1st Edition

African Perspectives on Literary Translation

Edited By Judith Inggs, Ella Wehrmeyer Copyright 2021
    310 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    310 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This collection serves as a showcase for literary translation research with a focus on African perspectives, highlighting theoretical and methodological developments in the discipline while shedding further light on the literary landscape in Africa.

    The book offers a framework for understanding key approaches and topics in literary translation situated in the African context, covering foundational concepts as well as new directions within the field. The first half of the volume focuses on the translation product, exploring such topics as translation strategies, literary genres, and self-translation, while the second half examines process and reception, allowing for an in-depth look at agency, habitus, and ethics. Each chapter is structured to allow for the introduction of a given theoretical aspect of literary translation followed by a summary of a completed research project with an African focus showing theory in practice, offering a model for readers to build their own literary translation research projects while also underscoring the range of perspectives and unique challenges to literary translation work in Africa.

    This unique volume is a key resource for students and scholars in translation studies, giving visibility to African perspectives on literary translation while pointing the way forward for future research directions.

    Part 1: Methodological and sociohistorical overview

    1 Translating Africa

    Paul Bandia

    2 The ethical in literary translation

    Libby Meintjes

    3 Broadening latitudes: mapping a sociological history of literary translation into Swahili

    Serena Talento

    Part 2: Product-oriented literary translation

    4 Crossing continents: a critical discourse analytical study of the translation of South African Young Adult texts into French and German

    Judith Inggs

    5 The translation of diasporic African Indian autobiographical voices into the languages of Spain: Achmat Dangor (1948–) and Moyez G. Vassanji (1950–)

    Juan Zarandona

    6 Mapping culture in literary translation

    Ella Wehrmeyer

    7 Self-translation of an Afrikaans short story by SJ Naudé

    Eleanor Cornelius and George de Bruin

    8 Translating emotion conceptual metaphors: a case of Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom in isiXhosa

    Amanda Nokele

    9 Translating linguistic hybridity and indigenous words in Mia Couto’s novel A varanda do frangipani

    Celina Cachucho

    10 Proverb translation to the realm of the story in Chinua Achebe’s novels

    Amechi Akwanya

    Part 3: Reception and process studies

    11 Translating the neighbour: contemporary Maghrebi literature in Spain

    Mònica Rius-Piniés

    12 Women as protagonists in West African plays translated in Cuba

    Ròcio Anguiano Pérez

    13 Who’s the boss? Power relations between agents in the literary translation process

    Ilse Feinauer and Amanda Lourens

    14 Translating Une Vie de Boy: a Bourdieusian study of agency in literary translation

    Felix Awung

    Conclusion

    15 A curriculum for literary translation in a multilingual South African classroom

    Christopher Fotheringham

    Biography

    Judith Inggs is Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. With numerous publications over the last several decades, one of the most recent is a monograph on South African Young Adult fiction. Her latest project focuses on the reception of South African young adult fiction in Europe.

    Ella Wehrmeyer is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at North-West University, South Africa. Having obtained her DLitt. et Phil. from the University of South Africa in 2013, her research focuses on corpus-based translation and interpreting studies. The author of numerous publications, she created the first sign language interpreting corpus and is constructing a literary translation corpus.