It is a film in Moroccan dialect, dubbed in Egyptian dialect to ensure, it is said, greater openness to the Arab world.
First presented as part of the 45th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival, its title goes – note the subtle nuance! – from “I’m not going to do anything” has “I’m more than I am”!!
It is not up to me to question the linguistic choices of the director nor the marketing strategies of promotion and distribution, but the theme remains striking in a context where social networks have increased exchanges and made people see and hear, instantly. , some dialogues of the deaf in local “patois”, notably between Moroccan and poorly understanding speakers, or pretending to be so, from the vast Arab world, disoriented, for some of them, in front of a dialect reduced to the stage of sabir incomprehensible.
I won’t even dwell on certain reactions from the main stakeholders, namely the Egyptians themselves, for whom the film in question seems primarily intended in this version, before serving as a springboard for its distribution.
The renowned Egyptian film critic and writer, Tarek El Shennawi, throws some murderous arrows in the direction of Moroccan film in an article and adds, with regard to the public of his own country, that “the audience in the large room does not believe the dialogue they hear, as if they were facing cartoon characters. »
It therefore favors subtitling written in what is called “a white dialect”placed in an intermediate rank between the classic and the vernacular.
Enough to do educational work by encouraging the ear to become familiar with the language, and the mind, to explore other mental constructions and other cultural universes!
Everything has been said about translation and the complexity of the process which goes beyond the simple transposition of words from one language to another to involve adjustments which can alter the original.
It is not for nothing that the old adage decrees bluntly: “traitorous translator“, either, “Translator, traitor!» or: «To translate is to betray”, if you prefer!
This is all the more insane since we are talking about dialects both derived from Arabic and clearly evolving over time under the influence of different factors.
A bit as if an Argentinian, Colombian or Mexican film were dubbed in Spain or a film made in the “Belle province” was dubbed into French in France.
Let us remember the reactions provoked following the broadcast on Canal+, in subtitled mode, of the mini-series by Quebec director Xavier Dolan, “The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up”adapted from the eponymous play, by playwright Michel Marc Bouchard, and whose dubbed version was assimilated by certain Quebec journalists to “nonsense», «a negation of the Francophonie», «an insult to the French spoken in Quebec»…
Tabarnak!!! Let’s imagine the outcry if the series had been dubbed!
-Normal! Without appearing to do so, the question raises the fundamental question of identity, even authority, while questioning the prejudice according to which one dialect among others is considered as a reference standard.
It all depends, in any case, on the angle at which you position yourself. Because when questioned about the virtues of this dubbing of the Moroccan film, a famous Egyptian actress justified the process and explained the difficulty of understanding our darija by the presence of words in “farançaoui».
This forgets that all our countries have forged a living language at the crossroads of various cultures, asserting itself as a form of resistance to dominant formalism and as a privileged space for communication and creativity.
It is also forgetting that if the Moroccan dialect actually includes (besides the fundamental Amazigh part) a few words in French, Portuguese or Spanish, in the same way, Egyptian has been enriched by Coptic, Greek, Persian , Turkish, English, Italian and even farançaoui …
In bulk, we remember a few words that smell good of the terroir but whose origin is elsewhere: tarabeza, fanous, faraoula (terms of Greek origin to designate respectively the table, the lantern or the strawberry); efendi, hanem, abla, khawaja, osta, agzakhanah, oda, arika, baqchich (all from the Turkish world). From French: abajoura, autobis, subscriber, diploma, occazione…; or again, from Italian: bagno, guanto, balyatcho (derived from Pagliaccio in the sense of clown and mountebank)…
As for Coptic, considered “the final stage of the pharaonic Egyptian language» and became the liturgical language of the Christians of Egypt, in addition to its natural, syntactic and grammatical influences, it leaves their name to some cities of Egypt such as Fayoum (Phiôm, “Land of the lake”), Assiut, Aswan or Damanhur…
There is therefore a notable difference between the “fosha“, specific to writing and the “amiya», falling into the domain of orality and presenting several phonetic particularities compared to classical Arabic and other Arabic dialects.
Among other examples: the consonant “qaf” is almost aspirated in pronunciation in Egypt, to give a sound similar to the letter a; while the j becomes a g, aptly called “Egyptian jim.” Both cases, illustrated in one sentence, would read something like this: “Inta gamil awi awi!”. Not very phonetically and grammatically orthodox, as you can see!
And when the diva Oum Keltoum, “Astre d’Orient”, enchants us with her marvelous chant with a truly Arabic title, «Alf lila or Lila» and there arises a «Izzy»repeated like a bewitching echo, no one is going to break the spell and inquire about the exact place of this term in language dictionaries.
In short, if the Egyptian dialect is the most understood and the most influential in the Arab world, it is not because of a supposed “purity” or a greater proximity to classical Arabic, but more because it is the key element of popular culture, formerly disseminated through audio-visual media, music and cinema.
It is up to us to proudly impose our culture instead of sacrificing diversity on the altar of standardization, or even erasure.
