African European- Laguage Literature and Writing as Translation

Paul BANDIA - page 1

African European-Language Literature and Writing as Translation:Some Ethical Issues

Introduction

This paper deals with some ethical and pragmatic issues at the core of theorizingtranslation practice in the African context, particularly those pertaining to translatingEuropean language literature. The history of translation in Africa is long and varied and,as is the case in most pre-industrialized societies, it stretches from pre-colonial timeswhen communication was ensured mainly by means of oral narrative practices, throughthe colonial era when writing systems began to compete with the oral tradition medium,to the post-colonial era when literacy and a culture of writing were firmly established.My paper focuses on writing and translating practices in the post-colonial era.

Indigenous versus European-language writing

So far, my interest in African translations has been in European-language writing ratherthan in indigenous writing, for some obvious reasons. Although African-language writinghas existed for a long time -- either as a by-product of the colonial era when someEuropean-language texts, particularly religious texts, were translated into Africanlanguages, or as the result of an earlier influence from Islam -- the translation study ofAfrican-language writing, like any other translation study, requires a thorough knowledgeof the various translating languages. However, it has been shown that the complex"babelic" nature of the African linguistic landscape has greatly limited the disseminationof African-language writing and translating. Also, the specter of European languages isalways nearby in spite of efforts to write in, or translate into, African languages. Eventranslations between African languages, which are rare, are often mediated by a Europeanlanguage (e.g. Christian religious texts). In other words, there is hardly any directtranslation practice between African languages per se.The debate over whether to write in indigenous or colonial languages, which took placein the sixties and the seventies, is a mute one today as the experience of some prominentAfrican writers has shown. We are all aware of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s attempt to writeonly in his native Kikuyu after a brilliant career in English-language writing. Hesubsequently had to translate his work into English mainly to reach a wider readership.Also, Wole Soyinka’s English translation of Fagunwa’s writing in his native Yoruba,notwithstanding the criticism of the translation, became necessary for its spread acrossborders in Africa and abroad. Hence, given its highly regional basis, its many differentlanguages and traditions, and its relatively unstable linguistic code, African-languagewriting, though a worthy and growing enterprise, seems quite difficult to study andaccount for from the point of view of a comprehensive translation theory.

European languages, as part of the colonial legacy in Africa, have had anenormous impact on modes of communication, competing with, and sometimesdisplacing, indigenous languages in matters of literacy and intercultural communication.The tension between European languages and indigenous languages is clearly evident inthe area of creative writing. It has been argued that ideally African literature should useAfrican languages as its medium of expression. However, European colonial languagesare today part of the linguistic landscape of Africa, with many African writers claiming


the right to use them for their artistic expression. This claim was eloquently expressed bythe Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, in a speech entitled “The African Writer and theEnglish Language” when he said:

Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue forsomeone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal andproduces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no otherchoice. I have been given the language and I intend to useit. […] I feel that the English language will be able to carrythe weight of my African experience. But it will have to bea new English, still in full communion with its ancestralhome but altered to suit new African surroundings.(Achebe, 1975:59)

Linguistic status of European-language texts(Orality/Orature and text)

This leads us to the problematic of defining the linguistic status of African European-language texts and to explore the interface between orality and writing as well as theinterface between creative writing and translating as practiced by African writers. ThatAfrican writers assert their right to use an alien language for their artistic expression isnot in itself surprising given Africa’s colonial history, coupled with the impact of today’sglobalization movement. What seems to be of particular import is their determination toappropriate the colonial languages giving them a distinctly African flavour. The languageof early African Europhone literature is greatly influenced by the aesthetics of Africanoral narrative traditions, as can be seen in the work of a university-educated writer likeChinua Achebe or in the work of a semi-literate writer like Amos Tutuola. This is not tosay that African creative writing amounts to wholesale translations from oral narratives,or that African writers are always translating from their respective oral narratives. Theattempt at reconciling the product of their imagination as creative writers, the inspirationderived from oral narratives, and the need to write in an alien code is at the basis of thelinguistic innovative practices, or "inventiveness", characteristic of the language of Euro-African literature. Over decades, this inventiveness has occurred in varying degreesdepending on the author and also on one's colonial heritage. In other words, the degree ofacculturation, or indigenization (Zabu, 1991) of the European language would depend onthe form of representation of a vernacular oral narrative in a foreign writing medium andthe kind of linguistic experimentation practiced by the writer, which is in turn determinedby the exigencies of the writer’s colonial heritage. For instance, it has been pointed outthat the English language has undergone a great deal more acculturation than the Frenchlanguage in African writing. Albert Gérard (1986) attributes this to the differencebetween British and French colonial policies.

In spite of the claim that Francophone writers are often forced to mimic the“pure” French that most of them acquired through a rigorous linguistic training in themetropolitan idiom, there has been a gradual Africanization of the French language inAfrica over the decades. Even the early négritude writers, whose writing practice washighly determined by the French classical tradition, were significantly influenced by theiroral narratives both in form and content. For instance, while extolling the virtues of the


French language, Senghor nonetheless asserts his right to adapt the language toexpressing African reality. He says:

By using French I am obliged to bend the language to meetthe exigencies of my Negro-Africa. I am led to makeAfrican music with the French language which is musicalbut not expressive. You see, there is a difficult problemhere and that is why, when once this problem is solved, awork of beauty is bound to result. The French language isnot tone marked. It is an abstract language, and from thisabstract language one has to create a concrete and vividlanguage…. (In Egejuru, 1980, pp. 33-34)

Jacques Chevrier (1978) sums up the attitude of African Francophone writers towardswriting in French by separating them into three categories: les inconditionnels, lesréticents et les réalistes. Senghor, whose position on the Francophonie is well known,belongs, of course, to the first category. The second category includes those authors whouse French as an artistic medium in spite of themselves. For these authors, the Frenchlanguage is an intrusion (like the presence of a gendarme); it is an instrument ofcolonization with its own ambiguities and travesties. The third category includes thoseauthors who are said to have a realistic and pragmatic view on the subject. For theCongolese writer, Tchicaya U Tam' Si, the use of French is not a deliberate choice butrather the result of a "situation de fait", which he accepts as "un phénomène naturel" (anatural phenomenon). It can be inferred from this that the attitude of African writers inthe "réalistes" camp is far from neutral or passive, rather it is expressed deliberately interms of conflict and struggle. The Zaïrean/Congolese Kadima-Nzuji talks of "saisir,plier, violenter la langue française". In more recent times, this latter view is borne out inthe works of writers such as Ahmadou Kourouma and Sony Labou Tansi who have“reinvented and ‘africanized’ the French language in a gesture of deliberate alienation.”(Oxford Guide, 2001: 302).

Interface between orality, creative writing and translatingThe third codeThe debate over the African writer's choice to use the colonial language as a means ofartistic expression has to be put in perspective by separating pre-independence from post-independence writers. It should be noted that during the colonial era African writers hadno alternative to the colonial language as the indigenous languages had not been givenany systematic or stable writing code. Also, most of these early writers whose littératureengagée was aimed at an European audience, chose the colonial language in order toreach a wide international readership whose assistance and understanding were necessaryin the struggle against colonization. The colonial language had ceased to be the languageof oppression and had been conferred official status by some local governments. Seen bysome as the language of alienation, the European language was hailed by others as aninstrument of liberation – a neutral language providing an opening to (or contact with) theoutside world.


The predicament of the African writer's choice to continue to write in an alienlanguage which is not spoken or understood by a majority of the people can be elucidatedthrough an understanding of Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "minority/minor" literature.Based on a study of Kafka's work, Deleuze and Guattari propose three hypothesesaccording to which Kafka's marginal position as a Jew born in Prague and writing inGerman suggests a triple impossibility: (1) impossibility of not writing ("impossibilité dene pas écrire"); (2) impossibility of writing in German ("impossibilité d'écrire enallemand"); (3) impossibility of writing in a language other than German ("impossibilitéd'écrire autrement qu'en allemand"). These hypotheses can be applied to the AfricanEuropean language writer whose situation clearly mirrors that of Kafka's in terms oflanguage choice and conditions of literary production. Regarding the first hypothesis, theimpossibility of not writing, many African writers have indicated how, at a certain periodof history, the colonial language had provided them the only means of escape fromcolonial domination. According to Franz Fanon, if the colonized intellectual unabashedlyimmersed himself in Western culture, it is because he had no choice, it was for him an"obligation historique" (1969). The African writer's desire to reject the imposed/alienculture is confronted with a double and paradoxical impossibility: the impossibility ofwriting in the language of the oppressor with which he/she is intimately involved, as wellas the impossibility of doing otherwise (i.e., of not writing in the language of theoppressor). This ambivalence is revealed in the deliberate and conscious explosive stylecharacteristic of Euro-African writing; a style described by Fanon as "nerveux, animé derythme, de part en part habité par une vie éruptive" (1969). This style of writing which isremoved from its cultural space by the very fact that it is expressed in a foreign language,generally inscribes literary production within a political space, on the one hand, andconfers upon it the character of a collective enunciation. The writer therefore turns theliterary machine into a revolutionary machine, claiming the right to difference, adifference suggested for the most part by Western ethnocentrism.

Linguistic experimentation or writing as translationThe status of African European-language discourse has evolved over the decades rangingfrom outright linguistic experimentation based on literal translations from oral narratives--hence a more fractured receptor language-- to a more standard codification in theEuropean language. As earlier indicated, forms of experimentation vary according to anumber of factors: the writer’s level of education (e.g., the difference between a semi-literate Tutuola and a university-educated Achebe); the degree of closeness to the oralnarrative and the indigenous language (e.g., Gabriel Okara's The Voice); the idiosyncraticinput of the writer as an artist (e.g., more modern writers such as Ben Okri and SonyLabou Tansi) and the international reputation of the author. It follows from this that eventhough African Europhone literature cannot generally be grouped under one category astranslations from oral narratives, the fictions usually borrow, in one way or another, fromthe oral narratives, either in terms of style or content. Here, I am interested in the view oftranslation as a metaphor for writing and the resulting discourse which is necessarilyhybrid, a language which I refer to as a third code by analogy with Homi Bhabha's notionof a "third space".In other words, translation is viewed here as a metaphor of transportation and relocation,a "carrying across" physical, cultural or linguistic boundaries from a minority languageculture into a hegemonic one. The intercultural writing practiced by African post-colonial


writers obviously has some points of convergence with interlingual literary translationpractice, although they are essentially distinct (Tymoczko, 1998). Maria Tymoczko hasargued that "unlike translators post-colonial writers are not transposing a text", but rather"as background to their literary works, they are transposing a culture" (p. 20). While thisis generally true of many African writers, it is also true that many others are translatingnot only cultures but also languages. This is evident in Okara's novel The Voice and inAchebe's almost literal translation of proverbs, aphorisms and other pithy expressionsfrom his native Igbo. Okara states:

As a writer who believes in the utilization ofAfrican ideas, African philosophy and African folklore andimagery to the fullest extent possible, I am of the opinionthe only way to use them effectively is to translate themalmost literally from the African language native to thewriter into whatever European language he is using asmedium of expression. (1963:10)

This kind of translating as writing, whether it be the recoding of language or therelocation of culture, is often inspired by a source text which is either “real” or“imaginary”. "Real" because the translated text can often be traced back to its originarytext in African oral narratives, and "imaginary" because the translation is not based onany particular concrete/physical source-language text, but rather it is inspired by thegeneral folklore or oral tradition of a source culture, in other words a metatext of culture(Tymoczko, 1998). To view post-colonial writing as mere transposing of culture and nottranslating of language is tantamount to viewing post-colonial writing as ananthropological exercise rather than an artistic and literary one. As the writers themselveshave pointed out, a major characteristic of post-colonial writing is what Berman (1985)and Derrida (1967) have referred to as "le travail sur la lettre" (the work on the signifier),the work on the signifier, performed by the writer, and the ensuing significations whichmay extend well beyond the mere semantic content of the text to suggest ideologicallyloaded forms of signification. Post-colonial writing as translating is not a mere relocationof culture from a peripheral context to a more central and powerful one. It involves a"travail sur la lettre" which is in a way its life-line, ensuring the "visibility" (Venuti,1995) of both the marginalized language culture and the postcolonial writer-translator ina context of globalization characterized by a universalizing drive and a quest forhomogeneity. The "oeuvre linguistique" (the work on language) is therefore distinctiveand characteristic of post-colonial writing, and vital to the creation of a "third space", aspace of one's own as it were, a space to inscribe one's identity and find one's own voicewithin a global literary machine and its arborescent structure.

Formal experimentation is therefore a strategy by which post-colonial orminority-culture literatures seek to challenge dominant standards of language, poetics andculture by introducing new formal resources and paradigms into the dominant receptorculture. This kind of innovative formalism has the potential to revitalize dominantlanguages and cultures and to make them more inclusive and more representative in theirrole as international languages in an ever-growing context of globalization. In theintroduction to his translation of Deleuze's Essays, Critical and Clinical, Daniel W.Smith writes:


The more a language acquires the characteristics of a majorlanguage, the more it tends to be affected by internalvariations that transpose it into a "minor" language.English, because of its very hegemony, is constantly beingworked on from within by the minorities of the world, whonibble away at that hegemony and create the possibility ofnew mythic functions. […] The acquisition of power by alanguage and the becoming-minor of that language, in otherwords, are coexistent movements that are constantlypassing and converging into each other in both directions.[Deleuze proposes a] "geo-linguistics" […] in which theinternal functions of language are inseparable fromincessant movements of deterritorialization andreterritorialization (1997: xlvii)

Smith explains that for Deleuze "the term 'minor' does not refer to specific literatures butrather to the revolutionary conditions for every literature, even (and especially) in themidst of a great or established literature […] the essential distinction is between a majorand a minor use" (xlix). A good example of this concept of 'minor' for Deleuze is ofcourse Kafka's writing in the "substandard" German of Prague. Euro-African writing isalso a good example of this understanding of a 'minor' literature.

Post-colonial intercultural writing is the result of a process whereby the dominantmetropolitan language culture is deterritorialized geographically in terms of its historicaland literary references and is subsequently reterritorialized within a post-colonial space.Within this space there is a blending of indigenous and western discourses resulting in anOther code, a third code, which is hybrid in nature, a "code métissé", which is neithercompletely detached from its African nor its European sources. The primary aim of thisin-between code is to reterritorialize the author and his/her audience, that is, to abolishthe linguistic and cultural distance imposed by the foreign language between the writerand his audience (often a multicultural audience). Though a hybrid code, it does notcompletely fuse its constituent parts to create an entirely new language with a potential tosettle in its own arborescent structure reminiscent of the concept of créolité or EdouardGlissant's utopian ideal of antillanité as expressed in his Poetique des relations. Instead,this third code is bi-langue (bi-language) rather than bilingue (bilingual), bi-culture (bi-culture) rather than biculturel (bicultural) (to borrow Abdelkebir Khatabi's terminology)as it projects transnational identities that are at once African and European. It is the locusof the co-existence of languages in an equal relationship free of hierarchy. In this in-between space the African writer attempts to resist the linguistic and cultural hegemonyof the colonial language, opposing all attempts at annexation and ethnocentrismcharacteristic of dominant universalizing cultures.

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari propose the metaphor of therhizome which is particularly suitable to describing the practice of writing as translatingas seen in Euro-African literature. The rhizomic nature of post-colonial writing in Africacan be explained from a two-pronged perspective: (a) in terms of the deterritorializationof the colonial language; (b) in terms of the reterritorialization of the colonial languagewithin the post-colonial space. In deterritorializing the colonial language the Africanwriter seeks to rid the language of its arborescence thus eliminating the implied hierarchy


and dominance. This strategy addresses the dilemma facing post-colonial writers: howcan one seek to assert one's identity and culture by using a foreign dominant language?Subverting the colonial code is therefore an attempt to neutralize it and to avoid itshegemonic influence, creating a horizontal rather than a vertical relationship with thelanguage. Reterritorializing the language within a post-colonial space by "indigenizing" itresults in another code, a third code, which exists in a rhizomic relationship in that ittakes flight from the indigenous and European languages at its source and multipliessustaining a post-colonial literature which now has a life of its own and is no longerdependent upon the dominant colonial norms. Hence, African post-colonial literature isrhizomic in that, in many instances, it is writing as translating from a metatext of culturewhich is not an original text as we know it, but rather an imaginary original with noarborescent, or hierarchical, relationship to the translation (i.e., the Euro-African text). Itis a form of translating which is not totally traceable to its "original", given that theoriginal for the most part only serves as inspiration to the writer. Moreover, steeped inoral traditions, these imaginary original, often exists in a variety of versions with no oneversion having authority over the others.1

This kind of writing as translating from an imaginary original challenges thedominant arborescent model of translation studies which is characteristically based onbinary oppositions such as source vs target, original vs secondary, and more recentlyminor vs major, dominant vs dominated, etc. For instance, the Polysystems theory isdependent on the opposition between source and target cultures, while the foreignizingmodel highlights the binary opposition of major vs minor cultures. The arborescenthierarchical structures of these two main models in the field are indeed obvious. AsGentzler points out regarding the Polysystems theory, " Toury posits a Target Text theoryfor translation, [the eventual goal of which] is to establish a hierarchy of interrelatedfactors which determine the translation product" (1993: 130). On the same subject, Even-Zohar wrote:

one need only assume the center-periphery relation in orderto be able to reconciliate heterogeneity with functionality.Thus the notion of hierarchy, of strate, is not onlyunavoidable but useful as well (cited in Gentzler, 1993:120)

The polysytems theory clearly replicates the arborescent model and its hierarchical valuesbecause, even though it dismisses source-oriented translation theories, it starts with anoriginal text and moves towards its off-shoot, the translated text. Similarly, theforeignizing model which is based on the binary opposition major-minor, defines

1 It is interesting to note here that this 'imaginary original' status of the metatext from which African writers'translate' was at the basis of Calixte Beyala's defence when she was accused of having plagiarized BenOkri's work. Her attempts to dismiss the accusations were based on the argument that any similaritybetween her work and Okri's was due to the fact that as African writers they all borrow from African oraltradition.This example is quite significant in that unlike Achebe or Soyinka who are based in Africa,Beyala and Okri are both exile writers living in Paris and London respectively. Yet their claim to theAfrican folklore (or oral narrative) is still quite strong. Even in Beyala's recent novel which is set in aParisian neighbourhood (Belleville), the tone, rhythm and flow of the text owe much to the African oralnarrative.


minority as a subordinate cultural position (135), and understands the term"deterritorialization" quite literally, as a re-placement, a movement from major to minor.Yet, although the innovative formalisms practiced by postcolonial writers are often theresult of foreignizing strategies, African Europhone writing as translating based on animaginary original disrupts any form of hierarchy either in its relation to the African oralnarrative or the European language of writing. As indicated earlier, this minor literatureseeks to co-exist in a rhizomatic relationship with both entities, by disruptinghomogeneity and binary oppositions and following a line of flight in its becoming text.

Translating between “colonial” European languages: Theorizing African translationpractice

The theorizing of African translation practice is still quite undeveloped, probably due tothe fact that a comprehensive history of translation in Africa is yet to be written. Mosttheoretical, pragmatic and descriptive statements on translation in Africa have beeninformed by models and approaches from other postcolonial situations. Kwame AnthonyAppiah wrote a seminal paper advocating "thick translation", involving heavy paratextualmaterial, in his attempt to theorize an approach to translating African literature. This, ofcourse, is an approach which forces the writer-translator to include large quantities ofexplanation and explicit information likely to compromise the reception of the text asliterature, by turning it into a didactic work or an anthropological piece suited to theexotic demands of an international audience. Based on a descriptive linguistic study,Chantal Zabus (1991) proposes the concept of "relexification" to describe theindigenization of European-language items by African writers. In my study of translationas cultural transfer, the translation of African literature is described as a "two-tierapproach to intercultural translation" where I consider Euro-African writing astranslation as constituting a "primary" level and inter-European language translation asa "secondary" level of translation (Bandia, 1993). Both levels are interconnected in thatthe translator of African literature from one European language into another is indirectlydealing with the vernacular language and culture already "translated" by the writer. Theinter-European language translator therefore has as his source text a translated text,linguistically (and perhaps culturally) multi-layered, often immersed in a certain degreeof intertextuality, written in a third code, an in-between code, fitting neither perfectlywithin traditional African discourse nor within the receiving European culture. Thetranslator is therefore "thrice removed from reality", and is that much further from theoriginal text and culture, that is, the African oral text in the vernacular language.Discussing the translation of Achebe's works, Ekundayo Simpson says, "Since the authorhas already bridged the gap between the Nigerian idiom and the European one, all thetranslator has to do is to find the equivalent expression and register in the foreignlanguage" (1979: 79). Although Simpson's statement confirms our view that the sourcetext is itself a translation, it nonetheless proposes a rather simplistic characterization ofthe translating process involved. The translation of what is virtually a translated sourcetext, a hybrid text, a bi-lingual/bi-cultural source text, a text straddling two alien ordistant language cultures, is bound to be different from the usual translation of amonolingual/monocultural text. The African European-language text is, in our view, atranslating text, in much the same sense as Deleuze and Guattari's concept of anomal(y) –


the state of "flexible citizenship" articulated in the in-between (Chambers, 1997) – abecoming-minor (text). Far from being static, this text gains agency throughappropriation, which is "a means of creating pluralism where homogeneity hadpreviously reigned" (Buchanan, 1997: 10). The text (re-) articulates identity as it'translates' African sociocultural reality into a European language consciousness and, as adynamic, rhizomic entity, can multiply, transposed into other translating texts in othertranslating languages and cultures. The translation of this type of text from one alienEuropean language into another raises some ethical questions that can informpostcolonial translation theory.

Postmodernism and the ethics of African translatingPostmodern philosophy has contributed significantly to discussions about translationethics particularly with respect to translating postcolonial discourse and dealing with thetheory and practice of minority translations. Insofar as postmodernism entails theabandonment of canonical practices, the various strategies created by African writers toescape the stranglehold of colonialism and especially the "tyranny" of the coloniallanguage may be termed "postmodern" (Zabus, 1997: 464). Euro-African literature ischaracterized by a self-conscious game of melding, including "ludic intertextuality"(Sellin, 1997: 471) as well as the blending of linguistic registers resulting in what can bereferred to as a "post-ethnic" interlanguage. This amounts to the creation of whatDeleuze calls "linguistic Third World zones" (Deleuze, 1986: 27), which in African textsconstitutes a "minor literature", that is, a "literature which a minority constructs with amajor language" (Deleuze, 1986: 16). The conscious language experimentation practicedby African writers was preceded by unwittting attempts at calquing the mother tongueand by resorting to loan-translations as can be seen in the "folk novels" of Amos Tutuola.The desire to make the colonial language carry the weight of African culture, especiallygiven the fate of African languages during the glottophagic process of colonization, canbe understood in terms of political expediency and exigency (Calvet, 1979).

Ethical considerations for translating African literature repose on a refusal to caterto a Western taste for exoticism as well as on attempts at "decolonizing literature"(Chinweizu, 1980) and "decolonizing the mind" (Wa Thiong'o, 1986). This calls for apoetics of translation that will respect the African writer's subversive intentions whetherit has to do with the writer's use of innovative formalism or the demands made on thereader by the metatext of culture. Translating African literature from one coloniallanguage into another amounts to a confrontation with yet another system ofrepresentational power. As a text which claims to be decolonizing in its intent, AfricanEuropean language literature calls for translation strategies that are likely to carry acrossthe subversion of this hybrid, cross-cultural, source text. The subversive nature of theAfrican author's writing in the dominant colonial language is translated with respect to itsdecolonizing intent, its struggle for the rights of political and discursive self-representation. The Euro-African text is thus an act of representation which is in essencean act of translation; subversive representation is more precisely "translative"(Karamcheti, 1995). The mainly linguistic translation involved in inter-Europeanlanguage translation threatens to subvert the subversive text, undoing the decolonizingwork done by the author, and recolonizing the Euro-African text given the imperialisticnature of language. Although the Euro-African text can subvert the dominance ofWestern colonial discourse over African traditional discourse, its translation into another


European language can undo that subversion through the structures of dominanceembedded in the language. Hence, the desire to decolonize through translation does notonly contend with the colonial desire to dominate, but also with the inherentcharacteristic of language to signify according to its own signifying structures.

African European-language translation is as much about carrying across culturalmatter as it is about resisting the structures of dominance embedded in the coloniallanguage. Given its decolonizing strategy of resistance and preservation through languageexperimentation, African European-language translating is best informed by an ethics ofdifference (Venuti, 1995) whose main objective is to safeguard the linguistic and culturalspecificity of Euro-African discourse. This ethical view is in line with a growingtendency in translation studies which seeks to move away from a systematic quest forsameness or fidelity in translation. The translation of the Euro-African text is neitherentirely foreignizing nor entirely domesticating. As mentioned earlier in this paper, theEuro-African text is itself a translated text, the result of a foreignizing as well as adomesticating strategy, blending African traditional discourse with European languagediscourse. The resulting hybrid text, written in a "third code" and located in the space in-between, an intercultural space, assumes an ambivalent posture as it seeks simultaneouslyto retain its foreigness while integrating into the receiving language culture. These textualmiddles (Robinson, 1997; Lecercle, 1990), created by experimental formal techniquesand multilayered textual strategies, are themselves often multi-lingual and multi-culturalsteeped in intertextuality rendering the texts highly resistant to the kind of binaryoppositions that are characteristic of translation criticism. The study of these hybrid textswhich are characteristic of postcolonial discourse and postmodern writing practice hasthe potential to point the way to a non-binary, non-oppositional approach to theorizingtranslation practice.

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African European- Laguage Literature and Writing as Translation

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