Translation Equivalents in Nigerian English and Ghanaian English

Abstract

This research is an analysis of the translation equivalents in Nigerian and Ghanaian Englishes. Translation equivalents refer to manifestations of mother tongues interferences in which lexical items are substituted literally from other local languages to English language. This study discusses the data from ICE Nigeria and Ghana respectively that reflect mother tongue interferences. All the data were purposively drawn from International Corpus of English (ICE) Nigeria and (ICE) Ghana components. A total of thirty-nine expressions constitute the data for analysis in this study. An eclectic framework of language interference, transfer and language variation and change is used for analysis. The analyses are in three levels: sociolinguistic, semantic and corpus based. This study identifies some distinctive NE and GhE lexical items from ICE Nigeria and Ghana with their meanings. Examples include “raise voice and no light” (NE) and “feel the rain and kill time” (GhE). The translation equivalents in NE are majorly as a result of the influence of the Nigerian indigenous languages: Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa languages, among others. That of GhE is greatly influenced by the Akan, Ewe and Ga languages. The study reveals that translation equivalents in both varieties of English are quite related.