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Research in African Literatures 30.2 (1999) 75-87



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Writing as Translation:
African Literature and the Challenges of Translation

Kwaku A. Gyasi


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.

If one considers what has been written on the language question in Africa, one realizes that the emphasis has especially been on the attitude of the African writer vis-à-vis the European language rather than on the creative use of the language. In fact, the classical question consisted in asking if writing in the language of the colonizer was problematic for African writers or if they felt comfortable in using this language. Thus, based on the declarations of some African writers, 1 Jacques Chevrier was able to observe:

L'attitude de l'écrivain vis-à-vis d'une langue non maternelle repose, semble-t-il, sur une certaine ambivalence, mélange d'amour et de haine, de saisie et de rejet, qui rend assez bien compte du sentiment du corps à corps avec le langage que provoque parfois la lecture des écrivains francophones. (49) [End Page 75] It seems the attitude of the writer towards a language that is not his mother tongue rests on a certain ambivalence: a mixture of love and hatred, acceptance and rejection, which clearly accounts for the feeling of struggle with the language that is sometimes caused by reading the works of francophone writers.

Although Chevrier's observation is pertinent, it directs the reflection only onto the ideological aspect of this linguistic question. What has been neglected is essentially how the European language is re-appropriated and given expression in the imagination of the African writer. In a situation of diglossia and bilingualism, such as that which characterizes African countries, the use of a foreign language as a medium of literary expression raises a certain number of questions. Is any given individual capable of mastering completely his or her mother tongue as well as a foreign language? Although this question can be answered in the affirmative, it is still possible to share the doubt entertained by Todorov when he writes:

Je me demande si le bilinguisme fondé sur la neutralité et la parfaite réversibilité des deux langues n'est pas un leurre ou tout au moins...

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