Intersemiotic Translation as a Space for Political Engagement: A Study of Mohamed Sobhi's Sikit al-Salama 2000

The realm of Translation Studies has witnessed crucial advances brought about by multiple turns that have revolutionized the object of study, such as the activist turn. The issue of the intertwinement of translation and activism has been widely discussed, albeit within the confines of interlingual translation. Exploring the intersection of other types of translation, such as intersemiotic translation, and activism remains largely understudied. The relative paucity of research that studies adaptation, which is a manifestation of intersemiotic translation, from a prism that is broader than the traditional issues of equivalence and fidelity serves as the impetus for this study. It is an attempt to tease out a potential research avenue for the exploration of the activist dimension underpinning the process of theatrical adaptation by conducting a qualitative analysis of the adapter’s ideologically charged shifts from the source text. The adapter’s agency and political engagement constitute the conceptual framework of the study. The data used comprise an Arabic play and its Arabic theatrical adaptation. The source text is written by Egyptian playwright Sa‘d al-Din Wahba and is entitled Sikit al-salama (The road of safety). The theatrical adaptation of Wahba’s play by Egyptian actor and director Mohamed Sobhi amounts to a reworking that reveals the adapter’s agency in instrumentalizing his adaptation to serve as a platform for political engagement. In driving his message home, Sobhi overtly politicizes the source text via interventionist strategies, ultimately diverting it from its original purpose in order to launch a scathing polemic against the Arab-Israeli normalization.