ABSTRACT
Throughout the history of translation, the question of ―translatability of literary worksâ€" has been repeatedly asked and debated among linguists as well as translators and translation theorists. For some, all translations are apparently attempts at finding solutions to some insoluble problems. They therefore distinguish two kinds of untranslatability, that is, linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatability. The former occurs when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the target language for a source language item. As for cultural untranslatability, it is due to the absence in the target language culture of a relevant situational feature for the source text. But other scholars and translators believe that virtually everything is translatable. According to them, the untranslatable can be translated by transferring the source item and explaining it if no parallel item is found in the target language. Hence, every variety of meaning in a source language text can be translated either directly or indirectly into a target language. The controversy over the problem of translatability or untranslatability stemmed therefore from the vagueness of the notion of meaning and a lack of consensus over the understanding of the nature of language and translation. In this regard, the present research examined the problems that arise from the translation of the African oral literature into French language. The problematic is approached as a conceptual challenge subsumed under the following hypothesis: the identity of a literary work of art cannot be retained when the work is translated into another language. The analysis is based on the material, particularly the fon akonhun rhythm songs. These songs are literary work of art that expresses everyday's life or a universally recognized truth. Most of them are rooted in the fon culture and have been preserved by oral tradition. They reflect not only the peculiarity of fon language and culture, but also the thoughts of fon people. The study highlights a variety of issues pertaining to the possibility of translating cultural expressions of this type. The research critically surveys the nature of the problem of translatability from different theoretical perspectives giving special attention to linguistic and socio-cultural theories of translation. The analysis of linguistic and cultural barriers including lexical gaps as main obstacles to translation reveals that the problem of translatability or untranslatability of African oral literature is closely related to man‘s understanding of the nature of language, meaning and translation. On the understanding that the object of translation is the message and not the carrier of the message, language-specific norms considered untranslatable by some linguists should be excluded from the realm of untranslatable. And since translation is a communicative event involving the use of verbal signs, the chance of untranslatability in practical translating tasks may be minimized if the communicative situation is taken into account. The study concludes that any text can be translated since translation is concerned with issues that go beyond an elucidation of one language into another. As a matter of fact, even for those apparently untranslatable base units, an ingenious translator may come up with a clever translation, which fully and naturally transfers the peculiar meanings of a source item. Thus, a perfect translation, the one that does not entail any loss of information from the original, is unattainable, especially when dealing with literary translation. A practical approach to translation must accept that. Finally, translating literary work requires a trained translator with skilled and consistently renewed linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. It also requires a great deal of fair imagination, as well as intelligence and above all, common sense. In view of the above, the study suggests that Africa literary translators be trained and be equipped with the intellectual and cultural background for oral literature as well as translation studies.
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