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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
Article outline
  • 1.Understanding exophony
  • 2.Translating the German exophonic text
    • 2.1The creativity of the exophonic writer should not be attributed solely to a process of literal translation from the mother tongue
    • 2.2Seeming ungrammaticalities in exophonic texts should not immediately be attributed to the writer’s imperfect command of his or her adopted language
    • 2.3The translator should not be tempted to bridge the “metonymic gap” in the exophonic text
    • 2.4The translator should be aware that the exophonic writer may push his or her adopted language beyond its communicative function
  • 3.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 July 2010
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.22.1.03wri
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