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Decolonizing Translation Practice as Culture in Postcolonial African Literature and Film in Setswana Language

Phetlhe, Keith
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6659-7178
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1585864989276825

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts).
The dissertation aims to engage a critical analysis of the cultural implications of translation practice in the context of postcolonial African literature and film in Setswana language. It argues for the integration of decolonial and culturally relevant translations in post-colonial African-language cultural productions. The dissertation shows that, through the application of decolonized methodological practices to translation, cultural meaning can be retained, and therefore, empower the relevance and global visibility of marginalized literatures. The study is cognizant of the fact that cultural translations constitute an essential aspect of growth and expansion of postcolonial literatures and films from Africa, especially for minority literary communities across the continent. Furthermore, the dissertation makes an innovative contribution to the ongoing debates on postcolonial literatures and films produced in Africa, and more importantly, to decolonizing the study of translation as culture in Setswana literature and film. The period of colonization in Africa was characterized not only with the impositions of the European literary cultures and canons on their colonies, but also with varied assumptive views on literary translation practice. For example, most literary translations only focused on the written word represented using the Latin alphabet, but overlooked the possibilities of other translation practices implemented and widely used by the culturally displaced literary cultures. Some of these translation practices entailed the translation of oral tradition and its integration into both the written forms of literature and cinematic adaptations. Furthermore, the exercise of translation also involved the translation of the postcolonial canons, and its defining aesthetic features that account for a distinct style of the cultural productions considered in this study. The study makes a critical observation that the colonial translation practice of Setswana language reflected the following: First, uncritical acceptance and imposition of prescriptive traditional methods of translations that favored English literary culture and its aesthetic modalities. Second, the ideological bias toward prescriptive translational methods that originated in Europe although they offered a dismissive, reductionist, and uninformed view of postcolonial African cultural texts. Literature and film in postcolonial Africa are examples that demonstrate the fact that translation practice is more than the transference of information from one language to another, but it is instead a cultural entity that exposes the existing dominant Eurocentric hegemonic and paternalist narratives about translation. Therefore, the dissertation establishes that, translation as a study and practice should be defined in the broadest possible sense, one that recognizes the role that it plays in giving a distinct style of literary and cinematic production in postcolonial African cultures. Methodologically, the data analyzed are selected from the following existing translations of Setswana literatures: Botlhodi Jwa Nta ya Tlhogo, The Conscript, Things Fall Apart, Praise Poems of Tswana Chiefs, A Grain of Wheat, When Rain Clouds Gather. And from the following Setswana films—O Bone O Ja Sereto and Beauty. In addition, it examines translated manuscripts and the existing literature on translation practice in relation to Setswana literature. The dissertation raises critical questions that have not received satisfactory answers regarding translation practice in postcolonial Setswana texts: How can translation methods in postcolonial African literature and film be decolonized in order to move forward with repatriating their cultural content? How does Setswana literature and film as examples reveal the complexities of the translation practice? What interventions can be deployed to improve future translations and address the negative implications of applying irrelevant translation methods? The questions contribute to understanding the complexities surrounding the translation question, and its decolonization in African literatures and films, and how such complexities are conceptualized and understood through postcolonial theory. The study will first explore the history of translated postcolonial African literature and film within a broader historical spectrum to show that the history of literary translation dates back to pre-colonial Africa, hence translation practice predates colonial era. Second, it considers how in the history of translation practice in Setswana literature and film, Setswana, as a literary language, portrays not only a history of mistranslations from the colonial anthropological and missionary translations, but also as a culture marked by remarkable literary resilience using diverse translation practices.
Andrea Frohne, Dr. (Committee Chair)
Erin Schlumpf, Dr. (Committee Member)
Ghirmai Negash, Prof. (Committee Member)
Vladmir Marchenkov, Prof (Committee Member)
338 p.
African Literature; African Studies; Comparative Literature; Sub Saharan Africa Studies
African Literature; African Film; Setswana Literature; Setswana Film; Translation Studies; Postcolonial Studies; Decolonization;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Phetlhe, K. (2020). Decolonizing Translation Practice as Culture in Postcolonial African Literature and Film in Setswana Language [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1585864989276825

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Phetlhe, Keith. Decolonizing Translation Practice as Culture in Postcolonial African Literature and Film in Setswana Language. 2020. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1585864989276825.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Phetlhe, Keith. "Decolonizing Translation Practice as Culture in Postcolonial African Literature and Film in Setswana Language." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1585864989276825

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1585864989276825
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© 2020, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Decolonizing Translation Practice as Culture in Postcolonial African Literature and Film in Setswana Language by Keith Phetlhe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.