Reframing and Renarrating Arab Muslim Women for the West: The Translation of Huda Sha’Rawi’s Memoirs into Harem Years

This thesis examines the impact of paratextual and textual framing on the representation of Third World Women, taking as a case study the translation of Huda Sha’rawi’s memoirs by Margot Badran. Drawing on narrative theory and framing, this study highlights the choices made by the translator in and around the translated text. An examination of the paratextual devices (including the front cover, the preface, blurbs and headings) is followed by an analysis of textual framing devices through examining omissions, additions, reductions, amplifications and displacement of material. This study aims at raising awareness of translation as a powerful tool of advocacy and social change but also as a potentially harmful instrument that may act against the interests of the author, her culture and voice, and in so doing, preclude intellectual processes of ideological transformation and of stereotypes dismantlement.