From Voice to Text: Untranslated Orality in Paul Bowles’s Moroccan Collaborations

Backup copy. This page is kept by the LLCIS Research Laboratory as a backup of Confluence Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies. The official version of record is published on the journal’s platform, hosted and indexed by IMIST-CNRST: https://journals.imist.ma/index.php/confluence/article/view/6108.

  • Inass Essrhir ORCIDAbdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, Morocco - LLCIS Research Laboratory
  • Sawsan Malla Hussein ORCIDAbdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan
PDF (backup copy)Official version on IMISTDOI
Journal
Confluence Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies (e-ISSN 3085-5411)
Issue
Vol. 2 No. 1 (2026)
Section
Articles
Pages
12-26
Published
19 January 2026
DOI
https://doi.org/10.34874/PRSM.cjms-vol2iss1.6108
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Copyright (c) 2026 Inass Essrhir, Sawsan Malla Hussein

Abstract

This article explores how Paul Bowles’s translations of Ahmed Yacoubi’s “The Night Before Thinking” (1979), Larbi Layachi’s A Life Full of Holes (1964), and Mohammed Mrabet’s The Boy Who Set the Fire (1974) retain untranslated elements of Moroccan oral storytelling. In each of these texts, orality is not merely evoked but structurally embedded. The translations retain paratactic syntax, rhythmic patterns, formulaic expressions, and mnemonic devices. Notably, the absence of quotation marks collapses distinctions between narration and dialogue, sustaining the fluidity of live storytelling within the written form. Bowles resists standardized literary conventions, allowing oral features to remain deliberately intact. Drawing on the concept of untranslatability from postcolonial translation theory, this article argues that this deliberate choice reflects a stylistic and cultural commitment to maintaining orality. In resisting domestication, the texts retain the spontaneity, tone, and narrative presence of the original performances, transforming the act of reading into an encounter with living, spoken tradition.

Keywords

Paul BowlesMoroccan StorytellingOralityPostcolonial TranslationUntranslatability

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