Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

words for the different language registers present in
the French. In Les yeux du volcan, not only does the
Congolese writer use popular terms like “foutez,”
“enculé,” and “badinez” throughout the text, he also
resorts to the use of slang terms like “zigoto,” (a
strange looking individual), “pognon,” (money), and
“baraqué” (to be well-built), as well as such technical
terms as “bousingot” (leather hat), “vésanie”
(insanity), and “lagotriche” (woolly monkey). An
effective translation of Les yeux du volcan will
therefore be one in which the translator is not only
familiar with the African context of the narrative but
also sensitive to the different shades of meaning that
Labou Tansi manipulates in his use of the French
language.
Quite obviously, in the translation of Labou
Tansi’s text, as indeed in any African literary text,
Western definitions of equivalence should be
approached with caution, because the translator of
an African literary text is concerned with establishing
not only equivalence of natural language but
rather of artistic procedures. For an African text,
these procedures cannot be considered in isolation
but rather must be located within the specific cultural-temporal
context within which they are used.
Without doubt, the creative manipulation of English
and French in postcolonial Anglophone and
Francophone literatures makes it necessary to challenge
and redefine many accepted notions in translation
theory. Because these postcolonial texts are a
hybrid of indigenous and imported modes of storytelling
and because of the linguistic and cultural layering
within them, conventional notions of equivalence,
or ideas of loss and gain, that have long dominated
western translation theory are in and of themselves
inadequate as translation tools. Indeed, as
Samia Mehrez has pointed out, “because the ultimate
goal of such literatures is to subvert hierarchies
by bringing together the ‘dominant’ and the
‘repressed’ by exploding and confounding different
symbolic worlds and separate systems of signification
to create a mutual intersignification, their translation
must of necessity confront, redefine, and in
the process deconstruct existing translation theories.”
An African literary text has both an
autonomous (in the sense of being based on African
culture) and a communicative (the cross-fertilization
of the different languages) character to it. The translator
must therefore bear in mind both its
autonomous and its communicative aspects, and any
theory of translation should take both elements into
account.
Works Cited
Basseha A. Singou. Interview with Labou Tansi.
Bingo (August 1988): 52-53.
Beti, Mongo. Le pauvre Christ de Bomba. Paris:
Robert Laffont. 1956.
Kourouma, Ahmadou. Les soleils des
Indépendances. Paris: Seuil, 1968.
—. Monnè, outrages et défis. Paris: Seuil, 1990.
Mehrez, Samir. “Translation and the Postcolonial
Experience: The Francophone North African
Text.” Ed. Venuti, Lawrence. Rethinking
Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology.
London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Oyono, Ferdinand. Une vie de boy. Paris: Julliard,
1956.
—. Le Vieux nègre et le médaille. Paris: Julliard,
1956.
Sony Labou Tansi. La vie et demie. Paris: Le Seuil,
1979.
—. L’etat honteux. Paris: Le Seuil, 1981.
—. L’anté-peuple. Paris: Le Seuil, 1983.
—. Les sept solitudes de Lorsa Lopez. Paris: Le
Seuil, 1985.
—. Les yeux du volcan. Paris: Le Seuil, 1988.
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