Anglo-American Voyeurism andTranslated Arab Women s writings

In this paper, an attempt is being made to shed light on how frequently Anglo- American Arabists, translators, and commentators have dealt with translated Arab women's writings from a voyeuristic perspective, satisfying the Western reader’s negative and preconceived attitudes towards the Arab world. According to several specialists, one of the main objectives of translation is to manipulate literature in order to acquire a new function in the target-culture. This manipulation is examined with specific reference to a number of translated Arab women's writings. Besides, they have also been used to serve the prevalent Western feminist discourse on both the literary and ideological levels. All in all, they have given the Anglo-American literary circles a pretext to look down at the allegedly inferior Arab culture.