The Translator by Leila Aboulela tells the tempestuous love story between a Muslim, Sudanese woman, Sammar, and a Scottish man, Rae. At the start of the book, Rae is mostly defined by his ethnicity and geographical positioning, while Sammar is marked by her ethnicity, her condition of displacement and her religion. However, Rae's religion will, as we shall see, become one of the central issues in the novel. He is ‘a Middle-East historian and a lecturer in Third World Politics’ (5)1 and Sammar's job is to translate between English and Arabic for him. Sammar may translate between Arabic and English, but her novel translates Standard English into a language that has to express her own experiences, spirituality and background. In addition to this literal translation between languages, she has to find a way of translating between different cultures. One of the novel's scenarios, then, relates to the issues that arise out of the differences between a North African, Arab speaking Muslim woman and a Scottish, English speaking non-Muslim man. However, this polarisation is cut across by greater complexities and syncretisms.

Rae's intellectual life spills over into Sammar's background – he dislikes the label ‘Islamic expert’ (5) and is able, at times, to pass for a native, instead of an ‘Orientalist’. In addition, unlike the vast majority of his countrymen: ‘he knew the letters of the Arabic alphabet, he had lived in her part of the world. Rae looked like he could easily pass for a Turk or a Persian. He was dark enough’ (5).