The African Writer as Translator: Writing African Languages through French

Abstract

The relationship between the African writer and the language of the former colonial power has often been studied in ideological terms. The classical approach has consisted in examining the attitudes and reactions of African writers in the use of an alien tongue rather than the writer's re-appropriation of the foreign language in the creative writing process. This paper attempts to re-orient the reflection on the imaginary, that is, on the creative use of the foreign language, a process that can now be considered under the notion of translation. I wish to expand the traditional notion of translation in order to demonstrate how it functions as a creative and critical activity in African literature. My definition of translation goes beyond the linguistic process that consists in transferring meaning from one language to another to include the entire medium through which ‘Third World’ cultures are transported to and recuperated by audiences in the West.