Investigating the latent resistance of African creative popular art to translation

AFRICAN JOURNAL

OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

AFR

ICAN JOURNA

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VOLUME 4, NUMBER 2 JULY, 2013

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AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES VOLUME.4, NUMBER 2, JULY 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Value-Concept and the Symbolist Aesthetics in G.D. Nyamndi’s Facing Meamba Andrew T. Ngeh, PhD. ................................................................................................. 4

Difficulties in the Translation of a Technical Text: Example of La bourse en veut-elle a la croiss ance? Ireka F. Ikechukwu ..................................................................................................... 20

Gender and Intertextuality in Butake’s Lake God, The Survivors and And Palm-Wine Will Flow Eunice Fonyuy Fombele .............................................................................................. 34

The Impact of Language Competence on Translation Performance – A Case Study Sakwe George Mbotake (Ph.D). .................................................................................. 51

Investigating the Latent Resistance of African Creative Popular Art to Translation Wanchia T. Neba, PhD ............................................................................................... 66

Issues on Possession and Trespass to Land under the Nigerian Law Dr. C.U. Emaviwe ...................................................................................................... 82

The Challenges of Institutional Coordination in Hygiene Management in Sub-Saharan African Cities: The Case of Yaounde, Capital of Cameroon H. N. Ndi, Takem Mbi B. M. & E. M. Fube .............................................................. 99

Consequences of Humanitarian Crises in Africa: Selected Systems (Central African Republic, Liberia & The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Nkongho Elizabeth, Ph.D. ........................................................................................ 114

Regional Hegemons and the Furtherance of Regional Integration in the CEMAC: Lessons from ECOWAS in the West African Sub-Region. Banlilon Victor Tani, Ph.D ...................................................................................... 138

African Journal of Social Sciences Vol.4, No 2, 2013 66

INVESTIGATING THE LATENT RESISTANCE OF AFRICAN CREATIVE POPULAR ART TO TRANSLATION

BY

WANCHIA T. NEBA, PhD ADVANCED SCHOOL OF TRANSLATORS AND INTERPRETERS

UNIVERSITY OF BUEA, CAMEROON

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to investigate the claim that there is a latent resistance of African creative popular art to translation. To attain the above objective, the notion of African creative popular art has been operationalised through the traits of orality, spontaneity, creativity, paralinguistic artistry, linguistic hybridisation, punning/wordplaying (and tongue-twisters), and humouring which culminate in linguistic open-endedness and productivity. Thereafter, an investigation into this postulated resistance to translation is effected, leading to the conclusion that even if untranslatability is now a contested issue in Translation Studies, it all the same remains tenable with respect to African creative popular art. Key concepts: Popular, orality, spontaneity, creativity, paralinguistic artistry, linguistic hybridisation, punning/wordplaying (and tongue-twisters), humouring, linguistic open-endedness and productivity.

INTRODUCTION

Unlike administrative memoranda or religious exegeses, ‘creative’ texts that are built on “imagination, based on both a private and collective experience”, and endowed with specific, factual and affective dimensions (Ade Ojo 1986:295-296), have a different function, as they are more aesthetically-oriented. Inspired by popular drama, the ‘popular’, for its part, can be considered as that which is “produced by, and offered for the enjoyment of the largest combinations or groupings [of people] possible within a society” (Mayer, in Jeyibo 1984:3). Okpewho (1992:272) sees the popular as “the enactment of themes of essentially popular concern [and] explores the concerns of social life, whether lofty or lowly, in a light-hearted style that offers entertainment, and to a sufficiently large cross section of the people”, and achieved “through the use of local media such as dance, song, drama and mime” (The community toolbook,, www.tools @ participation, accessed 10/01/2010). Finally, Prenki and Selman (2003:8-9) add tonic to the above by positing that the ‘popular’ “questions the social and political structure and presumes that there is a more egalitarian social making possible. It seeks to be part of social movements which pursue justice and equality. […] is used as a form of resistance, and as a tool for strategizing for change.”

Latent Resistance of African Creative Popular Art Dr. Wanchia T. Neba 67

African creative popular art, whose latent resistance to translation has been evoked. Scholars such as Bandia (1993:103), Delabastita (1997:10), Vandaele (2002:150), and the authoritative International Federation for the Theatre (www.firt-iftr.org/.../38-popular-entertainments), can be operationalised through peculiar aesthetic linguistic traits like orality, spontaneity, creativity, paralinguistic artistry, linguistic hybridisation, punning/wordplaying (and tongue-twisters), and humouring which culminate in linguistic open-endedness and productivity, which arise when “new situations arise or new objects have to be described” by manipulating “linguistic resources to produce new expressions and new sentences” (Yule, 1985:19). This latent resistance is shown below.

Orality and resistance to translation: Oral literature is literature “delivered by word-of-mouth before an audience” (Finnegan 1970, 1988 and Opkewho 1997:70). According to Granqvist, in Newell 2002:6), “The [African] popular [piece] tends to be oral by origin”. The “African popular fiction has therefore been labelled ‘oral popular discourse’”. African ideas, philosophy, folklore and imagery expressed in European/foreign languages (Okara 1973:137-138) help to keep “as close as possible to the vernacular expressions” and allow scholars like Kourouma (in Koné, 1992:83) to exercise boundless liberty, “cassant le français pour trouver et restituer le rythme africain”, [breaking up the French language in order to recreate an African rhythm].

The aesthetic qualities of African creative popular art (Okpewho 1992:70-04); its penchant for exploiting oral textless sketches (Ndzana 1988:147-151; Ndzié 1985:344, in Fofié 2007:54); as well as the exercise of ‘boundless liberty’ (Kourouma, in Koné 1992:83) divorce it from Aristotelian concepts of ‘pre-existing form’, endow it with an “effervescent”, “unstable” and “evasive” character (Barber 1987), and thus usher in latent resistance to translation. Latent resistance to translation lies in considerations for the difference between the written and the oral forms of expression, (Okpewho 1992:367). By asserting that “orality, immediacy and communality unavoidably introduce a new dimension to the translation of texts”, Aaltonen (2000:41) is espousing Opkewho’s (1992:294) earlier assertion that both Europeans and Africans of the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century largely failed to translate African oral popular art. Many Europeans laboured

under a prejudice as well as a misconception … reflected in rather cavalier ways in which they translated the piece of oral literature or sought to give them a respectability which, it was thought they lacked. The result of this was that some European collectors, in their translations [of the songs which they encountered in African communities], tried to


force them into schemes of versification that made music to Europeans but were characteristically un-African (Opkewho 1992:294).

In a similar manner, African translators and scholars were so “fashionable” that their translations also sounded just as un-African as those of the Europeans, thus leading to the questioning of the authenticity of the translation. Orality, amongst many things, evokes the pertinent issue of dialects and the difficulties related to their translatability, signalled by Azevedo (1998) who asserts that translators:

do not necessarily have at their disposal a dialect that approximates, let alone replicates the connotations of the original. As a result, they may have to represent orality through the creation of an approximate, perhaps ad hoc literary dialect, and in so doing they will risk masking, misrepresenting, or obliterating the sociolinguistic variables inherent in the original. If an attempt is not made, however, something vital will be missing from the translation. Nonstandard speech is not just an alternate, optional way of saying the same thing: rather it marks the characters using it and affects their mutual relationships in a way that standard language cannot replicate (Azevedo 1998:42).

Cameroonian-born Jean Miché Kankan exhibits many of these oral traits. The excerpt:

Ze wa essayer soigner toi, ça c’est pas probelème. Zètte-moi quéqué cho à terre. On wa commencer avec visite dans le warmites. Zèttes encore quéqué cho à terre. Ya waaï, zètte à terre, c’est Bon Dieu wa prendre. Il donne toi les wénédictions, (J. M. Kankan’s, La vérité de Mallam),

portrays two dialect-related aspects which accord sociolinguistic peculiarity to Mallam’s utterance. Phonologically, the words/phrases ze (je), wa (va), probelème (problème), zètte-moi (jette-moi), quéqué cho (quelque chose), and les wénédictions (les bénédictions), for example, are typically Fulfulde when perceived, as opposed to the standard version pronunciations and spellings in brackets. With regard to grammar, Ze wa essayer soigner toi; ça c’est pas probelème ; Ya waaï, zètte à terre ; and c’est Bon Dieu wa prendre, inter alia, structurally deviate from their standard French language forms. Difficulties with respect to the translatability of this orally dense excerpt are located at adequately mapping unto the translated text the local Fulfulde-related phonological and grammatical deviations. Latent difficulties also exist with regard to the translatability of the trait of spontaneity.

Spontaneity and resistance to translation: Spontaneity refers to behaviour that is natural and unconstrained, and is the result of impulse and not planning (Microsoft Encarta 2009). Commenting on spontaneity in African creative popular art, Okpewho (1992:33) states that:


Sometimes, composition and performance happen simultaneously, especially in cases where an oral poet is moved to chant a piece of poetry on the spur of the moment. In The singer of the Tales, Lord made the classic statement that “ an oral poem is not composed for but in performance”, meaning that whatever the text of the poem, artists have in mind before they come to perform, they necessarily make certain adjustments to suit the type of audience they face. In some cases, the question of a premeditated text does not exist and the artist simply summons his or her skill to address an immediate subject.

The artist has the outstanding job of “bestowing, totally unrehearsed, a traditional pattern of imagery and diction on a brand–new subject, showing rather impressively how in African oral poetry the acts of composition and performance can take place simultaneously” (Okpewho 1992:34). Spontaneity can engender interconnected translation-relevant concepts (semantic extension, polysemy, ambiguity and vagueness):

Firstly, with semantic extension, a word may have different senses which can be divided into a primary sense and secondary senses (Mollanazar 2010:7, in Motallebzadeh &Yazdi 2011:3). The indirect, form-related, and word-median separative truncation of the word con…congressiste, extracted from the utterance «Mesdames, Mesdemoiselles, messieurs, chers con…congressistes» (Kouokam Narcisse, Le Discours d’or 90) is illustrative. Morphologically, con and congressist can exist independently. However, in this context, these two lexical items are not isolated words but a deliberate truncation of the word congressist that bears semantic expansion, especially as con and congressists are not linked by a hyphen (-) but rather by suspension marks (…) which indicate orality. Spontaneity’s second consequence can be polysemy, as acknowledged by Alexieva (1997:139) who insinuates that “the well-known phenomenon of semantic extension in general….may lead to polysemy”. According to Alexieva (1997:141),

Languages tend to be profoundly different in terms of semantic structure: a polysemous word in the source language may not be polysemous, or may be polysemous in a different way, in the receptor language; words may be found in the target language that are referentially synonymous with a source-language word, but have radically different emotive or stylistic meanings, and so on. Last but not the least, there are interlingual differences on the phonological (sound) and graphemic (writing) levels; here it should be remembered that identity of phonic and graphemic substance provides the necessary basis for wordplay.


Delabastita (1997:5) adds that: what is at a certain point in time understood as a single polysemous word may well be the result of the merger of two originally distinct words which happened to have similar forms. Conversely, two meanings of a single polysemous word may get dissociated to the point of breaking up the sense of word identity and growing apart – even formally – into separate words.

“Polysemous words constitute the majority of words in a language and frequent errors in translation are mostly due to taking a primary sense for a secondary sense” (Motallebzadeh &Yazdi 2011:3). Such is evident in this dialogue between Kouokam’s Journalist and Parliamentarian that follows:

Journalist: Dans une assemblée où il y a dix femmes, c’est trop peu dix femmes. Comment comptez-vous faire pour améliorer, comme en France, la parité homme-femme ? [In an assembly with ten women, that’s too few, ten women. How do you intend, like in France to adjust the male-female parity?].

Parliamentarian: S’il ya très peu de femmes, ….est- ce nous sommes obligés de chercher les femmes rien qu’à l’assemblé ? Il y a les autres dehors, Monsieur le Journaliste. [If there are very few women, …are we obliged to look for women only in the assembly? There are the others outside, Mr. Journalist].

Kouokam Narcisse, Appellez-moi Honorable), (my translation).

The word parité which means both male-female parity and pairing is variously understood by The Journalist (first meaning) and The Parliamentarian (second meaning), thus leaving the audience not only perplexed but equally amused. As a third upshot of sponataneity, ambiguity, for its part, means that each word, expression, or sentence may have two or more different descriptive senses and can be considered as ambiguous before realization of stress, stop, intonation or other phonological means and without any more presuppositions or contexts than what the word or the sentence itself creates (Qing-Liang 2007:1/166, in Motallebzadeh & Yazdi 2011:3). Baker (1998:166) talks of lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity. The excerpt below blends these two dimensions:

-Policeman: Présentez vos pièces! [Show me your papers]. -Kankan: Je n’ai pas de pièces. J’ai seulement un billet de mille francs. Si

vous voulez qu’on arrange, on arrange. [I do not have coins. I only have a thousand francs bank note. If you want that we should arrange, let us do so]. (J.M Kankan, Le Soulard), (my translation).


The French word pièces is ambiguous to Kankan who in a context of bribe-taking knows that the Policeman may just be more interested in a coin (pièces) than in papers (pièces). Finally, Tuggy (1993) identifies a relationship between polysemy, punning and vagueness. The Microsoft Encarta (2009) defines vagueness either as “not explicit”, “not distinctly seen”, “not clearly perceived” or “unclear in thinking”. Dave K. Moktoï’s Newrich is, for instance, vague in the utterance «Uh yuuuu, who-o-o, je suis chaud maintenant ! Auparavant je suis froide ! », [Uh yuuuu, who-o-o, I am hot now! Before I am cold], (D. K. Moktoï, Grosse baleine intouchable), (my translation). The words chaud (hot) and the punned froide (cold) are vague in context, until subsequently unravelled to respectively mean flashy and shabby. In effect, Newrich is flashy (chaud) now (motivated by newfound wealth), compared to his poverty-provoked shabbiness (froide) of yesterday.

From the above examples, one perceives the cyclical and intertwined relationship between semantic extension, polysemy, ambiguity and vagueness (Langacker 1987:101). Their cumulative latent resistance to translation is buttressed by the Consortium for Speech Translation Advanced Research (C-STAR) which approves Waibel’s standpoint (1996, in Darinka V. et al 2007) that attributes spontaneity’s resistance to translation to the fact that:

humanly spoken sentences are hardly ever well-formed in the sense that they seldom obey rigid syntactic constraints. They contain disfluencies, hesitations (um, hmm, etc.), repetitions (....so I, I, I guess, what I was saying…), and false starts (...how about we meet on Tue.. um.. on Wednesday.....), (http://www.c-star.org/main/english/cstar2/ Waibel,1996).

The next trait whose latent resistance to translation is also worth investigating is creativity. Creativity and resistance to translation: Creative ‘idiosyncratism’ is a very distinctive characteristic of African creative popular art. ‘Creativity’ means “showing use of the imagination to create new ideas or things” (Microsoft Encarta, 2009). Darah (1982:91, in Okpewho 1992:32) asserts that “A gifted ororile creates by deft of allusions and analogy. As the song progresses, metaphors are introduced, […] a metaphorical remark or proverbial allusion is made and explained logically later in the song”. Okpewho (1992:32) opines that:

The actual process of composition shows what a delicate and painstaking job is involved in the making of African oral poetry…The principal stylistic tools of this job are metaphor, allusion, analogy, and other kinds of oblique


imagery designed to make it reasonably clear who the subjects are even when fake names are used .

Figurative language which features traits like metaphor, allusion, analogy, and oblique imagery) and which resides in the material, social, religious or ecological culture (Floros, http//www.euroconfernce.Info…/2007Floros_Georgios.pdf, 2007), resists translation by virtue of its intrinsic oblique character. Mindja’s excerpt below is a case in point:

Moi, Tcheuveuleu Zébédé Tchedullon. Guérisseur traditionnel tradipraticien occulte. Haut diplômé en Famla. Spécialiste des blindages des footballeurs : Feutmba, KKunde, Milla, Tokokto, c’est moi. En ce jour de d’aujourd’hui, je donne mon poitrine à mon fils, Tchaapoulue Moïkze, future Docteur fraichement sorkti de la kwisse (CUSS). C’est pour lui, c’est pour moi mon coup de cœuuur. Comme dit le proverrrbe, à tel père, à tel fils…. (Essindi Mindja, Coup de cœur).

Effectively, translating the above figurative language would imply translating the culture (far from being universal) which produced that language and requires astute sociological and sociolinguistic perspicacity. In effect,

It is precisely this density of linguistic and cultural factors in figurative language which proves so challenging in the passage from one language to another: it is not by chance that some scholars (Dagut 1976; Broeck 1981) locate figurative language at the limits of translatability, if not beyond. Translators have the task of adapting the world-view which has produced these instances of figurative language into the cultural paradigm and thus beliefs and values of the target-culture, and to do so while preserving that combination of force and levity which is a prerogative of figurative language (http://www.lingue.unibo.it/ tradurrefigure, Magdalena Dombek 2012).

Paralinguistic artistry, like spontaneity discussed above, is also resistant to translation.

Paralinguistic artistry and resistance to translation: Paralinguistic artistry refers to the accompanying resources variously described as

nonverbal, extraverbal, paraverbal, paratextual, or paralinguistic, in the sense that they occur side by side with the text or the words of the literature…..One of these resources is the histrionics of the performance, that is, movements made with the face, hands, or any other part of the body as a way of dramatically demonstrating an action contained in the text. These movements may or may not be specifically named in an account of the performance. What Smith and Dale tell us about the narrative performance of the Ila storyteller Mungalo – “every muscle of


the face and body spoke, a swift gesture often supplying the place of whole sentence” – is clearly a description of the man’s histrionic skills (Okpewho1992:46).

Scheub (1972:116) exemplifies Okpewho’s picture above with a Xhosa storyteller thus:

She is not given to broad outward dramatic gesticulation, and one is apt to miss the extraverbal elements of her production if one does not watch her carefully… Her art is subtle, and understated even when it is most bombastic. Her face and body are constantly in harmony with the developing production: a slight grimace, a flash of fear, anger, joy. Her hands work softly, calmly deftly, moulding the performance, giving a nuance to this character, adding depth to that one, her red blanket shimmering slightly and continually as her body moves to the poetry of her narrative.

Instances of non-verbal elements abound in the above text; they have to be identified and then rendered, not literally, into the target language. That is why Bassnett (1990:72, 1991 & 1998:92) would like to know

If the written text is merely a blueprint, a unit in a complex of sign systems including paralinguistic and kinetic signs, and if it contains some secret gestic codes that need to be realised in performance, then how can the translator be expected not only to decode those secret signs in the source language, but also to re-encode them in the target language?

From the Cameroonian setting, one can cite the significant socio-cultural, gestural and caricatural features exhibited by artists, which have to be deliberately accounted for in translation through accompanying semiotic inputs. These paralinguistic features should thus not be ignored during translation, as should be punned words, wordplays and tongue twisters. Punning/wordplay (and tongue-twisters) and resistance to translation: Bjornson (in Newell, 2002:74) and Fofié, (2007) aver that African creative popular artists abundantly use these traits. According to Delabastita (1996:128), “wordplay is the general name for the various textual phenomena in which structural features of the language(s) used are exploited in order to bring about a communicatively significant confrontation of two (or more) linguistic structures with more or less similar forms and more or less different meanings”. He continues that:

Complete or partial identity can be further specified in terms of homonymy (identical sounds and spelling), homophony (identical sounds but different spellings), homography (different sounds but identical spelling), and paronymy (there are slight differences in both spelling and


sound). Furthermore, the two formally similar linguistic structures may clash associatively by being co-present in the same portion of text (vertical wordplay), or they may be in a relation of contiguity by occurring one after another in the text (horizontal wordplay), (Delabastita 1996:128).

Punning/wordplay (and tongue-twisters) can be generally repugnant to translation – Egan (1994:2) says “puns effectively scotch the myth of universality”, and “practically untranslatable”; Sider (1983:176, in Veisbergs 1997:163) states that “neither formulae nor systems can be of help, as the translation of wordplay gives life to a new wordplay in the other language; Alexieva (1997:140) says that “the basic difficulties in pun translation lie in the fact that there exists interlingual asymmetry on top of the intralingual asymmetry”; Delabastita (1997:10, in Marinetti 2005:36) has also talked of the ‘incontestable fact that wordplay tends to resist some kind of translation’; and finally, Marinetti (2005:36), in reference to Delabastita, opines that “the kind of translation that Delabastita is referring to is the Jakobsonian notion of equivalence, according to which, poetry, and by extension punning and wordplay, are ‘by definition untranslatable’.

Considering the above, Veisbergs (1997:172) insists that “the possibilities of a fully equivalent idiom transformation are rather limited”, and Jakobson (1992:151) adds that “only creative transposition is possible”. Examples as « Colonel le plaisir » [Colonel Pleasure], (Dave K. Moktoï, L’homme bien de là-bas); « Corps constipé », [Constipated corps] and « petite émotion de soutient » [small emotion of support] (Kouokam Narcisse, Le discours d’or 90) as well as Tchop Tchop’s “Praise the Lord!” (Campaigne Evangélique), deliberately erroneously rendered by Tchop Tchop (interpreter) as « Nous javons de l‘or dans sheu pays, mais on ne shait pas où sha part!” [We have gold in thish contri, but we no know where it goesh], (my translation), make latent untranslatability claims verifiable. Here, Tchop Tchop, (interpreter), intentionally puns the word Lord (English) to become L’or (French); achieved phonologically and interlingually, making it difficult to easily translate. This is, in much the same way as linguistic hybridisation, another phenomenon in African creative popular art that resists translation.

Linguistic hybridisation/assortment and resistance to translation: Beyond “double language” (Suh 2005), Evembe (1988), and Ndzana (1988:153) have also noticed and reported an even more complex phenomenon of language assortment/medleying. Vakunta (2008:942) talks of “texts couched in indigenized and hybridized linguistic forms, namely, creoles, pidgins, camfranglais, and other forms of hybrid languages”, considering them


“modes of linguistic and cultural appropriation” that “tend to transpose the imprint of their [writers] cultural backgrounds onto their fictional works” and that “are charged with socio-cultural information that reveals a lot about the characters in the narrative…” Vaktuna (2008:946) even asserts that it is an all-African phenomenon in that “Africans of all backgrounds use blended languages such as Camfranglais, Pidgin, Moussa and Nouchis as a means of ensuring group solidarity within a community of practice. Creative writers use these mixed varieties to translate the socio-cultural contexts that inform and structure their narratives”.

This blend of several languages results somewhere in the “non-mastery” of all these languages as testified by Okara (1963:137-138), and Kourouma (in Koné, 1992:83). Cameroonian-born Evembe (1988:161) more pertinently states that:

Mais déjà, je ne maitrise plus très bien le batanga, à cause du français, moins encore le français à cause de l’anglais et encore moins le français à cause du batanga. [By the way, I no longer master Batanga very well because of French, less French because of English and even less French because of Batanaga], (My translation).

Consequently, for Evembe (1988:161), Il ne reste plus alors qu’à prendre des libertés avec le batanga, le français, et l’anglais désormais étant que je produise une langue que mon public pourra comprendre parce que cette langue exprime les symboles, les schémas de pensée, les références de l’environnement que le public reconnaît. Je suis obligé de me rabattre sur la science des signifiants et des signifiés, et bâtir un nouveau monde de substances et de formes originales. [I have no other option than henceforth taking liberties with Batanga, French, and English, on condition that I produce a language that my public can understand, because the said language expresses the symbols, thought patterns and environmental references recognisable to the public. I am obliged to resort to the science of signifiers and signifieds, from which I construct a new world of original substances and forms], (my translation).

Resulting asymmetries of language pairs concerned, individual poetics, as well as the special use of language resulting from and reflecting the African ambivalent situation (often evident at various levels - lexical, syntactic, imagery, proverbs, dialogue, rhetorical and other stylistic devices) produce an incidence on translation as the artist’s “indigenous thought patterns and linguistic features in the source text would require the translator to analyse


and interpret them appropriately in order to transfer them adequately to the target text (Suh, 2008:114).

Nida (1976: 55) posits that hybridisation-related translation difficulties lie with finding in a foreign language a dialect with approximately the same status and connotations for rarely is the dialect match fully successful, given that the values associated with a particular dialect are often highly specific. Bandia (1993:103), inspired by the West African setting, equally acknowledges the “difficulty of translating pidgins and creoles in the African novel”, adding that “there is hardly any direct equivalent relationship between English-based pidgins and French-based pidgins”. The following medley of Cameroonian languages is illustrative:

Speaker I: Hau you di nfra fra so man? Speaker II: Aah! Ngémé man! Speaker I: Ngémé hau? Speaker II: For sika ma nga don take belle man and wey ma bailleur don

move me for los man (Fingon Tralala, Les ‘frappeurs’ de motos).

This typically Cameroonian hybrid language (Camfranglais), blends at least three main lexifier languages, namely, Cameroon Pidgin English (hau you di, nfra fra, sika, don take belle, los); English (man, for, take, move, me); duala (ngémé,); and French (bailleur). The achievement of an equal indigenized and hybridized linguistic form in translation will not be quite obvious…as may also be the translatability of African creative popular art’s humour.

Theatrical humour and resistance to translation: Inspired by Vandaele (2002), popular art can be said to be a category highly embedded with intended humour, where an actor’s intended meanings, reconstructed from their verbal and non-verbal behaviour cause the receiver/viewers/audience to perceive humour intention and evaluate it spontaneously or artificially through unavoidable physiological smiling or laughter, ‘played’ non-physiological smiling/laughter or any other sign like anger, silence (Vandaele 2002:161). Just like with the other five traits operationalised above, Attardo (2002:173-193) and Antonopoulou (2002:195-220) raise the issue of humour’s latent resistance to translation. In the same vein, Vandaele (2002:150) posits that from a practical perspective humour may resist translation for any or all of the four outstanding reasons below: a) Humour is a meaning effect, with an undeniable, exteriorised

manifestation – laughter or smiling, opposed to the meaning of other texts which is sometimes less-compelling in terms of perception;


b) Based on research, the comprehension and appreciation of humour on the one hand, and its production, on the other, are two distinct skills. An individual (the translator inclusive) may well be sensitive to humour and be yet unable to successfully produce it, because it is more talent-than teaching/learning-related;

c) The appreciation of humour varies with individuals – what is humorous for one person, for instance, may just be supposedly comic/‘bad joke’, and therefore not really funny enough for another, and

d) The rhetorical effects of humour may be so overwhelming that they blur the specifics of the humorous creation – strong emotions may hinder analytic rationalisation.

From a list of humour-arousing situations with respect to the Cameroonian setting (Bjornson, in Newell 2002:71-76), Cameroonian-born Essindi Mindja and Michekan L’Africain’s furnish eloquent examples. Mindja achieves humour by a ‘Fulfuldised’ pronunciation of French thus:

Ça attrrape d’aborrd le tête, puis douleurr commence derièrre le nuque, descend jusque les fesses…(rires) mais rraide comme le bâton de soya walaï ! Nassourrou, même soze, Bandaami même soze, Ali même soze… Allah ! Tout le village wa finirr, que fairre? (Essindi Mindja, Chers amis microbes).

In like manner, Michekan, in the utterance: (Cock’s crow). Voishi encoore une jhournée de plushe dans cheu pouvoooir qui me duonne des maux de tête tout le teemp. Et commeu nous shommes déjhà au mois de déchembre, j’hattends aujhourd’hui tout muon gouvernement, y compriis-eu des membres amis au gouvernement qui viendront me remettre les cadeaux de fin d’année (Michekan L’Africain, Présentation de voeux de fin d’année)

equally creates humour by mimicking the Cameroonian Béti accent. All these happen through deliberate deviations from Standard language norms as well as other contextually relevant semiotic effects such as gestures and voice inflection. The humour-arousing linguistic and non-linguistic traits must be seriously considered by the translator (and indicated as semiotic inputs, especially for acting) if he intends to achieve the same effect as in the source text. But it may only be better said than done, as it is, indeed, a daunting task.

CONCLUSION

On the whole, as has been demonstrated above, the peculiar linguistic traits of African creative popular art (orality, spontaneity, creativity, paralinguistic artistry, linguistic hybridisation, and punning/wordplay (and tongue-twisters) which culminate in the more englobing concept of linguistic open-


endedness/creativity and productivity cumulatively resist translation to some degree. In effect, as Bandia (1993:55-56) states,

It is generally agreed that African creative writing [art] in European languages has been greatly influenced by African oral tradition (Obiechina, 1975; Chinweizu et al, 1980; Gérard, 1986; Bandia, 1993)….The nature of these Africanized varieties poses specific problems for translators of African works….Translation of African works into European languages is an example of a translation between non-related languages and cultures. It is a translation of an oral "text" into written form, on the one hand, and a translation from one language culture into an alien language culture, on the other” (my emphasis).

“The nature of these Africanized varieties” which “poses specific problems for translators of African works”, mentioned by Bandia above implicitly alludes to the above peculiar linguistic traits whose individual circumstances of resistance to translation have also been examined in this article. It is, therefore of vital importance for scholarship to produce a framework for resolving the real or potential resistance of African creative popular works to translation.

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Investigating the latent resistance of African creative popular art to translation

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