ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the roles of translation and transliterations in accounts of the protracted Sahrawi refugee camps in south-west Algeria. Despite the limited nature of research conducted directly in Arabic, Arabic terms and their translations are nonetheless habitually used by non-Arabic speakers in accounts of the camps, even when little attention has been given to the precise meaning and linguistic functions of these words. Rather, external observers have typically relied on previous authors’ transliterations and translations of Arabic terms; these, in turn, have usually been provided by Sahrawi interpreters who are closely associated with the Sahrawi’s official political representatives, the Polisario Front. In part, this reflects the ‘citationary’ nature of much research, not only of the Sahrawi context, but across many fields of study, and evidently fails to address the politics of translation and naming in such contested spaces. This chapter aims to demonstrate that, beyond the citationary nature of such research, many analysts have systematically and uncritically ‘recited’ terminology and discursive representations presented by the Sahrawi refugees’ political leadership, resulting in what we refer to as the strategic activation of ‘travelling lexicons,’ which are cited and recited by Sahrawis and non-Sahrawis across time and space.
