In this paper, the researchers carry out a comparative analysis of Zoqaq Al Midaq, one of the most complex types of prose texts in Arabic by Naguib Mahfuz, Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, and its French version by Antoine Cottin (1970). The researchers use the grid of analysis as proposed by the French translator and translation critic Antoine Berman. The analysis particularly sheds light on one of the most important deforming tendencies in literary translation, specifically “Rationalization”. The main finding is that for the sake of acceptability, the translator tended to produce a version which sounds as natural and as fluent as possible for the French readers, to the detriment of the multiplicity and the rhythmic difference of the Arabic text. This strategy—Rationalization—is precisely what makes the translating process more dangerous as it distorts the nature and the complexity of the source text in an imperceptible way.