Publications
Publication details [#5699]
Vidal, Bernard. 1994. Le vernaculaire noir américain: ses enjeux pour la traduction envisagés à travers deux oeuvres d'écrivaines noires, Zora Neale Hurston et Alice Walker [Black English vernacular at issue: translating the work of Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker]. In Chapdelaine, Annick and Gillian Lane-Mercier, eds. Traduire les sociolectes [Translating sociolects]. Special issue of Traduction Terminologie Rédaction (TTR) 7 (2): 165–207. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in Special issue
Publication language
French
Keywords
Person as a subject
Abstract
Zora Neale Hurston's and Alice Walker's works are notable for their use of an Other language - the long-denigrated sociolect that is Black English Vernacular. This use goes well beyond the mere social delineation of the characters, and is at once an act of contestation, a reclamation and a celebration. Under these conditions, annexationist French translations, which resort to sociolects - "paysan" speech, for example - that completely erase both the negritude of the original and the problem of race, in fact constitute nothing less than a mutilation of the source texts. A possible solution would be to effect a decentering of the target texts by inscribing the originals' negritude therein. Markers that would serve this purpose without unduly relocating the target text are to be found in the various French language-based Creoles and in the different types of French spoken in Black Africa.
Source : Abstract in journal