A Comparative Stylistic Analysis of the French-Swahili Translation of Camara Laye’s “L’Enfant Noir” into “Mtoto Mwafrika”

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir and its Kiswahili translation, Mtoto Mwafrika, at the lexical, syntactic and semantic levels, in order to establish whether the translation showed more convergence than divergence and whether meaning was lost. French–Kiswahili translation is under-researched, and comparative stylistics has rarely been applied to it. Comparative stylistics (Vinay & Darbelnet, 1958/1995) was the theoretical framework. The sample comprised 35 units: five randomly selected from each of the seven procedures (l’emprunt, le calque, la traduction littérale, la transposition, la modulation, l’équivalence, l’adaptation) using random purposeful sampling. Each unit was judged as meaning preserved, shifted or lost. Contrary to the expectation of more differences than similarities, the languages converged in meaning: 30 of 35 units (85.7%) conveyed the author’s message, 16 (45.7%) with meaning preserved and 14 (40.0%) shifted, while five (14.3%) lost meaning. Formal divergence was concentrated in the oblique procedures, which changed form without losing the message. The study contributes a procedure-based description of correspondences and shifts in one French–Kiswahili literary translation and shows that comparative stylistics applies to a Romance–Bantu language pair. It recommends larger samples, other translations and genres, additional translators, and the use of comparative stylistics in translator training.