Translation and colonial memory in East Africa

Abstract

This chapter explores the interconnections between translation and colonial memory by looking at the work of translators in post-independence East Africa. The study will focus on two works, Mau Mau Kizuizini (1965), the Swahili translation of Josiah Mwangi Kariuki’s autobiography ‘ Mau Mau’ Detainee (1963), and Kinjeketile (1970), the English self-translation of Ebrahim Hussein’s homonymous Swahili drama (1969). After an introduction of the Kenyan and Tanzanian post-independence contexts in which these works were written and translated, the translations of ‘Mau Mau’ Detainee and Kinjeketile will initially be addressed as an intercultural and mnemonic practice carried out by bilingual and multilingual postcolonial writers, and subsequently as interlingual translation. The analysis will highlight the editorial interventions in the paratext and unravel some of the translating strategies used to tackle the linguistic complexity of these texts and to mediate memory of the colonial years to different audiences.