Abstract This dissertation suggests a new approach to the translation of African literature, and more precisely African literature in English, considering that the English language has evolved. In most former colonies, New Englishes exist alongside standard varieties of English. This linguistic trend needs to be accompanied by well thought out and researched strategies, if translations are to match the success of the original versions. As a first step, the research report engages with a definition of New Englishes as well as of other important concepts in the research report: colonialism, post-colonialism, negritude, translation, nativisation and indigenisation. Examples of New Englishes are established through an analysis of The Famished Road. This is followed by a discussion of translation theory, with special focus on dynamic equivalence and functionalism. Finally, recommendations are made in relation to methods and strategies for translating a West African novel from English to French.

In Ben Okri's The Famished Road, rituals such as baptism are easily lost in the dense symbolism. The novel is, in the words of Douglas McCabe, a "ramshackle and untidy affair, a hodge-podge of social ideologies, narrative forms, effusive enthusiasms, and precision-jeweled prose poems" (McCabe 17). This complex untidiness can be discouraging for readers and critics alike, and yet "there is something contagious about the digressive, meandering aesthetic of The Famished Road" that makes the novel difficult to consign to confusion (Omhovere 59). Commonly considered post-colonial, post-modern, and magical-realist, The Famished Road deals with, among other things, spiritualism, family relations, and political and sociological tensions in Nigeria in the decades before its publication in 1991. These themes are depicted with a rush of symbols, and in such a clamor, baptism and other rituals may have trouble making themselves heard. And yet, paying attention to the repeated performance of baptism transforms this audacious, ramshackle novel into a story of liminality, alienation, and reconciliation, a story which celebrates these things as inevitable and necessary parts of life. As readers, we can use baptism to decode The Famished Road. In doing so, the novel develops a cyclical, ongoing narrative focused on the difficulties of and increased agency in liminality and the necessity of ritual, on an individual, familial, and socio-cultural level, in navigating that in-betweeness. I will begin by exploring baptism in The Famished Road in order to understand the performance and power of ritual. Here, ritual acts as a doorway, giving characters a chance to navigate liminality without removing themselves from it. This navigation gives them an increased understanding of how the world works and how they may operate in it. After exploring baptism as a ritual, I will examine Okri's "universal abikuism" and its connection to the flexibility of liminality.

In Ben Okri's The Famished Road, rituals such as baptism are easily lost in the dense symbolism. The novel is, in the words of Douglas McCabe, a "ramshackle and untidy affair, a hodge-podge of social ideologies, narrative forms, effusive enthusiasms, and precision-jeweled prose poems" (McCabe 17). This complex untidiness can be discouraging for readers and critics alike, and yet "there is something contagious about the digressive, meandering aesthetic of The Famished Road" that makes the novel difficult to consign to confusion (Omhovere 59). Commonly considered post-colonial, post-modern, and magical-realist, The Famished Road deals with, among other things, spiritualism, family relations, and political and sociological tensions in Nigeria in the decades before its publication in 1991. These themes are depicted with a rush of symbols, and in such a clamor, baptism and other rituals may have trouble making themselves heard. And yet, paying attention to the repeated performance of baptism transforms this audacious, ramshackle novel into a story of liminality, alienation, and reconciliation, a story which celebrates these things as inevitable and necessary parts of life. As readers, we can use baptism to decode The Famished Road. In doing so, the novel develops a cyclical, ongoing narrative focused on the difficulties of and increased agency in liminality and the necessity of ritual, on an individual, familial, and socio-cultural level, in navigating that in-betweeness. I will begin by exploring baptism in The Famished Road in order to understand the performance and power of ritual. Here, ritual acts as a doorway, giving characters a chance to navigate liminality without removing themselves from it. This navigation gives them an increased understanding of how the world works and how they may operate in it. After exploring baptism as a ritual, I will examine Okri's "universal abikuism" and its connection to the flexibility of liminality.

This research provides an analytical reading of four contemporary novels, in a transcultural study of magical realism and dreams. Two of the novels, Ben Okri's The Famished Road and its sequel Songs of Enchantment, examine dreams through magical realism in postcolonial African literature. The third novel, Toni Morrison's Beloved, is used to depict the use of memory within an African-American magical realist novel. And the fourth narrative is Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares, which focuses on the use of hallucination within what can be seen as a magical realist mode. The analysis of these novels examines certain aspects of magical realism, including the use of the subconscious, focusing primarily on dream, memory and hallucination. In examining this topic, I aim to suggest that the use of the subconscious, within this literature, allows the writer to comment on a particular society. As can be seen in previous studies of magical realism, the writer is able to express his or her dissatisfaction with society by destabilising conventionally accepted truths. A writer can therefore convey a sense that the surface of a particular culture or society is a facade, disguising certain hidden truths, which require a more in depth examination, in order to more fully understand the workings behind that society. The subconscious works to reveal these hidden realities, and is therefore a mode of resistance in that it allows the writers an avenue through which to express their dissatisfaction with their particular society. This is achieved through the exploring and deconstruction of certain boundaries within the novels which, along with several other factors, essentially concords the magical realism inherent in these texts. It is additionally enhanced through the use of the device of the subconscious, which allows the writers to transgress borders, and further explore their particular cultures. Through the use of novels from various contemporary societies, I hope to establish the fact that the subconscious, and therefore magical realism, is a transcultural technique, in that it traverses a multitude of cultures, without being specific to any one in particular. While the use of dreams requires a culture specific interpretation, the use of the subconscious in this literature can be seen as a global technique of expressing dissatisfaction within these societies. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.