Nahdah Translators and the Politics of Modernization in Colonial Egypt: A Paratextual Analysis of Darwinism as a Reform Project

• Zeina, Farah Magdy ^[1]
  1. [1] Cairo University

     Cairo University

     Egipto

     
• Localización: Transletters.: International Journal of Translation and Interpreting, ISSN-e 2605-2954, Nº. 4, 2020, págs. 339-365
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper examines the modern Nahdah translation movement in Egypt, the end of the 19th century and turn of the 20th century, a period characterized by conflicting ideologies and reform projects. The paper examines western ideologies, imported via translation, as modernization projects. It presents a case study of Salama Moussa, a radical Nahdah intellectual, by focusing on his agenda for reform in the age of decolonization. The paper critically analyzes paratextual elements of Moussa’s Nazariyyat al-tatawwur wa-asl al-insan (Theory of Evolution and the Origin of Man) published in 1928 as a case of ‘concealed translation’. Situating the text in context reveals the alignment of the translation with norms of the translation policy in a given socio-historical moment.