Are Arabs prisoners to Western validation?

As a result, we have become incapable of self-awareness except through the perceptions of others — particularly those of the West — and can only view ourselves and our culture through the eyes and judgements of outsiders. We no longer have independent appreciation of our accomplishments until they acknowledged by others.

Western validation

We wait for a sign from the West to commend any of our own achievements. Accordingly, we only explore an Arabic text if it was linked by Western culture to a somewhat similar literary text of its own, restricting the Arabic one to a mere reflection of its Western counterpart.

This has been the case with several of our mediaeval Arabic classics such as Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan, Risalat al-Ghufran [the Epistle of Forgiveness], the Muqaddimah [the Introduction] by Ibn Khaldoun, and even the Thousand and One Nights.

We only began to admire such masterpieces after their translation to European languages. Consciously or subconsciously, we became entirely dependent on translations, comparative literary studies, and juxtapositions by the West to feel entitled to appreciate any of our own cultural works.

As a result, what we write or read has no value except through its translation. In other words, we write only to get what we wrote translated. Some of us are even writing first in a language other than Arabic and then translating what they wrote into Arabic.  

Arab novelists are writing stories while keeping in mind their would-be translator to this or that foreign language. We are becoming increasingly incapable of writing or reading our own language without obsessing over its translation, juxtaposition, and comparison to other languages.

Odd literary practices

Therefore, Arabic literature readers, directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously, relate it to a European text, thereby becoming a default practitioner of comparative literature, or a translator, if you will. This has resulted in odd literary practices where we find ourselves reading Arabic texts while thinking about their respective translations into other languages — be it English, French or Italian.

Additionally, translation is no longer a post-production practice, but a process that accompanies the writing of the text.

To us Arabs, translation has become not just the conventional process of conveying meanings from one language or literature to another, nor is it merely an intellectual endeavour. Rather, it has become a mindset and a lifestyle, as we evaluate everything that we say or write in Arabic by how it translates to European languages.

Thus, translation has become an integral part of our daily practices. This odd practice of a particular culture conforming itself to the perceptions of outsiders could be called "a translation situation."

We no longer feel entitled to acknowledge our own achievements except after "the others" have done so.

Read more: In the eyes of others

Impact on Arab self-esteem

This is evident in how Arab writers rush to see how their translated books are being perceived by Europeans. The intangible mirror of "the others" has become an indispensable measure of our collective self-esteem.

To make things worse, we let these perceptions deeply affect us. We obsess over how the West perceives us so that we may replicate the image of ourselves that the West approves.

This is no different than how commercial advertisements manipulate society by projecting images and models of how society should dress, eat, behave, consume, and so on. This results in a society that chases after unrealistic standards and feels a constant need for validation.

This consumer-advertisement relationship is a perfect example of how we, as Arabs, perceive our own image — whether it reflected by a piece of glass, our past, or the dominant global culture.

The danger is that we will continue to replicate distorted images of ourselves and lose our identities altogether.