L’intraduisible en question (English shop)

Problématique linguistique africaine et décolonisation conceptuelle, une lecture critique

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An equivocal concept if ever there was one, the untranslatable denotes the difficulty of conceiving the act of translating outside the categories of the unfinished, the consensual and the relative. An essential incompleteness bound up both with the formal characteristics of the original text and with the inherent cultural specificities that operate as forces of resistance to translation. In the African context in which this book is situated, these forms of resistance are all the more pronounced in that they derive from the still-vivid awareness of the aftermath of colonial violence and of the subsequent identitarian, existential, discursive, linguistic and cultural inconsistencies. In a word, how can one meaningfully speak of translation when the texts to be translated confine the languages involved within the inextricable logic of difference, marked on the one hand by the survivals of the “colonial sentence” and on the other by repeated calls for mental decolonisation? This book undertakes to confront the ideological premises of these texts with the pragmatic stakes of the linguistic question in Africa today, as a contribution to reflection on the current issues and challenges of translation.

Rezension

"D’une lecture captivante, rigoureusement articulé et érudit, L’intraduisible en question est un livre pour notre temps. Il réévalue les discours sur l’intraduisible et ses figures dans la pensée africaine postcoloniale, et ouvre des voies au-delà des pesanteurs des mythologies de la différence et des idéologies essentialistes rétives à l’interculturalité. Critique subtile de la raison africaine postcoloniale, c’est aussi un outil indispensable pour ceux qui sont passionnés par le croisement des mondes, des cultures, des diversités."
Prof. Kasereka Kavwahirehi, Université d’Ottawa (Canada)

Rezension N° 2
"'L’intraduisible en question' by Abraham Brahima is an original and highly organized research. The presentation is brilliant. The mastery with which the author refers to ways of problematizing difficulties about translatability is exemplary. The variety of sources that are used throughout the book is impressive. They come from different cultures and include classics in Greek philosophy, as well as solid documentations on disciplines, literatures and cultures. The African list is extremely rich and varied. The untranslatable in African thought addresses issues that qualify the author’s perception of African 'challenges' as they can be addressed from angles that would qualify as 'political'."
Prof. Yves Valentin Mudimbe, Duke University (U.S.A)