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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Mebitaghan Rita Ochuko
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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2016.04.004
Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria
Traditionally, translation research is centered on language transfer and problems of transposing author’s intention from Source Language (SL) to Target Language (TL). The cultural turn in translation studies which gave birth to such trends as postcolonial translation studies, saw research in translation expand to include cultural, social, and political considerations. Translation is then conceived as intercultural communication. Postcolonial translation scholars identify with other disciplines (cultural studies, anthropology, ethnography, etc.) and posit that culture can be mediated by language. Literatures of colonized societies existed first in oral forms and later in written form expressed in European languages as direct translations from indigenous languages; hence they are considered as retranslated texts manifesting traits of hybridity. In a postcolonial context, hybridity gives an identity to the writer and his text and places literature in its historical perspective. Against this background, this paper conceives translation as an intercultural activity with the translator acting as a mediator who communicates between cultures. It discusses Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (PH) and cultural mediation in the French translation L’hibiscus pourpre (HP). Set in south-eastern Nigeria, the novel depicts amongst others, social norms of the Igbo people all expressed in English and the Igbo language. Drawing on postcolonial translation studies and Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), the study conceives the translator as a bicultural individual who mediates between cultures; it raises such questions as what cultural elements in the text are translated and how? To what extent are these translated elements in touch with the original? What is the role of the translator as a cultural mediator? A comparative analysis of parallel pairs of Igbo features and norms in Source Text (ST) and Target Text (TT) are examined.
postcolonialism, cultural mediation, cultural identity, postcolonial translation studies, the Igbo people
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