Cracking the Code: Translation as Transgression in Triomf

Abstract

Summary This article has been braided from two main strands: first, my arguments probe the conditions that pertain to the project of literary translation in South African letters, both in the light of my own research into and observations of conditions in the field, and my own experience as a working translator, a participant in a domain that I regard as extraordinarily rich but also highly problematic. Second, the argument considers aspects of my own translation of Marlene van Niekerk's paradigm-busting novel, Triomf (1994, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c, 2004), as a case history which serves as possible corroboration of my arguments in the first part.