Mainstream translation studies hitherto have tended to neglect Arabic. This volume evaluates the ways in which translating from Arabic has helped to form and deform cultural identities, approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives: politics, economics, ethics and poetics.
Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Arabic Linguistic Tradition introduces the major issues and themes that have determined the development of the Arabic linguistic tradition. Each chapter contains a short extract from a translated "landmark" text followed by a commentary which places the text in its social and intellectual context. The chosen texts frequently offer scope for comparison with the Western tradition. By contrasting the two systems, the Western and the Arabic, this book serves to highlight the characteristics of two very different systems and thus will stimulate new ideas about the history of linguistics. This book presumes no prior knowledge of Arab-Islamic culture or Arabic language.
This is an account of the phonology and morphology of modern spoken Arabic, the first to be published in any language and based largely on the author's research. Dr Watson's approach is theoretically innovative and aware, but accessible to Arabic language specialists outside linguistics. Broad in coverage, this is an important and pioneering book.
This is the first study of its kind to tackle the postcolonial in Arabic fiction. In ten chapters, a lengthy preface and an extensive bibliography, the author discusses and questions a large number of novels that demonstrate cultural diversity and richness in the Arab World. Using current methodologies and discourse analysis, the author highlights engagements with postcolonial issues that relate to identity formation, the modern nation-state, individualism, nationalism, gender and class demarcations, and micro-politics. With this intention, the book locates Arabic narrative in the mainstream of world literature, and establishes the modern Arabic novel in the contemporary literary critical world of postcolonial studies. The author's lucid style and thorough knowledge of the field should recommend the book to students and scholars alike, as it comes in time to meet the needs of the academy for solid writing on the Arabs.
