"The Language of the Eye Is Not the Language of the Ear": English, Translationality, and (Dis)Similarities between Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Against the backdrop of the 60th anniversary of the African Writers Conference and the perennial question of English as an "African language," this article investigates the ways in which English has been used within the literary writings of Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. An overview of the (seemingly) divergent views on English articulated by Achebe and Ngũgĩ is presented, and two of their novels, namely Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Ngũgĩ's Devil on the Cross , are then situated within the frame of translationality. Extracts from the two novels are comparatively analyzed and discussed with reference to translation theory, specifically "thick translation," " omdigting ," and "foreignization," in relation to their lexical and ideological treatment of English. The article concludes that despite the differences in attitude toward English expressed in their polemical and philosophical writings, their literary treatment of English points to a number of similarities.