Writing as Translation: African Literature and the Challenges of Translation

Abstract

Literature is about people, their society, their culture, their institutions. But it is also, and especially, about language, the medium through which the people's society, culture, and institutions are expressed. It can therefore be safely asserted, without any fear of contradiction, that to talk about literature is to talk about language. However, this simple assertion becomes problematic when it is applied to the situation of African literature written in European languages. For this reason, this form of African literature expressed in European languages occupies a unique position. Although oral narratives have existed abundantly in Africa for centuries, it is arguable whether there were novelists or novels in sub-Saharan Africa before the advent of colonization. Whichever way one looks at it, African novelists, since the colonial period, constitute a special kind of creators. Unlike traditional poets or storytellers with whom they are in contact, African novelists who express themselves in European languages acquired their art through the possibility of writing. Within the framework of literature, the immediate advantage that writing offered to the African was the means to participate in the development of the prevailing literary genre. However, because of the impossibility or difficulty for some African writers to write in their mother tongues, there arose the need for these writers to write in the languages of the colonizers. Because, historically, Africans found themselves placed in this linguistic situation, the early African writers started to write in the languages of the colonizers without considering all the implications involved in the use of such languages. In their zeal to destroy the stereotypical images of Africa and to project their African world view, these writers may have considered the colonial languages as mere tools or means to achieve their objectives. As Roland Barthes points out, however, "le langage n'est jamais innocent" since a people's social, political, and cultural institutions are reflected in their language.

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