Globalization and localization in Nabīl Nowaira's Arabic translation of samia Serageldin's the Cairo house

Abstract EN

The concepts of globalization and localization are often viewed as opposites in translation.

However, Nabīl Nowaira's Arabic translation of Samia Serageldin's The Cairo House demonstrates that globalization and localization can be reconciled.

Although Serageldin is an Egyptian author, her novel is global in nature because she writes in English which is the lingua franca and focuses on the influence of Anglophone and Francophone cultures on the social circle of the protagonist.

When translating this novel, Nowaira resorts to using globalization and localization in a manner which seems to be in line with the taste of the expected readers.

Mapping the Egyptian literary field is done in light of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology in order to understand the literary field's dynamics.

As the literary field in Egypt currently seems to be influenced by nostalgia to a cosmopolitan Egypt, Nowaira keeps the overall cosmopolitan feel of the text.

However, he sometimes resorts to localizing parts of the text for the sake of making them intelligible to the readers who might not be familiar with them.

The balanced use of globalization and localization in translation can be understood in light of the skopostheorie.

By analysing the reconciliation between globalization and localization in Nowaira's translation, the study establishes a link between globalization and literary translation which is still a largely overlooked field and a new territory in literature on globalization and translation studies