short stories collections.
• He was shortlisted three times for the International
Prize for Arabic Fiction (known informally as the Arabic
Booker Prize) in 2009, 2012, 2021.
• He won the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel in 2021.
• His writing style is unsophisticated and economical.
• He uses Tunisian Arabic words in his writings
• His novels were translated into several languages:
English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese,
Malayalam

3. Themes
• Cultural differences between the Middle East and the West
• Transformations in the Tunisian countryside
• Dichotomies within the Arab intellectual
• Mixed marriage

4. Goat Mountain
• The first novel by Habib Selmi.
• It was published in 1988.
• It was translated into English by Charis Olszok
in 2020 and published by Banipal Publishing.
• It tells the story of a young man’s new life as a
teacher in a rural village called “Goat
Mountain” and the life twists of his guide
Ismail.

5. The Scents of Marie-Claire
• The seventh novel by Habib Selmi.
• It was first published in Lebanon in 2008.
• It was translated into several languages: English, French,
Italian, and German.
• Shortlisted in 2009 for the International Prize for Arabic
Fiction.
• Translated in 2010 by the Palestinian writer Fadwa Al
Qasem and published by the American University in
Cairo Press.
• It’s a love story between a Tunisian immigrant in France
and a French woman called Marie-Claire.

6. Research Questions
• What are the translation techniques used to translate into English the
Arabic culture-specific terms in Goat Mountain and The Scents of
Marie-Claire?
• What are the translation techniques used to render into English the
Arabic idioms in the two novels?

7. Research Methodology
• Use of the mixed method: quantitative & qualitative.
• Use of the classification of translation techniques by Vinay &
Darbelnet
• The use of the translation techniques of calque, modulation and
adaptation.
• Calque is used mainly to translate rural attire: burnoss, malahfa, etc.