CULTURAL TRANSLATION:

AZUR ET ASMAR
Michel Ocelot
 His fourth animated feature film
 His first Kirikou et la sorcière (1998) was a great
success (Kirikou effect in France)
 Azur et Asmar also set partly in Africa
 Focus on “transnational cinema”
Transnational Cinema
“as scores of transnational films have illustrated
in various generic modes, leaving one’s homeland
entails leaving behind both physically and
emotionally the familiarity that home implies.
This leave-taking often entails, to use Freud’s
term, a becoming-unheimlich both to oneself and
to those who are variously invested in the
diasporic subject’s remaining recognizable.”
(Ezra & Rowden, Transnational Cinema in the
Film Reader)
Transnational Cinema
“… borders are always leaky and there is a considerable
degree of movement across them …. It is in this migration,
this border crossing, that the transnational emerges. … The
experience of border crossing takes place at two broad
levels. First there is the level of production and the
activities of film-makers. … The second way in which
cinema operates on a transnational basis is in terms of the
distribution and reception of films. … when films do
travel, there is no certainty that audiences will receive them
in the same way in different cultural contexts” (Higson,
“The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”)
Ocelot and Transnational Cinema

 Focus in Africa again, which embarks on a

transcendence of all types of boundaries, a
perpetual translation or transportation between the
two cultures, the Orient and the Occident, thus
promoting a mutual complementarity
 contact between its viewers, mostly children in the
West, and a different culture
 awareness of the position of the immigrant in
contemporary societies
Posters and Titles
Posters and Titles
Immigration issues
 Hostility toward immigrants in general in the
Western, developed world, and toward those of
Arab origin in particular, (‘invasion’ of immigrants
in the continent).
 Borders are of paramount importance in relation to
immigrants who are excluded from a process of
opening up, or even completely eliminating, all
forms of boundaries when capital and the larger
economy are concerned.
Immigration and the West
‘[…] such a dual-policy regime [is] viable when it
comes to access to the EU: on the one hand, lifting
multiple restrictions on access by non-EU firms,
investment capital and goods in the context of
WTO, and the general opening of financial markets
in the European economies, and on the other,
building a Fortress Europe when it comes to
immigrants and refugees’ (Saskia Sassen, Guests
and Aliens)
Developments
 New immigration bill adopted in France in 2006 (DNA
tests, French language tests, other biometric tests)
 these provisions ‘[are] part of the general strategy and
managerial logic based on the rationalization of
processes and procedures, leading to the fundamental
transformation of a conception of society once based
on mutual trust into a situation of generalized
suspicion’ (Merzouki,
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.20/dna-french-i
mmigration-law
).
Transformations in Ocelot
 Ocelot’s film attempts a reversal of roles.
 The film inhabits Arab culture, embarks on a series
of boundary crossings – literal and metaphorical
 Finally manages a reversal of roles, turning the Self
into the Other
Cultural Translation
 transferences between cultures – be it the physical
trans-portations of individuals, spatial or temporal
dis-placements, alternations between languages
 ‘in-between’ space that undermines contemporary
fixities
Cultural Translation
“By drawing on more than one culture, more than one
language, more than one world experience, within the
confines of the same text, postcolonial Anglophone and
Francophone literature very often defies our notions of an
‘original’ work and its translation. Hence, in many ways
these plurilingual texts in their own right resist and
ultimately exclude the monolingual and demand of their
readers to be like themselves: ‘in between’, at once capable
of reading and translating, where translation becomes an
integral part of the reading experience” (Samia Mehrez
“Translation and the Postcolonial Experience: The
Francophone North African Text”)
Cultural Translation
“authors” of French origin, like Michel Ocelot,
who were born and grew up in Africa, are also
positioned in this space of “in between”, of not
belonging, which makes them “[assume] their
bilingualism as an effective means with which to
contest all forms of domination, and all kinds of
exclusion within their own ‘native’ cultures and
their ‘host’ cultures as well” (Mehrez).
Ocelot “in-between”
 Born and grew up in North Africa
 identifies himself with the North African immigrant
in France and hints at the frustration he
experienced as an adolescent because of his
‘immigrant’ status when he was transported from
Africa to France (“I was a small hostile Beur, with
an absurd attitude. I invented a country that never
existed, a country on cardboard, instead of living
the here and now”).
“Beur”
“Beur is the term used to refer to a person born in
France of North African immigrant parents. It is not a
racist term and is often used by the media, anti-racist
groups and second-generation North Africans
themselves. The word itself originally came from the
‘verlan’ rendering of the word ‘arabe’” (Le Robert &
Collins Dictionnaire Français-Anglais), where “verlan”,
in the same dictionary, is “a particular kind of
backsland […] [which] consists of inverting the
syllables of words, and often then truncating the result
to make a new word”.
“Border Subjectivity”
“border filmmaking tends to be accented by the
‘strategy of translation rather than representation’
(Hicks 1991, xxiii). Such a strategy undermines the
distinction between autochthonous and alien cultures in
the interest of promoting their interaction and
intertextuality. As a result, the best of the border films
are hybridized and experimental – characterized by
multifocality, multilinguality, asynchronicity, critical
distance, fragmented or multiple subjectivity, and
transborder amphibolic characters – characters who
might best be called ‘shifters’” (Naficy “Situating
Accented Cinema”).
The Film
Two boys spend their first years together, since Asmar’s
mother is Azur’s wet-nurse and later his nanny. This
mother-figure, a literally life-giving force for Azur who
has never known his real mother, brings the two boys
up with oral narratives from her homeland, in particular
the tale of the Djinn Fairy who awaits the brave prince
to overcome all obstacles and finally deliver her from
an evil spell that keeps her imprisoned. The two boys,
although later separated, are at some point reunited and
set off together to achieve the liberation of the Djinn
Fairy.
Film
 Setting
 Dual displacement (temporal and spatial)
 Disorientation of this “in-between” or “beyond”
state, neither here nor there, or both here and there
at the same time “an exploratory, restless
movement caught so well in the French rendition of
the words au-delà – here and there, on all sides,
fort/da, hither and thither, back and forth” (Homi
Bhabha The Location of Culture).
Temporal displacement
The Middle Ages, largely associated with a period
of darkness for Western humanity, refer to a
mediating period between the classical civilization
of Antiquity and Modern times.
Spatial displacement
The countries of the Maghreb, or Barbary
Largely cast in the role of the enemy
“The religion of its inhabitants alone was enough to exclude it from
Christian Europe. The ambiguity of its position thus appears: part of
the known world but irremediably alien, part of both Africa, the
Mediterranean and the Islamic worlds. Hence the difficulty of deciding
where to classify it, for each of these accepted divisions of the globe
entailed a certain number of characteristics in the European
imagination, which North Africa did not fit perfectly” (Ann Thomson
Barbary and Enlightenment)
Barbary: “a word which is overlaid with adverse connotations in
European minds that it must immediately have provoked hostile
reactions among most people”.
Discriminations & Colonisation
“when an original culture is superimposed with a
colonial or dominant culture through education, it
produces a nervous condition of ambivalence,
uncertainty, a blurring of cultural boundaries,
inside and outside, a nervousness within” (Robert
Young)

Example: Poisoned by Saracen’s venom

Universal Discriminations
 Azur (sky-blue French)  Asmar (dark Arabic)
 Curse of blue eyes  Curse of dark skin
 Motherless  Fatherless
 Wealth-poverty  Poverty-wealth
 Mother-figure
 Dominant position in the film
 Focal point in the opening sequence
 Breast-feeding (children’s nourishment)
 Children’s acquisition of speech
 Oral tradition
 “Only when we have considered the whole scope of the
basic feminine functions – the giving of life,
nourishment, warmth, and protection – can we understand
why the Feminine occupies so central a position in human
symbolism and from the very beginning bears the
character of ‘greatness’” (Neumann The Great Mother).
Mother-Father
 Primary  Secondary
 Open  Closed
 Soft  Hard
 Good  Evil
 Other  Self
 Unity  Division
 Orient  Occident
Travel to the Land of the Other
 Crossing of the sea
 Africa
 Utopia
 Blindness
 Difference
Transformations
 Divesting of previous identity
 Angel – Demon
 Angelic eyes – Evil eye
 Self – Other
 Native – Immigrant/Alien/Unwanted
 Sight – Blindness
 Wealth – Poverty
 Speech – Silence
Transformations
 Familiar land – Unknown territory
 Bright – Dull

 Childhood stories – Frightful reality

 Beauty – Ugliness

Example: Meeting between Azur and Asmar

‫‪1st merchant (addressing Azur):‬‬
‫أنظر ماذا فعلت؟‬
‫)‪Azur: (Gives the merchant the money he earned from begging‬‬
‫!عفواً أنا آسف‬
‫)‪1st merchant: (takes the money‬‬
‫ماذا تريدني أن أفعل بهذا؟ ماذا فعلت لربي كي أقع على صعلوق كهذا؟‬
‫‪2nd merchant:‬‬
‫!المسكين! لم يقصده‬
‫‪1st merchant:‬‬
‫!لم يقصده؟ هؤالء الغرباء بدؤا أن يضايقوننا‬
‫‪2nd merchant:‬‬
‫)‪ (Says something in a different language‬وماذا عنك أنت؟ ألست غريباً؟‬
‫‪1st merchant:‬‬
‫!تكلم بالعربية و ليس بالقبائلية‬
1st merchant: “You miserable imbecile! Look what
you’ve done!”
Azur: “I’m sorry.”
1st merchant: “What do you want me to do with that?
What have I done to good god to fall on such a
cretin!”
2nd merchant: “He didn’t do it on purpose.”
1st merchant: “Not on purpose? They have started to
annoy us, these foreigners!”
2nd merchant: “And you, you’re not a foreigner? (In
Kabyle) Here, it is our home.”
1st merchant: “Speak Arabic, not Kabyle!”’
(No) Translation
 Deliberate absence of translation
 Gaps in understanding
 Sharing of alienation with main character
 Position of immigrant
 Exclusion
“Translation becomes part of the process of
domination, of achieving control, a violence carried
out on the language, culture, and people being
translated. The close links between colonization and
translation begin not with acts of exchange, but of
violence and appropriation, of ‘deterritorialization’”
(Young). See Niranjana.
Reactions
‘[…] The only drawback to this movie is that part of the
conversation that is made in Arabic has no subtitle (fyi
language used in the movie is French and Arabic but it
has English subtitle).’
http://mettysays.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-
01-01T00%3A00%3A00%2B07%3A00&updated-max=2
008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00%2B07%3A00&max-result
s=34
; ‘The story was presented in French and Arabic and I
found it a shame that they didn’t give subtitle for the
Arabic dialogue’
http://whiteka.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html).
Power of Hybridity/Liminality
 Knowledge
 Inside/Outside

 Mediation

 No boundaries

 Power of the disempowered

Example: Jénane / Princess Chamsous-Sabah

Space of Victory
 Myth
 Utopia (all characters displaced/misfits)

End of Film
Translation/Appropriation
“the Other text is forever the exegetical horizon of difference, never
the active agent of articulation. The Other is cited, quoted, framed,
illuminated, encased in the short/reverse-shot strategy of a serial
enlightenment. Narrative and the cultural politics of difference
become the closed circle of interpretation. The Other loses its power
to signify, to negate, to initiate its historic desire, to establish its
own institutional and oppositional discourse. However impeccably
the content of an ‘other’ culture may be known, however anti-
ehtnocentrically it is represented, it is its location as the closure of
grand theories, the demand that, in analytic terms, it be always the
good object of knowledge, the docile body of difference, that
reproduces a relation of domination and is the most serious
indictment of the institutional powers of critical theory” (Bhabha)
False dilemma
“If we must translate in order to emancipate and preserve
cultural parts and to build linguistic bridges for present
understandings and future thought, we must do so while
attempting to respond ethically to each language’s contexts,
intertexts, and intrinsic alterity. This dual responsibility may
well describe an ethics of translation or, more modestly, the
ethical at work in translation. […] Indeed, without more
refined and sensitive cultural/linguistic translations and, above
all, without an education that draws attention to the very act of
translation and to the interwoven, problematic otherness that it
confronts, our global world will be less hospitable; in fact, it
could founder” (Bermann, Nation, Language and the Ethics of
Translation)