homemaker
Explanation:
In the old days, we would say, "house wife," but that is now considered misogynistic.
The difference between أم بيت and ربة بيت is that أم بيت is the colloquial term. Notice that the first part of the text you posted is in colloquial Arabic.
ادي كان هذا هو السن المناسب للزواج زوجوني مثل ما يزوجون كل البنات، صفقة وهلاهل وصرت أم بيت
The second part is in formal (written) Arabic:
هكذا بكل بساطة أصبحت وهي في مثل سني ربة بيت عليها أن تتحمل كل مسؤولياته وواجباته
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 6 hrs (2020-07-22 19:08:39 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
I am adding this note to caution against anachronism regarding the term “homemaker” or “housewife” as opposed to their Arabic counterparts as used in the story you are translating.
Today, the terms “homemaker” and “housewife” are essentially understood as negative terms, although not necessarily directly pejorative. A woman is called a homemaker if she is not professionally or gainfully employed. This is a negative definition because it stands in contradistinction to what is now considered the standard walk of life, which is to have a paying job and a career.
The term is not necessarily directly pejorative, because many women wear it as a badge of honor. However, in common usage, it does have a pejorative undertone because of what a paying job signifies. It is not just that the homemaker does not make money; it is rather the unsaid, wink-wink notion that the homemaker could not qualify for a paying job due to lack of education or professional training. Of course, many highly educated, highly trained women choose to stay at home and raise a family, but the modern notion of a professional career does in fact prevail in the minds of many.
The bottom line is that the term “homemaker” or “housewife” is negative, even when not understood pejoratively, because it defines what the woman does not do (work at an office), not what the woman actually does (raises a family, manages the home economy, and, on top of that, performs house work, even if assisted by domestic help).
The text you are translating appears to be about an older time, a time governed by a different set of categories. I can say that because the lady refers to a time when women were married at a more tender age, an age that would nowadays be considered inappropriate for marriage, if at all legal. In those days, being employed or having a professional career was not the standard walk of life for an adult female. It was not what a girl looked forward to as she grew up. Being a homemaker was the standard, even if being a homemaker included farming work or selling goods in the marketplace. That was not seen as a form of employment. It was just what the family did, and every member of the family contributed to it.
Therefore, when a woman becomes ربة بيت, that was seen as a blessed milestone to celebrate and honor. She is not a girl in her parents’ household anymore. She is now the lady of her own household. In some cases, she would not achieve that status immediately, practically speaking, because, by transferring from her parents’ house to her husband’s house, she may initially come under the tutelage of her mother-in-law, who, in some regions, would expect to be addressed as ستي (“my lady”) and expects her daughters-in-law to be subservient to her ladyship. This could go on for a while before the daughter-in-law achieves the true independence implied by the term ربة بيت. Regardless of these pesky complications, the term ربة بيت, as understood in those more innocent times, was an honorific term. In some regions, when a girl marries, they still say تسـتتت (that is three final ت’s in addition to the initial ت). It means that she has become a ست, a lady.
This is clearly implied by the term itself. The word ربة is the feminine form of رب, which means “lord.” (In this case, no divinity is implied, of course.) Thus understood, ربة البيت means “the lady of the house.” That also explains the colloquial term أم بيت (literally “house matron”).
I am throwing these terms at you (“house lady,” “house matron”) in addition to “homemaker” and “housewife” to give you a richer palette to help you deal with this text, which enfolds more subtlety than appears on the surface. The translation is tricky because the reader is assumed to have a modern mindset. Today, when we hear a woman saying, “I have become a housewife,” that usually means, “I have given up on a career and will be staying at home.” In the case of this story, however, that understanding would be anachronistic, because the old lady in the story actually means, “overnight, I became a woman in my own right and the lady of my own house.” In the end, these considerations may not change your choice of term, and I don’t want to persuade you one way or the other, but I felt I should point out these maddening facts to help you form your own judgment on the basis of a fuller understanding.
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 5 days (2020-07-28 05:13:30 GMT) Post-grading
--------------------------------------------------
Now that an answer has been selected, the question has been closed, and the dust has finally settled, it is time for me to set my final thoughts about the proper translation of the terms in question. These final notes are not intended to question the wisdom of the answer selection. That matter is foregone and is neither here nor there. The purpose of these notes is to address some translations suggested by other answerers that I had previously chosen not to contend with. The reason I am addressing them now is my fear that the asker might actually use them in his work.
My notes will address two notions: the use of the expression “stay-at-home mother/mom/mum,” and whether the expressions أم بيت and ربة بيت should be translated the same or differently.
1. stay-at-home (mother/mom/mum/etc.): I believe I have already made it clear that this expression would not work at all in this context. As I have written at length, such a phrase would only work in a context in which a contrasting alternative is viable. If every female head of a household is expected to stay at home, it will makes no sense to call anybody a stay-at-home this or that. Here is an analogy: in a world in which all eggs are brown, you don’t write “brown eggs” on your shopping list. You just write “eggs.” In short, أم بيت or ربة بيت cannot be translated as “stay-at-home mother” because there is no other kind in the novel’s timeframe. It would be anachronistic and would fail to make sense.
2. Even though we have two distinct phrases (أم بيت and ربة بيت), we must (a) understand them to mean the same thing, and (b) be very clear in our minds why we should translate them differently if we choose to. I will now address each one of these two points.
(a) We know that أم بيت and ربة بيت were intended in the novel to mean the same thing because of the way they were used. The narrator first quoted her grandmother’s words verbatim:
عادي كان هذا هو السن المناسب للزواج زوجوني مثل ما يزوجون كل البنات، صفقة وهلاهل وصرت أم بيت
These were the grandmother’s own words, and they were reported just as she said them in her local dialect. Thus reported, the words give the story color, depth, authenticity, and realism. They make the story more believable, and they make the character more relatable.
Immediately after quoting the grandmother, the granddaughter restates what has just been reported in Modern Standard Arabic, which is the language of the novel:
هكذا بكل بساطة أصبحت وهي في مثل سني ربة بيت عليها أن تتحمل كل مسؤولياته وواجباته
The restatement is in the third person. The “I” now becomes “she.” What was a personal, autobiographical statement has now become a report about an event, a milestone on the narrative timeline, a knot in the plot (if the there is a plot to the novel).
The granddaughter used words congruent with Modern Standard Arabic, but she remained faithful to her grandmother’s statement, which we have just read. She can choose different words, but she cannot write something the grandmother did not say. She is in essence a translator. She is doing what we are doing: using words from a different language to express a concept first expressed in a different language (or dialect). Any attempt to give ربة بيت a meaning other than that of أم بيت will make the granddaughter a fraud. The meaning must be the same or there is no story to tell.
(b) There is no harm in rendering أم بيت and ربة بيت differently, so long as we are not doing so to change the meaning. The novel uses two different expressions. The first is matter-of-fact, first-person report in a low register. The other is a reflective, second-hand report in a higher register. If you can muster two different expressions that mean the same thing in order to match the writer’s linguistic choices, that should be perfectly OK, so long as neither of the two expressions means “stay-at-home.”
Example:
وصرت أم بيت = and I became a lady, with a home of my own (or a lady in my own right)
هكذا بكل بساطة أصبحت وهي في مثل سني ربة بيت عليها أن تتحمل كل مسؤولياته وواجباته
“Thus, she quite simply became, at an age not different from mine, the rightful lady of a homestead (or of a household), the responsibilities and duties of which she would have to bear.”
In this manner, you accomplish the following:
1. You use words that express the core meaning intended in their cultural milieu, avoiding the grotesque anachronism of phrases like “stay-at-home.”
2. You present the granddaughter’s narrative as a true restatement of the grandmother’s statement, not something different.
3. You are using different words for the grandmother and the granddaughter, as in the original text.
These are my final thoughts about this topic.
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 5 days (2020-07-28 05:15:28 GMT) Post-grading
--------------------------------------------------
Now that an answer has been selected, the question has been closed, and the dust has finally settled, it is time for me to set my final thoughts about the proper translation of the terms in question. These final notes are not intended to question the wisdom of the answer selection. That matter is foregone and is neither here nor there. The purpose of these notes is to address some translations suggested by other answerers that I had previously chosen not to contend with. The reason I am addressing them now is my fear that the asker might actually use them in his work.
My notes will address two notions: the use of the expression “stay-at-home mother/mom/mum,” and whether the expressions أم بيت and ربة بيت should be translated the same or differently.
1. stay-at-home (mother/mom/mum/etc.): I believe I have already made it clear that this expression would not work at all in this context. As I have written at length, such a phrase would only work in a context in which a contrasting alternative is viable. If every female head of a household is expected to stay at home, it will makes no sense to call anybody a stay-at-home this or that. Here is an analogy: in a world in which all eggs are brown, you don’t write “brown eggs” on your shopping list. You just write “eggs.” In short, أم بيت or ربة بيت cannot be translated as “stay-at-home mother” because there is no other kind in the novel’s timeframe. It would be anachronistic and would fail to make sense.
2. Even though we have two distinct phrases (أم بيت and ربة بيت), we must (a) understand them to mean the same thing, and (b) be very clear in our minds why we should translate them differently if we choose to. I will now address each one of these two points.
(a) We know that أم بيت and ربة بيت were intended in the novel to mean the same thing because of the way they were used. The narrator first quoted her grandmother’s words verbatim:
عادي كان هذا هو السن المناسب للزواج زوجوني مثل ما يزوجون كل البنات، صفقة وهلاهل وصرت أم بيت
These were the grandmother’s own words, and they were reported just as she said them in her local dialect. Thus reported, the words give the story color, depth, authenticity, and realism. They make the story more believable, and they make the character more relatable.
Immediately after quoting the grandmother, the granddaughter restates what has just been reported in Modern Standard Arabic, which is the language of the novel:
هكذا بكل بساطة أصبحت وهي في مثل سني ربة بيت عليها أن تتحمل كل مسؤولياته وواجباته
The restatement is in the third person. The “I” now becomes “she.” What was a personal, autobiographical statement has now become a report about an event, a milestone on the narrative timeline, a knot in the plot (if the there is a plot to the novel).
The granddaughter used words congruent with Modern Standard Arabic, but she remained faithful to her grandmother’s statement, which we have just read. She can choose different words, but she cannot write something the grandmother did not say. She is in essence a translator. She is doing what we are doing: using words from a different language to express a concept first expressed in a different language (or dialect). Any attempt to give ربة بيت a meaning other than that of أم بيت will make the granddaughter a fraud. The meaning must be the same or there is no story to tell.
(b) There is no harm in rendering أم بيت and ربة بيت differently, so long as we are not doing so to change the meaning. The novel uses two different expressions. The first is matter-of-fact, first-person report in a low register. The other is a reflective, second-hand report in a higher register. If you can muster two different expressions that mean the same thing in order to match the writer’s linguistic choices, that should be perfectly OK, so long as neither of the two expressions means “stay-at-home.”
Example:
وصرت أم بيت = and I became a lady, with a home of my own (or a lady in my own right)
هكذا بكل بساطة أصبحت وهي في مثل سني ربة بيت عليها أن تتحمل كل مسؤولياته وواجباته
“Thus, she quite simply became, at an age not different from mine, the rightful lady of a homestead (or of a household), the responsibilities and duties of which she would have to bear.”
In this manner, you accomplish the following:
1. You use words that express the core meaning intended in their cultural milieu, avoiding the grotesque anachronism of phrases like “stay-at-home.”
2. You present the granddaughter’s narrative as a true restatement of the grandmother’s statement, not something different.
3. You are using different words for the grandmother and the granddaughter, as in the original text.
These are my final thoughts about this topic.
| Fuad Yahya
Native speaker of:  Arabic, English
PRO pts in category: 114
|
|
peer agreement (net): +1
