Article published in:
Target
Vol. 22:1 (2010) ► pp. 22–39

Exophony and literary translation

What it means for the translator when a writer adopts a new language

| University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
When writers of literary prose adopt a new language—a phenomenon known as exophony—this often leads them to mould the new language until it becomes suitable for their purposes, in a manner analogous to the strategies of appropriation observed in post-colonial literatures (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 1989). This process often results in a defamiliarisation of the new language through stylistic innovation, which, in turn, has implications for the translation of these texts. This article, influenced by Berman’s ‘analytique négative’ (1985), proposes a series of guidelines for the translation of exophonic texts and illustrates these with examples taken from German exophonic prose texts by Franco Biondi, Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Yoko Tawada.
Keywords: exophony, immigrant writing, migrant writing, stylistics, literary translation, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Franco Biondi, Yoko Tawada, post-war Germany
Keywords: exophonie, écriture immigrante, écriture migrante, stylistique, traduction littéraire, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Franco Biondi, Yoko Tawada, Allemagne de l’après-guerre
Published online: 06 July 2010
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.22.1.03wri
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