La Traduction Anglaise de Gouverneurs de la rosée de Jacques Roumain par Langston Hughes et Mercer Cook

Jacques Roumain's novel, whose title, in its original French version, is Gouverneurs de la rosée, is a masterpiece that has enjoyed considerable popularity among French-speaking black peoples the world over. Its translation into English in 1971 as Masters of the Dew by Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook was most welcome as it has helped to launch and popularise the novel in the English-speaking world. A critical reading of the translated version, however, reveals a number of flaws that tend to detract from the otherwise tremendous effort of the translators. It is in this context that the essay takes a close look at the translation and points out areas in which the translation seems to have fallen short of expectations. Such identified flaws include wrong translations, inconsistencies, omissions and the erroneous use of italics as a translation device. An attempt is made in the essay to proffer suggestions to improve the quality of the wrongly translated parts of the work.