Translating Yoruba Oral Poetics in the French rendering of Tègònni (An African Antigone): Between Cultural Fidelity and Translational Rewriting

Abstract

This paper analyses the translation of oriki praise poetry, and ritual chant and song in the French translation of Tegonni (An African Antigone) by Femi Osofisan. It examines how these Yoruba oral poetics are mediated through the French translation of the play by the translator, Alani Souleyman. Drawing on Lefevere’s (1992) rewriting theory, Venuti’s (1995) domestication/foreignisation paradigm and the Interpretive Theory of Translation (ITT) of the Paris School, the research uses a qualitative comparative textual study of the chosen Yoruba oral forms in both the English source text and the French target text. The analysis reveals that the French translation works under a domesticating ideology that always prioritises semantic intelligibility to target-culture audiences over the cultural fidelity, performative texture and counter-colonial ideology of the Yoruba oral forms. These findings have important implications on translation theory application to African literary texts, for the study of translation in theatre, and for broader debates on the politics of cultural mediation in postcolonial contexts.