Translation and Postcolonial Identity

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The Translator. Volume 4, Number 2 (1998), 163-181 ISBN 1-900650-01-0

Translation and Postcolonial IdentityAfrican Writing and European Languages

MORADEWUN ADEJUNMOBIUniversity of California, Davis, USA

Abstract. Critics and authors of the corpus of texts designated asAfrican literature often consider problematic the role of Euro-pean languages in this literature. A discourse based on the practiceof translation represents one strategy among others for resolvingthe crisis of identity of African writing in European languages.Three kinds of translation found in African literature are discussedin this paper. Both compositional and authorized translations seekto confirm the African identity of the European-language text:the former by reference to imaginary and the latter by referenceto original versions in indigenous African languages. Complextranslations, on the other hand, embrace mobility between lan-guages and identities as inescapable in postcolonial Africa. Whilethese varieties of translation appear to reconcile the desire forauthenticity with the exigency of writing in a foreign language,the relationship between the various versions indirectly confirmsthe continuing hegemony of European languages in contempo-rary African writing.

The variety of convictions expressed about the place of translation in Afri-can literature in European languages stands against the background of largerissues and controversies, involving the well-known ambivalent attitudes ofAfrican writers towards those languages. These convictions further reflectdiverse apprehensions of African identity, invariably defined in terms ofessential or incidental alterity. The importance attributed to the activity oftranslation in contemporary African literature therefore cannot be disasso-ciated from the persistent nostalgia for ‘origins’, ‘original languages’, andmost significantly for ‘original identities’. The classifications and catego-ries commonly referred to in translation yield insight into the factors involvedin this quest for origins and the resulting construction of a literature of dif-ference, a body of texts seeking to be identified as specifically African butwritten in European languages.

1. Varieties of translation

The translating process by definition requires interaction and dialogue

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Translation and Postcolonial Identity164

between languages. Such interaction is rarely neutral, even less so inpostcolonial societies. Having defined translation as a form of rewriting,Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere also add that this “[r]ewriting is manipu-lation, undertaken in the service of power” (in Lefevere 1992:vii). The locusof the power to canonize African literary texts is especially exposed duringthe encounter between African and European languages in the act of trans-lation. The activity of translation enables us to measure the degree to whichthe African writer succeeds in frustrating institutional and, in this case,postcolonial designs upon his or her creative text, and the degree to whichthe same institutional framework succeeds in frustrating the designs andintentions of the author of the creative text.

In the first place, however, it must be acknowledged that the very use ofthe term ‘translation’ to describe particular linguistic trends identified withsome African writing in European languages is problematic. These practicesare thought to derive from attempts to reproduce African-language speechpatterns in texts written essentially in European languages. Some critics ofAfrican literatures therefore account for the linguistic specificity of Africanwriting in European languages by initial reference to the activity or termin-ology of translation.1 For example, Oluwole Adejare confidently affirms “thattranslation is used by some authors of African Literature in English (ALE) isnot a new discovery” (1987:145). Despite the extra-linguistic implications ofher understanding of the word, Eloise Briere makes a similar observationwith respect to a well-known African text written in French: “Camara Laye’sL’Enfant Noir is thus not simply an African novel in French, but the author’sattempt to translate the essence of his life as a Malinké” (1988:34).

Chantal Zabus has questioned the appropriateness of ‘translation’ as adescription for the processes resulting in the specific types of language useencountered in African literature in European languages. Expressing her dis-satisfaction with the tendency to describe as translation practices that seemto fall short of the usual definition of the term, she proposes in its place theterm relexification and notes that “relexification is characterized by the ab-sence of an original” (1991:106). This forms the crux of her objections tothe widespread assumption that African writing in European languages co-incides with a sustained activity of translating. Most African texts in Europeanlanguages do not in fact correspond to European-language versions of exist-ing texts in indigenous African languages, and from this perspective, theobjections raised by Zabus are valid.

Nevertheless, some – though not all – African writers have explicitlydescribed the processes involved in their writing as translation. The Nige-rian writer Gabriel Okara, for example, remarks:

As a writer who believes in the utilisation of African ideas, Africanphilosophy and African folk-lore and imagery to the fullest extentpossible, I am of the opinion that the only way to use them effec-

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Moradewun Adejunmobi 165

tively is to translate them almost literally from the African languagenative to the writer into whatever European language he is using asa medium of his expression. (1963:15)

In a similar vein, the Ivorian writer Ahmadou Kourouma writes:

J’ai pensé en malinké et écrit en français en prenant une liberté quej’estime naturelle avec la langue classique ... J’ai donc traduit lemalinké en français en cassant le français pour trouver et restituer lerythme africain. (in Koné 1992: 83)

(I think in Malinké and write in French, taking what I consider to benatural liberties with the classical tongue. I have thus translatedMalinké into French by breaking up the French language so as torecreate an African rhythm.)

In those instances where the writers themselves have not defined theirwriting by reference to the practice of translation, a number of critics haveunearthed convincing evidence or traces of this activity in their creative texts.Thus, Bandia (1993) has revealed instances of translation from African toEuropean languages in Chinua Achebe’s works, while Adejare (1987) hasidentified similar processes in the texts of Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awonoor,Christopher Okigbo, Ola Rotimi, and others.

My intention here is not to determine the accuracy of the claims madeabout African writing in European languages according to the strictparameters suggested by Zabus. Rather, I will direct attention to the motiva-tions supporting this reference to translation on the part of some writers andcritics of African literature in European languages, notwithstanding theabsence of ‘original’ versions in indigenous African languages. For the pur-poses of the present discussion, I will identify as compositional translationstexts which are published in European languages and which containoccasional or sustained modification of the conventions of the Europeanlanguage in use, where ‘versions’ or ‘originals’ in indigenous African lang-uages are non-existent. Many texts commonly perceived as belonging to therubric of ‘African literature’ fall into this category. The works of GabrielOkara, Ahmadou Kourouma and Amos Tutuola will provide illustration forsuch compositional translations. It should be noted, furthermore, that themodification of European languages in these texts generally results from adeliberate intent to indigenize the European language. The actual method-ology of such projects of indigenization is in turn often grounded in referencesto translation.

In referring to certain works of African literature as compositional trans-lations, I am seeking to distinguish these works from another sub-groupingthat I will describe here as authorized translations. This term will be usedfor instances where more than one version of the full text exists, even when

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the indigenous language version has not been published, or has been pub-lished prior or subsequent to a European-language version. In these instances,the fact of translation hardly impacts on language use within the European-language version and functions rather as a strategy for ethnic identificationof the European-language text. The writing of Mazisi Kunene, Okot p’Bitek,and Ngugi wa Thiong’o will provide examples of authorized translations tobe considered here.

A final category of African texts relating to translation will be repre-sented by the writing of Abdelkebir Khatibi and Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo.This final category belongs to a trend that I will tentatively label complextranslations. For complex translators, translation does not represent a meansto an end, a method for ‘Africanizing’ European languages. Movement be-tween languages becomes in these kinds of texts an end in itself, the focalpoint and central concern of the text.

The different types of translation identified thus far should together helpreveal the power relations at work in the emergence of a literature describedas distinctively African.

2. Compositional translation

Critics have used different terms to characterize the defining features andimpact of translating techniques involved in African compositional transla-tions. Besides identifying the use of calques, semantic shifts, collocationalshifts and irregular syntax, among other strategies, Bandia, to quote onlyone example, summarizes the overall effect of these techniques as follows:“It is a translation process which ... is overt and not covert; it is a primaryand not a secondary exercise ... semantic and not communicative .... In short,it is a source-text oriented translation” (1993: 58). Borrowing FriedrichSchleiermacher’s often quoted formulation, it could be said that Africanwriters of this tradition, acting in their capacity of purported translators, seekto move the European-language reader towards the African author and hisor her mother tongue. In Lawrence Venuti’s terms, it might be observed thatthese texts, far from seeking to eliminate language difference, seek to makeit visible and prominent. They avoid fluency and transparency and, to a cer-tain degree, illustrate the kind of translation that Venuti has designated‘foreignizing’ (1995:20), where the intent is to preserve the foreignness ofthe foreign text.

Although several African authors have resorted to this form of translationon a limited scale as a means of reproducing speech patterns of indigenouslanguages in their works, or for the purposes of characterization, few authorshave attempted this exercise at the level of entire works. The works of Okara,Kourouma, and Tutuola, however, are exemplary of a more sustainedrecourse to this strategy in creative writing. Zabus (1991) affirms that Okara’swriting shows evidence of “morpho-syntactic distortions” (ibid:123), that of

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Kourouma relies on “lexico-semantic relexification” (ibid:129), whileTutuola’s exploits “direct or semi-direct loan translation” (ibid:113). Evidenceof such distortion can be seen in statements like “You cannot a thing I havedone not put on my head”, made by Okolo, the main character, in Okara’sThe Voice (1964:71); it means “You cannot accuse me of an act that I amnot guilty of”.2 The postponement of the verb in Okolo’s statement here andin many other instances in the novel reflects word order in Ijo, Okara’s firstlanguage, and as such might be considered evidence of translation from anindigenous language on Okara’s part. The imprint of the Malinké languageis similarly evident at the very onset of Kourouma’s Soleils des indépend-ances, where he writes: “Il y avait une semaine qu’avait fini Koné Ibrahimade race malinké (Koné Ibrahima, a Malinké, finished in the capital a weekearlier; 1970:7). The sentence, readers soon realize, refers specifically toKoné Ibrahima’s death rather than to some other undertaking, for the Frenchverb finir as used here derives its meaning from an equivalent in the Malinkéthat can also mean ‘to die’.

While Tutuola’s style has been linked to an imperfect command of Eng-lish (Zabus 1991:109), Okara’s and Kourouma’s linguistic experiments derivefrom a deliberately undertaken project. These writers, unlike Tutuola, havedescribed the process at work in their texts as ‘translation’ and further jus-tify this practice as a means of being or truly confirming themselves to beAfrican writers. Okara (1963:15) thus asks in his major statement of inten-tions concerning his creative writing: “Is it only the colour of one’s skin thatmakes one an African?”. By implication, the answer to that question wouldrecognize the need for additional proofs of Africanness inherent in distinc-tive forms of language use, associated inter alia with translating practices.For his part, Kourouma explains: “Ecrire le roman dans la langue françaiseme gêne parce que le français ne me permet pas de faire ressortir la mentalitédes personnages. Ces personnages ont des approches, des tournures d’espritque seule leur langue permet de suivre les méandres de la logique (sic)”(Writing a novel in French hampers me because the French language doesnot enable me to illustrate the mentality of the characters. These charactershave attitudes, thought patterns, whose logic can be understood only in rela-tion to their own language; Koné 1992:83).3 In other words, the Frenchlanguage is considered an inadequate medium for conveying specificallyAfrican thought patterns, hence the need to modify the French language bytranslating from Malinké. The representation of the Africanness of his char-acters depends on a close approximation of their indigenous-language thoughtand speech patterns in the French language.

As Zabus has pointed out, references to translation on the part of bothauthors imply the existence of an original version in an indigenous Africanlanguage. This implication forms part of a chain of illusions set in motion bythe mention of translation. If the authors are translating as they allege, then

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the European-language text does not legitimately have the status of an origi-nal version. Indeed, and by implication, the text is read as if it were reallywritten in an indigenous language. Being neither entirely European nor fullyAfrican, the language of the text might perhaps be an “interlanguage” (Zabus1991:102). Furthermore, we have here authors who, prompted by the desirefor authenticity, seek to evacuate their real authorial presence by appro-priating the posture of translators, mere mediators between a supposedindigenous-language original and a European-language version. The trendtowards denying real authorship of the literary text in order to promote asemblance of authenticity became a kind of convention in some early Afri-can texts in European languages. Several narratives were presented as textsoriginally recounted by an indigenous-language narrator, rather than as nar-ratives invented directly by the author in French. Hampaté Bâ, FerdinandOyono, Birago Diop and Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, among others, had re-course to this technique in their novels.

In the overwhelming majority of these cases, however, an indigenous-language original does not exist either as a corresponding publication or as acomplete manuscript acknowledged by the author. Nonetheless, some Afri-can authors continue to present their European-language works as derivativetexts, because a widespread conception prevails among African writers andcritics of African literature according to which only versions in indigenousAfrican languages can be truly African. In other words, texts in Europeanlanguages must demonstrate some connection with an indigenous-languageoriginal as unequivocal proof of their Africanness. In the larger context ofpreoccupations among African writers and critics, this conception can berelated to another requirement, namely that the Africanness of any givenEuropean-language text be deduced not from the nationality of the author,but from specific strategies mobilized within the text. Such strategies in-clude modelling European-language texts on African oral narratives andrecreating a certain vision of African life in these texts. The argument thathas raged about the language of ‘African literature’ since the emergence ofa group of texts known under this cognomen represents only one dimensionof this wider concern.4

This preoccupation with original texts and an Africanness located withinthe text is undoubtedly motivated by a desire to compensate for certain con-sequences of the colonial encounter. The marginalization of indigenousAfrican languages in significant spheres of life in many parts of contempo-rary Africa lies at the heart of this concern. While modification of Europeanlanguages as a response to this state of affairs is an established tradition inAfrican writing, the writers involved do not share a uniform conception oftheir activity. When the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe refers to the ‘be-trayal’ of his mother tongue in his writing (in Ngugi 1986a:7), we can deducethat for him, the language of his fiction is a foreign language. Other writers,

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on the other hand, present themselves as translators. These writers tend todevote less space to the language question, perhaps because they considerthemselves to have resolved the crisis of identity provoked by the act of writ-ing in a foreign language. Through the identification of their language usewith translation, the works of these authors appear to successfully circum-vent those consequences of the colonial experience that led to the emergenceof African writing in European languages in the first place. To the extentthat the European-language text represents a replica of an indigenous-language original, the grounds for writing in European languages dissolveas it were before our very eyes. The European-language text is apprehendedprimarily as a translation, while the exigency of writing in European lan-guages is transcended prima facie by implicit allusion to indigenous-languageoriginals.

Even making allowance for differences in terminology, a critic as per-ceptive as Zabus can come to the conclusion that the technique she has termedrelexification (and which others have called translation) succeeds in Okara’sThe Voice in letting the “Ijo tongue speak” (1991:123). In other words, thistext is read as if it were written in the Ijo language of South-eastern Nigeria.But this is precisely the problem with the claim of translation or relexification,as the case may be. Okara’s text, as it stands, surely differs from a textwritten entirely in Ijo. The strategies used and their link to translation maypropel the impression of reading a text in Ijo to the European-language reader,but the fact remains that the text is essentially and substantially written in alanguage other than Ijo. Furthermore, the illusion created probably divertsattention from the real impediments to publishing literature in languageslike Ijo or Malinké.

Venuti’s comments about foreignizing translations are pertinent here:“Foreignizing translation signifies the difference of the foreign text, yet onlyby disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the target language” (1995:20).If Africanness in literature is assumed (erroneously in my opinion) to inhereonly indigenous-language writing, then the works of writers like Okara andKourouma embody such Africanness more in relation to European-languageliterature than vis-à-vis any literary texts actually written in Ijo or Malinké.In the absence of an original version or a published text in an indigenouslanguage, foreignizing translation here involves manoeuvres in the targetEuropean language without significant ramification for indigenous-languagewriting. To my mind, the danger for literatures in indigenous Africanlanguages lies in the failure to acknowledge that this kind of foreignizingtranslation does not substantially challenge the hegemony of Europeanlanguages over published literature in Africa. In the end, African authorswho write in the foreignizing translation mode should not, on the basis oftheir language use, be considered any more exemplary of authentic African-language writing than those Africans who make no attempts to modify

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European languages in their texts. This variety of engagement with Europeanlanguages in contemporary African literature represents equally ambiguous,and as such truly African responses to postcolonial Africa’s languagedilemma.

3. Authorized translation

I use the term ‘authorized translation’ to refer to European-language ver-sions of African-language texts. In the instances to be considered here, thetext in the indigenous language antecedes at least in writing the European-language version, and may therefore be described as a real original. Theinclusion of these texts in my discussion may be seen as problematic sincemy title refers particularly to African writing in European languages. It ismy contention here that despite their original versions, these texts may beregarded as also belonging to the genus of African writing in European lan-guages. And perhaps more importantly, they contribute to an enhancedunderstanding of the significance of translation in the constitution of a rec-ognizable ‘African’ literature. In the cases to be reviewed here, Kunene andp’Bitek have themselves translated and published their texts in European-language versions, further justifying my decision to consider such textsevidence of African writing in European languages. Ngugi has translatedtwo of the texts composed in his mother tongue, while the translation of athird text, Matigari Ma Njiruungi, has been undertaken by someone else.

As a rule, the texts existing in multiple versions demonstrate a closerconnection with African oral traditions than compositional translations. Theyare deliberately modelled on traditional songs, poetic forms and oral narra-tives. Speaking about Kunene’s writing, Ken Goodwin thus remarks: “Theworld of discourse of his poems is a Zulu one, and the philosophy, the im-agery, and the rhetoric rely heavily on the oral traditions of Zulu poetryfrom the eighteenth century to the present day” (1982:173). Ngugi similarlyhas this to say about his first novel in his mother tongue Gikuyu: “I bor-rowed heavily from the forms of the oral narrative, particularly theconversational tone, the fable, proverbs, songs and the whole tradition ofpoetic self-praise or praise of others” (1986a:77-78). And yet, if these textswere initially written in indigenous African languages from the perspectiveof foregrounding their formal and thematic non-Western affiliations, theyhave ironically been translated into European languages in accordance withthe Western norms of fluency. Venuti has identified fluency as the domi-nant convention of contemporary Euro-American translation, suggesting that“a translated text, whether prose or poetry, fiction or non fiction, is judgedacceptable by most publishers, reviewers and readers when it reads fluently,when the absence of any linguistic or stylistic peculiarities make it seemtransparent” (1995:1). He further adds that “a fluent translation is immedi-

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ately recognizable and intelligible, ‘familiarised,’ domesticated, and not‘disconcerting[ly]’ foreign” (ibid:5). Unlike the foreignizing translationsdiscussed earlier, fluent translations expunge as much of the foreignness ofthe foreign or African text as possible.

Fluency has remained the dominant strategy in translations of African-language texts into European languages, even in instances where suchtranslations have been undertaken by the author. Comparing Kunene’s trans-lation into English of certain traditional poems in the Zulu language with adifferent translation of the same poems entitled Izibongo: Zulu PraisePoems, Goodwin has this to say:

The Izibongo version seeks to keep close to the Zulu parts of speechand word order .... Kunene, while preserving these qualities as faras possible, is prepared to sacrifice them at times in the interests ofmaking sense or achieving a more rolling oratorical rhythm. Wherethe Izibongo versions sometimes read like word-for-word cribs inwhich the meaning has to be elucidated by a footnote, Kunene’sversions show the selective freedom and judgement exercised bysomeone thoroughly familiar with both languages. (1982:186-87)

That is to say, Kunene’s translations eschew linguistic difference and can beread without reference to the text or language of the poems in Zulu. TabanLo Liyong’s comments about p’Bitek’s Wer pa Lawino, originally writtenin Acholi, and the author’s translation of the same text into English as Songof Lawino, do not exude the kind of commendation implicit in Goodwin’sremarks on Kunene. In essence, though, they amount to an identical assess-ment of the English-language translation of the Acholi original. Lo Liyongstates for example that “Wer pa Lawino was watered down in translation toSong of Lawino” (1993:88), and then he expatiates on this further by sug-gesting that “Okot produced a simplified version of Wer pa Lawino in English– all proverbs, wise sayings, and puns were rendered into sarcastic English.So the depth and erudition of the Acholi original were passed over in favourof flowery and colourful English” (ibid:89). Simon Gikandi’s reflections onthe “eloquent” English-language translation of Ngugi’s Matigari Ma Njiru-ungi are even more explicit. Certain proverbs are omitted in the Englishtranslation, he suggests, “possibly for the sake of fluency, and replaced by asimpler alternative .... This translation captures the spirit of the original, butfluency is only attained by effacing the linguistic difficulties that give theGikuyu language its power and identity. Such effacement makes the Eng-lish translation of the novel into a simplistic, sanitized version of the original”(1991:166).

Authorized translations thus tend to be the least foreignized of Africantexts existing in European languages. The translation seeks to convey themeaning but not the language of the original. Linguistic peculiarities are

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avoided or altogether omitted, and in Schleiermacher’s terms, these author-ized translations seem to move the author towards the European-languagereader. Attention does not focus on the translating activity itself. Indeed,were it not for indications contained in prefaces and title pages, one mighteasily conclude that these texts were originally composed in European lan-guages. So normalized are these translations that they bring back a culturalother, in Venuti’s words, as “the same, the recognizable, even the familiar”(1995:18).

Nonetheless, the fact of being translations remains significant for manyAfrican writers and their critics, even if the target versions adhere to a modeof translation that seems to suppress the alterity of the original text inindigenous languages. In this instance as elsewhere, the existence of theseoriginal versions serves by inference as a guarantee of the genuine African-ness of these texts, since only versions in indigenous African languages canbe truly African for their writers. No study of Kunene, p’Bitek, or Ngugi’sEuropean-language versions is thus complete without reference to theexistence of these original versions in indigenous languages.

Kunene speaks for himself and many other writers and critics when heconcludes:

... writers who write in a foreign language are already part of for-eign institutions; to one extent or another, they have adopted foreignvalues and philosophical attitudes, and they variously seek to be amember of that culture. They cannot be said to be African culturalrepresentatives who write in another language because, in spirit, atleast, they speak from the perspective provided for them by the ef-fective apparatus of mental control exercised by the former colonialpower. (1992:32)

However, statements made in this vein usually overlook the fact that thesaid texts, by and large, function as literature – texts that are read and critiquedwithin the original linguistic community of the author – only in their nor-malized European-language translations. Speaking about Kunene, Goodwintherefore concedes that “by a paradox of contemporary publishing opportu-nities, Mazisi Kunene, who writes in Zulu and then translates some of hispoetry into English, has had much more of his work appear in translationthan in the original” (1982:173). In other words, not only is Kunene widelyread in translation, Kunene is read essentially only in translation. AnotherEast African publisher makes reference to p’Bitek’s magnum opus, the Songof Lawino, in his comments on the difficulties of publishing literary texts inindigenous African languages: “titles published in the indigenous languageswere all a ‘financial disaster’, even though one of them was a prize winningnovel in Luo and the other a translation back into the original of Okotp’Bitek’s Song of Lawino”(Zell 1980:1071). This observation suggests that

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the reputation of p’Bitek’s text is founded on the initial publication of theEnglish-language translation rather than on the subsequent publication of anindigenous-language ‘original’. As discussed in Adejunmobi (1994), thepublication of literature in African languages remains a risky venture in theabsence of a highly educated readership literate solely in African languages.In many parts of Africa, education in African languages alone rarely ex-tends beyond elementary school. At that level, readers tend to have limitedliteracy in African languages and possess neither the means to purchase northe skills to read canonical texts of ‘high literature’, whether written by Af-ricans or others, even though a vibrant popular literature does exist in anumber of indigenous languages such as Yoruba and Swahili.

Ngugi’s texts in Gikuyu, however, seem to constitute something of anexception to this trend, to the extent that they have achieved popularity withinthe author’s Gikuyu-speaking community. But even in the case of Ngugi, asGikandi has pointed out, the act of translating a text like Matigari MaNjiruungi into English further exposes the disjunction in status between theoriginal text and its translated versions. Gikandi writes:

If Ngugi’s intention was to make the Gikuyu text the great originalto which all translations would be subordinated, this intention isdefeated not only by the political repression of Matigari MaNjiruungi, but by the act of translation itself ... The act of transla-tion is hence a double-edged weapon: it allows Ngugi’s text to surviveand be read, but it is read and discussed as if it were a novel inEnglish. (1991:166)

Moreover, according to Gikandi the ‘sanitized’ nature of the translation fur-ther encourages this inclination to read the text as if it were a novel in English,since it effaces all signs that would remind readers of their “inability to mas-ter the original and to negotiate the untranslatable aspects of the Gikuyulanguage” (ibid:167).

A question arises as to why the novel should even require translation intoEnglish. The answer lies in the existence of a significant constituency ofpotential readers outside the Gikuyu language spectrum. These are readersand critics who speak powerful languages such as English, and for whomignorance of Gikuyu constitutes no deterrent to reading Gikuyu-languagetexts in translation. Translation can, in a variety of ways, confirm the powerof one language over another by absolving speakers of the more powerfullanguage of the obligation to learn the less powerful language. This is truenot only of translation between African and European languages in apostcolonial world, but also of other European languages in relation to Eng-lish. Interestingly, since many readers of the novel in English subscribe tothe thesis of encouraging writing in Gikuyu, the existence of a real ‘origi-nal’ in Gikuyu comforts their consciences: they are supporting ‘writing in

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Gikuyu’ through the medium of an English-language translation. They areupholding the cause of true Africanness, albeit through the agency of a textread in European languages. The real power of English over Gikuyu is atonce sustained and denied, with no change in the hierarchy between thelanguages.

Authorized translations then remain confined within an economic andpolitical arrangement in which greater power is ascribed to languages likeEnglish or French than to any indigenous African language. Indeed, I wouldargue that by foregrounding – and in a sense exemplifying – the problematicconfrontation between European and indigenous languages in contempo-rary Africa, compositional translations do direct a modicum of attention tothe real conflict prevailing outside the literary text. The fluent authorizedtranslations, on the other hand, seem to accommodate the hegemonic ordereven more significantly, by eliding this conflict altogether within the moreprominent European-language text. Indigenous languages are completelybanished from these European-language translations, being frequently rel-egated to unpublished, uncirculated or marginalized ‘original versions’.

Compositional and authorized translations nevertheless have some quali-ties in common: they seek to resolve the problem posed by the power ofEuropean languages in Africa by recourse to the pursuit of original identi-ties. Both seek to deal with the postcolonial context of writing by inferringthe existence of a certain ‘Africanness’ immanent in real or imaginary originalversions in indigenous languages. In so doing, they sustain an illusion ac-cording to which the implied recovery of original versions truly alters thebalance between European and indigenous languages in their impact on con-temporary African literature.

4. Complex translations

I have attempted thus far to reveal the invalidity of some assumptions re-garding the role of translation in African literature. A final group of Africantranslations does represent, to my mind, a more realistic engagement withthe African postcolonial ‘language problem’. The authors involved deploythe concept of translation in order to reconstruct the interplay between domi-nant and dominated languages in a world transformed by the experience ofcolonialism. The Malagasy writer Rabearivelo and the Moroccan Khatibiproblematize language contact and conflict in texts where the ability to trans-late as languages intersect becomes a prerequisite for comprehension. Themultilingual world of their texts imposes translation as a mode of reading,since both indigenous and European languages actually figure in the text. Inthe writing of Rabearivelo and Khatibi, expressions and terms in indigenouslanguages do not function as blank signals of cultural authenticity to be ex-plicated in peripheral glossaries, but rather as components that are integralto the construction of meaning at every point in the text. The reader, like

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those who live in postcolonial settings, is confronted with European lan-guages, cannot circumvent indigenous languages, and must in the end learnto translate.

Rabearivelo, lived and wrote in the early decades of this century, shortlyafter the onset of the French colonial rule on the island of Madagascar. Atthat time, terms like ‘African literature in English’ or ‘Malagasy literaturein French’ had not yet become widespread. Where the existence of a nativeliterature was admitted in the colonies, such recognition extended only totranscriptions of oral compositions in indigenous languages or in European-language translations. This arrangement had the added advantage of callinginto question the African credentials of any works that were not transcrip-tions and whose authors expressed undisguised anticolonial sentiments.Where such ‘non-traditional’ texts were written in the native language in aFrench colony like Madagascar, avenues for publication simply disappeared.Rabearivelo responded to this situation by claiming that his earliest poemsin French – written in strictly non-traditional format – were translations ofMalagasy originals supposedly in the oral mode. His deep involvement inthe actual translation of Malagasy orature into French complicated the dis-tinction between his real or authorized translations and his deliberatelycompositional and complex translations.5

In the last decade of his life (during the 1930s), he moved increasinglytowards the composition of bilingual works in both French and Malagasy.Several factors suggest that the majority of these bilingual texts wereoriginally written in French, though Rabearivelo always affirmed the contrary,claiming that the Malagasy texts constituted the originals from which theFrench versions were translated. This fiction enabled him to appropriateMalagasy identity for the French-language texts, since they were assumed,after all, to be only translations. But why write in French at all if his objectivewas to produce a recognizable Malagasy literature? Rabearivelo had cometo the realization that the colonial age in which he lived to all intents andpurposes precluded non-traditional Malagasy-language texts from publishedexistence. Unlike the authors of the more recent compositional or authorizedtranslations discussed earlier, Rabearivelo ultimately intended to securepublication for both the European and indigenous-language texts by reversingthe real linguistic relationship between them. In other words, the expression‘translated from the Malagasy’ which accompanied his French-language textsdid not signify a true craving for original texts and identities. Rather itrepresented a wilful manipulation of the barriers to publication in Africanlanguages within the colony. From the beginning Rabearivelo insisted onspeaking of these poems as bilingual French-Malagasy texts, though theywere initially published in monolingual French versions. Through thisstratagem, he eventually succeeded in doing what later compositional andauthorized translators proved incapable of achieving: ensuring the publication

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of his Malagasy-language poems alongside their French versions in theircapacity of supposed originals.

In the most recent edition of his later poems published in France in 1990,the Malagasy and French versions of each poem appear on facing pages. Astanza from a poem written for his children will serve as illustration. TheMalagasy version comes first and reads as follows:

Solofo anie aho ka Solofo,Solofo eo ambondin’ ny hazo:Maniry solofon’ ny voloMisy tantely velon-dreny (Poémes 82)

The French version appears on the following page:

Solofo je suis, donc une pousse neuve,Une pousse neuve au pied de l’arbreJe désire une pousse de roseauAvec du miel épais dedans (Poémes 83)

(I am Solofo, and thus a new shoota new shoot at the foot of the treeI desire a slender shootFilled with thick honey)

It is worth noting that Solofo, the name of Rabearivelo’s son, is the Mala-gasy equivalent for ‘shoot’ or ‘sprout’. The poem is constructed around theselective translation of Solofo in the French version, where it is left untrans-lated in the first line and then glossed in succeeding lines. Using these kindsof strategies in his bilingual works, Rabearivelo is able to demonstrate thecomplex linguistic identities and loyalties of the postcolonial writer, encom-passing both the French and Malagasy in his creative work.

Rabearivelo’s growing intuition concerning the significance of transla-tion for the postcolonial writer led him to make it the theme of his finalcollection of poetry, entitled Traduit de la nuit (Translations from the Night).In addition to the bilingual format of the work, the French-Malagasy poemsprovide images of the many possible ways in which the phenomenon ofnight can be ‘translated’. In Adejunmobi (1996:278-79), I attempted to ex-plain the significance of Rabearivelo’s translations of the night as follows:

In effect, to translate night or translate from the night does notmean to describe night as a static state. Rather it means to evokethe transmutations undergone by the phenomenon of night, toconsign night to an unending mobility intended to be symptomaticof the original condition of colonized man and nature. Rabeari-velo’s ideal for man and the elements resided in the capacity formutation or ‘translation’.

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Translation in Rabearivelo’s writing therefore does not lead back to uncon-taminated origins and linguistic states; on the contrary, it substantiates theinevitable linguistic mobility that had in his time become the vocation of thepostcolonial writer.

In the late 20th century, several North African writers have, according toRéda Bensmaïa (1987:137), sought to resolve language problems identicalto those confronting Rabearivelo by choosing between the many languagescontending for supremacy in the region: Classical Arabic, different varietiesof dialectal Arabic, Berber languages and French. Khatibi responds to thissituation by embracing all of these languages, as illustrated in Maghrebpluriel, the title of one of his works. Mary Ellen Wolf observes that Khatibi’swriting tends toward the empowering of a “collective, ethnic, decentered,multi-lingual” voice (1994:58). Since he does not choose one language overanother, Khatibi is therefore freed from the obligation of attempting to cre-ate an original version in any one chosen African tongue: his allegiance is toall rather than to the one. Furthermore, for him, the very complexity of thelanguage situation imposes the exigency of translation as a fundamental formof communication. Translation is therefore implicated in every form of com-munication within the postcolonial context rather than in the exclusive andelusive quest for origins alone.

The organizing principle of Khatibi’s language use and linguistic identityfinds expression in the notion of the ‘bi-langue’ and in his real sense ofbelonging to more than one language. In practical terms, Khatibi’s demon-stration of the ‘bi-langue’ does not lead him to resort to the strategies usedby the compositional translators. As Bensmaïa has pointed out (1987:141),Khatibi writes classical French in his many works, and does not attempt tomodify the structures of the French language. It might even be argued thatKhatibi does not translate as such. Rather his writing proceeds by a systemof ‘doubling’, allowing an unending play on the multiple meanings of a wordwithin individual languages, and between the different languages in use:French, classical, and dialectal Arabic. In Amour bilingue in particular, whileexploring the possibility of loving in two languages, the text maintains whatSamia Mehrez has described as a “perpetual migration of signs” (1992:134).Simple translations no longer suffice, while meaning becomes infinitelyvariable.

This particular text addresses the translating activity explicitly. Wordslike ‘translation’, ‘equivalence’, ‘language’, ‘mother tongue’ in their multi-ple meanings play a prominent part in the unfolding of the text, as do wordsin classical and dialectal Arabic in the same manner. That is to say, thetheme of the text itself is the unequal and unending dialogue between severallanguages in the postcolonial context. Furthermore, that theme is elaboratednot only in the form of a discontinuous narrative but also through consciouslyorchestrated references to the numerous possibilities of meaning and

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interpretation from one language to another. At a certain point in Amourbilingue for example, the narrator is described as recovering from disturbingthoughts, and we read:

Il se calma d’un coup, lorsqu’apparut le mot arabe “kalma” avecson équivalent savant “kalima” et toute la chaîne des diminutifs,calembours de son enfance: “klima”... La diglossie “kal(i)ma” revintsans que disparût ni s’effaçât le mot “mot”. (1983:10)

He calmed down instantly when an Arabic word, kalma, appeared,kalma and its scholarly diminutives which had been the riddles ofhis childhood: klima ... The diglossal kal(i)ma appeared again with-out mot’s having faded away or disappeared. (1990:4)

In this excerpt, the word calma (meaning ‘calmed down’) in French promptsrecollection on a phonological level of both kalma and kalima in Arabic,and ultimately leads back to ‘word’, for kalima means ‘word’ in Arabic,and prefaces calma in the text. Thomas Beebee (1994:75) perceptively ob-serves that the narrator does not, however, indicate that kalima is the Arabicequivalent for ‘word’. It is left to the reader to undertake this act of transla-tion and decoding. Thus, Khatibi explores and constructs a network of unusualassociations between French and Arabic that can be fully deciphered onlyby multilingual readers acquainted with both French and Arabic. Transla-tion in this work is not therefore an invisible activity resulting in theemergence of an ‘original text’ in Arabic; it is the primary focus and ‘method’,as it were, of narrative progression. Indeed, as Mehrez has argued, it is inaddition the only form of reading authorized by the kind of “postcolonialplurilingual texts” that “resist and ultimately exclude the monolingual anddemand of their readers to be like themselves: ‘in between’, at once capableof reading and translating, where translation becomes an integral part of thereading experience” (1992:122).

Both Khatibi and Rabearivelo published their works in European lan-guages. So also do compositional and authorized translators notwithstandingappearances to the contrary. Unlike authorized translators, however, Khatibiand Rabearivelo locate the postcolonial language conflict within the pub-lished text (instead of in the unpublished text) as theme and central focus.While the strategies exploited by compositional translators are suggestive ofthe same conflict, they too, in the end, refer the reader to an unpublished andin many instances non-existent ‘original’ in an indigenous language. Thisbrings us to the most fundamental difference between Khatibi and Rabeari-velo on the one hand, and the other kinds of African translators on the other:Khatibi and Rabearivelo imply the futility of pursuing original versions inindigenous languages as a means for resolving the postcolonial crisis of iden-tity. For them, translation does not connote derivation, source text, fixed

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meaning or primal essence; rather it incarnates change, mutability, a persist-ent mobility between languages not so much inherited from Babel as inflictedby the postcolonial order of things.

MORADEWUN ADEJUNMOBIAfrican-American and African Studies, University of California, Davis,CA 95616, USA. [email protected]

Acknowledgements & Notes

Extracts from J. J. Rabearivelo, Poèmes (collection Litterature francophone),1990, are reprinted with the kind permission of Hatier.

1. Critics who have explored the role of translation in African literature inEuropean languages include: A. Afolayan, Oluwole Adejare, Paul Bandia,Eloise Briere, Bernth Lindfors, and Amadou Koné, among others.

2. It is important to note, though, that the style used by writers like Okara orKourouma does not necessarily correspond to actual African speech pat-terns in English, French or even Pidgin (Schmied 1991:133). The style is,as Zabus (1991:102) has pointed out, a special literary code, which isundoubtedly ‘African’ but quite distinct from widely spoken African va-rieties of English or French.

3. In a recent interview (Gauvin 1997:156), Kourouma does, however, placegreater emphasis on the objective of correctly presenting the Malinkéworldview than on the linguistic process of translating from Malinké toFrench.

4. Obiajunwa Wali was one of the earliest to raise this issue in a 1963 edi-tion of Transition magazine. The matter has received renewed publicitywith the 1981 decision of the Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, to aban-don writing in European languages.

5. Details of Rabearivelo’s elaborate deception and exploitation of the roleexpected of colonized writers are recounted in Adejunmobi (1996).

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Documents

Translation and Postcolonial Identity