Translating African ideophones

Abstract

Ideophones are linguistic devices that feature prominently in African discourse and are part of the identity of African oral literature. The present article discusses the translation into English of African ideophones, using the The Ozidi Saga, an Ijo epic narrative recorded and translated into English by the Nigerian writer J. P. Clark for exemplification. The article describes a number of structural and semantic means Clark employed to convey Ijo ideophones into English. In the eyes of the author of the present article, these means are not adequate for rendering African ideophones. It is our contention that ideophones can hardly be translated into English, possibly any Western language, in a way where they have the same impact as they have on an African audience. This suggests that ideophones are best left untranslated ‐ as loanwords ‐ in target languages, and their meaning should be approximated by liberal use of glossaries and annotations, in so far as translators wish to ensure fidelity in literary translation.