Contemporary Afrikaans fiction in the world: The Englishing of Marlene van Niekerk

Abstract

Many of the most ambitious and important South African novels of the past fifty years have been written in Afrikaans, but in order to reach a global audience the authors have had to turn to translators. Focusing on Marlene van Niekerk’s Triomf and Agaat, this article examines the challenges that this fiction, and the particular character and social status of different varieties of Afrikaans, present to the translator, and discusses the significance of the differences between versions addressed to an English-speaking South African readership and versions addressed to a global readership.