Cultural Politics of Translation - 9781138499157

Taylor & Francis

This book is the first full-length examination of the cultural politics at work in the act of translation in East Africa, providing close critical analyses of a variety of texts that demonstrate the myriad connections between translation and larger socio-political forces. Looking specifically at texts translated into Swahili, the book builds on the notion that translation is not just a linguistic process, but also a complex interaction between culture, history, and politics, and charts this evolution of the translation process in East Africa from the pre-colonial to colonial to post-colonial periods. It uses textual examples, including the Bible, the Qur\u2019an, and Frantz Fanon\u2019s Wretched of the Earth, from five different domains \u2013 religious, political, legal, journalistic, and literary \u2013 and grounds them in their specific socio-political and historical contexts to highlight the importance of context in the translation process and to unpack the complex relationships .