Exploring Sound Motifs in African Europhone Literature from a Translating Perspective: Case Study and Theoretical Framework
While the hybridity and diglossia of African literatures are accepted realities within the field of postcolonial translation studies, the aesthetics of African literary orality has yet to be explored to the same degree. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that the oral aesthetic’s socio-cultural and linguistic roots can take on a political dimension. This article will explore the aesthetic issues of a hybrid text from a translation studies perspective with Sardines, the fourth English-language novel of Somali writer Nuruddin Farah. This essay will demonstrate how orality and its traditional formal elements shape Farah’s writing. In addition, it will look at the vocal and aural dimensions of orality as a Bermanian vecteur de signifiance, supported by Ryan Fraser’s concept of Cratylian translation.