An important editorial achievement has been the recent translation into Swahili of the first volume of the monumental work on the life of Jesus Christ in ten volumes, L`Evangelo come mi Stato rivelato (the title of the English version is The Poem of the Man-God) by the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta (1897-1961).

An important editorial achievement has been the recent translation into Swahili of the first volume of the monumental work on the life of Jesus Christ in ten volumes, L`Evangelo come mi Stato rivelato (the title of the English version is The Poem of the Man-God) by the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta (1897-1961).

This paper considers some of the questions posed by literary translations both from and into Swahili. While the questions a translator might address as she proceeds with each translation may be the same, their differing answers often highlight the translator’s different position towards, and history with, each target language, as well as her aesthetic and political commitments in each. The projects discussed are Mlenge Fanuel Mgendi’s comic short story Starehe gharama (Comfort is Expensive) about a young schoolboy’s misadventure on a daladala bus in Dar es Salaam and Tope Folarin’s Caine Prize shortlisted story Genesis (Mwanzo), in which two Nigerian boys living in the American Midwest witness their mother’s struggle with her new surroundings.