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.