Critical Perspectives on Cameroon Writing

38. Translation or Transcreation: To What Extent is Translating Creative Writing a Creative Activity

515 38 Translation Or Transcreation: to What Extent Is Translating Creative Writing A Creative Activity by Oscar Tanifum Advanced School of Translators and Interpreters (ASTI) University of Buea Background As the years elapse, more and more Cameroonians seem to be taking to creative writing, especially those of English-speaking expression, as we are wont to call them. A number of us have grown up to enjoy great classics a good many of which, even if we sometimes do not realise it, are indeed translations. You would all understand that, with my professional bias, it occurs to me pretty regularly to ask myself what I could do to get a reader to either receive the message as accurately and faithfully as possible or enjoy the way the message is expressed. I was struck by the fact that, sometimes, the translation of apparently simple facts or literary devices was not as easy as one would think. Naturally, I started asking myself how much of translation was creation, and whether I should not write about it. Furthermore, when I raised the issue with Hansel Ndumbe Eyoh, himself a writer and critic, who had given me a proposed translated version of his play The Inheritance (L ‘Heritier) to read and criticise, he in turn talked of a translator of a literary work suggesting, to use a mild expression, that he should have part of the copyright. You can guess what his stand was: go on and write the paper. I also thought that with the impressive and distinguished array of creative writers and panellists that you are the paper would be thought-provoking enough. 516 Creative Writing: A Translator’s Perspective Creative writing generally serves two principal purposes: putting across a message and entertaining the reader or audience. The author’s creativity is manifested both at the level of conception of the message to be transmitted and that of devising the means of effectively and/or entertainingly passing on the message. But it should immediately be borne in mind that, in addition to the writer’s intelligence or genius, he uses his entire cultural background, albeit unconsciously, to achieve his objective. The case is even a little more complicated in a setting like ours in Cameroon where there are many mini-cultures and where, in the case of an author who grew up either in a particular area or culture where his national language was the main language or in a number of areas or cultures where different national languages were spoken, it is of utmost importance to be able to understand the language or culture or languages or cultures, as the case may be, in order to understand the author’s work and even enjoy the literary or creative devices he employs. In fact, there are cases where either the author or, later on, a critic has to provide explanatory notes to guide the reader as he explores the author’s new world. Creative writing has no prescribed ways of expressing ideas. The genius socio-cultural customs of any people gives them a peculiar means of expressing ideas and it is obvious that an author who has lived through a number of cultures, invariably and sometimes unconsciously reflects this fact in his writings. In our own context, I could mention songs, short stories, proverbs, epics ... and so on. These genres are so culture-bound that any attempt to interpret them or, worse still, translate them without taking due account of the sociocultural context is tantamount to courting futility. Let us take the example of a North American author who, at a certain point, decides to write about ice hockey or baseball or American football, for that matter. If a translator were faced with a scene like that to render, he would definitely have problems. If we assume that the text has to be translated into French for Cameroonian public, then the translator is bound, if he opts to maintain the North American sport, to provide a whole handbook on it. 517 But then, if it is not important to highlight the fact that the sport is foreign, depending on the purpose of the translation, the translator may opt to transform ice-hockey or baseball into another more familiar game. This would be the obvious solution in case what is important is to refer to a popular sport, for example. People tend to believe that what is easy to understand is necessarily...