Jiménez Bellver, Jorge

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

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Kathryn Batchelor. (2009). Decolonizing Translation: Francophone 
African Novels in English Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome 
Publishing, 282 págs.  
  
Out of some 1500 published sub-Saharan Francophone African novels, 72 
have been translated into English and none of them has been translated more than 
once, except for one (Ahmadou Kourouma‟s 1998 En attendant le vote des bêtes 
sauvages). In Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English 
Translation, Kathryn Batchelor provides a comprehensive study of those 73 
translations from the standpoint of postcolonial translation scholarship, paying 
special attention to the role of translation in the emergence of sub-Saharan 
Francophone African literature (following the “palimpsest” metaphor developed by 
literary comparatist Chantal Zabus) and the linguistic challenges involved in its 
translation into English.  
Batchelor approaches translation in its intersection with four types of 
linguistic innovation, starting from so-called “visible traces” and, to a lesser degree, 
“traces within traces” (chapter 3). Visible traces are “idiosyncratic” borrowings from 
African-language terms to manifest the presence of African languages in the 
Francophone narrative, whereas traces within traces involve the typographic 
variation (e.g. italicization) of specific French words to manifest the presence of 
French lexical borrowings and adaptations in African languages and, in turn, to 
signal that, although the language of literary expression, metropolitan French is more 
importantly the language of translation of a particular African language, which the 
characters are “really” speaking. In contrast, the incidence of basilectal and 
mesolectal Creole varieties of French (chapter 4), particularly so-called “petit nègre” 
and “established” borrowings from African languages, points to Africanized usages 
of French in connection with sociolinguistic questions of power and prestige. Closely 
linked to visible traces, relexification (chapter 5), whereby the “character” of African 
speech is transferred into the colonial language, is another strategy seeking to 
underscore the polyglossic reality of sub-Saharan Francophone Africa and, 
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furthermore, one that raises the dichotomy of orality versus writing that often 
characterized colonial encounters. Lastly, onomastics and wordplay (chapter 6) also 
address resistance against the imbalance of power and prestige in sub-Saharan 
Francophone Africa and pose significant linguistic challenges for translation into 
English.  
In addition, the book features a brief introduction to postcolonial translation 
studies, an overview of the criteria for inclusion in the corpus of study and its 
translation rates (chapter 1), a sociolinguistic approximation to the notion of 
“polyglossia” and linguistic diversity vis-à-vis African cultures and realities (chapter 
2), some conclusions on the translation strategies analyzed in light of postcolonial 
translation theory (chapter 7), and, conversely, some remarks on postcolonial 
translation theory as informed by the translation of sub-Saharan Francophone 
African fiction into English (chapter 8). Ultimately, Batchelor seeks to explore the 
idea of a “decolonized translation practice” grounded in a metonymic 
conceptualization of translation (as developed by translation scholar Maria 
Tymoczko) whereby translation is acknowledged as a complex activity of 
intercultural negotiation and conflict to the detriment of dominant philological 
models of translation and textual accuracy.  
In this regard, the most striking feature of Decolonizing Translation lies in 
the methodology displayed by its author as reflected in the macrostructural 
organization of the book. In the introduction, Batchelor argues that, although 
significantly inspired by postcolonial literary studies of translation (most notably, 
Kwaku Gyasi‟s 2006 The Francophone African Text and Paul Bandia‟s 2008 
Translation and Reparation), hers is the first extended study of English translations 
of sub-Saharan Francophone African fiction. Whereas the contributions by Gyasi and 
Bandia circle around the notion of “writing-as-translation”, as reflected for example 
in relexification and calquing processes, Batchelor underscores the need in 
postcolonial translation studies for more empirical research where translators‟ 
responses to the challenges posed by Europhone African literature are addressed—
yet, an initial hypothesis concerning such responses is absent from her study. After a 
detailed and insightful account of the criteria involved in the selection of the corpus 
of translations, the author provides throughout chapters 3 to 6 an analysis largely 
anchored in the work of some of the leading figures of postcolonial translation 
theory, particularly in Antoine Berman‟s “système de déformation des textes”, 
whereby the foreignness of the source text becomes naturalized in translation, and 
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Lawrence Venuti‟s notion of a “fluency aesthetic” that predominantly guides 
translation activity in the Anglophone literary publishing industry.  
By the end of chapter 6, a number of important questions arise in the 
reader‟s mind: do the findings in Batchelor‟s analysis (namely, the systematic 
normalization of linguistically innovative features in English translation) actually 
shed light on translation dynamics as approached in the paradigm of postcolonial 
translation or do they reveal instead an excessive dependence on postcolonial 
translation theory, particularly as articulated by Berman and Venuti? If, according to 
Batchelor, her findings confirm “this system [Berman‟s système de déformation des 
textes] to a large extent […] that Berman argues to be characteristic of any 
translation” (206) as well as “Venuti‟s assertion that „translation practices in English 
cultures (amongst many others) have routinely aimed for their own concealment, at 
least since the seventeenth century‟” (207), what is the actual contribution of this 
type of empirical research to translation studies—merely corroborating Berman and 
Venuti‟s theories à propos of sub-Saharan Francophone African fiction or rather 
informing those theories by questioning their implicit epistemological assumptions? 
To put it differently, if both Berman‟s système de déformation des textes and 
Venuti‟s fluency aesthetic (taken to routinely characterize any translation) underlie 
an assumption of the inevitability of textual deformation/domestication, should not 
the kind of empirical research advocated by the author of Decolonizing Translation 
begin by problematizing such assumption or, at least, by providing the so-called 
“working predictions” about the corpus of translations being researched?    
Even if, by its evident empirical character, this study interrogates Berman‟s 
and Venuti‟s approaches to translation (otherwise there would be no need for this 
type of empirical research), the methodology employed by Batchelor ultimately 
complies with the universality embedded in their models in view of the absence of an 
initial hypothesis and the pragmatic instrumentalization of the concepts of système de 
déformation des textes and fluency aesthetic to account for the strategies displayed in 
the corpus of translations. Throughout her analysis, Batchelor identifies recurrent 
cases of so-called “ethnocentrique”/“domesticating” translation but fails to provide 
critical reflection on those strategies beyond the dominant approaches that form the 
theoretical background to her study. While including a detailed and insightful 
compendium of translated textual features, the reader cannot help but question the 
appropriateness of the author‟s application of the ethnocentrique/domesticating 
translation model to sub-Saharan Francophone African fiction independently from 
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extratextual sources of information (e.g. commission, patronage, editorial policy, 
intended audience) —even if some of those sources are partly addressed in the 
introduction. Once concluded the analysis, Batchelor‟s push for more empirical 
research in translation studies barely holds the significance initially argued by the 
author. For, what is the goal of such empirical research if its findings have been 
accurately anticipated in influential translation models dealing with naturalization 
and the Anglophone literary translation industry? What is it exactly that the kind of 
empirical research discussed by Batchelor may contribute to translation studies?  
The answer is found in the two final chapters of Decolonizing Translation, 
where Batchelor engages with the implications of sub-Saharan Francophone African 
fiction for the study of translation and vice versa, and interrogates the capacity of the 
models previously incorporated to foster a decolonized translation practice. Although 
she starts by affirming their general applicability to the analyzed corpus of 
translations, Batchelor subsequently employs Berman‟s système de déformation des 
textes and Venuti‟s fluency aesthetic as a springboard to approach the implications of 
a decolonized translation practice for the conceptualization of translation itself. 
According to the author, the purported “untranslatability” of sub-Saharan 
Francophone African literature often underscored by literary critics and academic 
translators alike (whereby the normalization of linguistic innovation in English 
translation is portrayed as virtually inevitable) is founded on two different aspects: 
the linguistic hybridity of sub-Saharan Francophone African literature (as reflected in 
the types of linguistic innovation analyzed) and the interplay between the languages 
involved (i.e. French and African languages). Whereas linguistically hybrid texts 
have commonly served as a paradigmatic example to support the idea of 
untranslatability due to their inherent heterogeneity as opposed to supposedly 
homogeneous linguistic systems, Batchelor calls attention to the importance of 
historical, political, and cultural confrontations between specific languages for the 
meaning of linguistically hybrid texts in order to articulate her notion of “translation-
as-relocation”. From this perspective, the ultimate goal of translation is not so much 
to reproduce linguistic hybridity per se in another language as to relocate the 
complexities and effects embedded in the encounter of languages featured in the 
source text in connection with the “translation situation”.  
In this respect, Batchelor succeeds in departing from the translatability-
untranslatability axis toward a new ethos of translation whereby the willing 
“suspension of disbelief” upon which translated literature is assumed to rest is 
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substituted for the recognition of the geographic, historical, and cultural setting of the 
source text and, furthermore, for an interplay with the broader implications of the 
alterations made to the language of literary expression. In this way, even if 
translation-as-relocation points to the shifts (e.g. linguistic, cultural, historical, 
geographical, temporal) derived from translation practice, it also seeks to underscore 
the potential of translation to expand and inform the “contact zone” (to borrow the 
term coined by Latin American literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt) from which the 
subversive elements of the original narrative context emerge. Following up on the 
question of a decolonized translation practice, the author returns to the four types of 
linguistic innovation analyzed to exemplify the challenges of translation vis-à-vis the 
model of translation-as-relocation, this time incorporating a number of extratextual 
factors, such as editorial policy, intended readership, and receiver-effect, and 
problematizing the approaches drawn upon in earlier chapters.  
At this stage, further questions related to methodology and macrostructure 
arise: if a decolonized translation practice that not only is empirically-based but that 
also explores translation in light of polyglossic linguistic innovation is the subject of 
the book, why are the primary reflections on the subject placed in the last section? If, 
as the author contends, Decolonizing Translation seeks to explore a decolonized 
translation practice “not only in terms of overall principles, but also in terms of the 
intricacies and challenges posed by the linguistically innovative features of 
postcolonial texts” (230), why is the main body of the study (chapters 3 to 6) carried 
out following general models of translation that, in addition, fall short of accounting 
for the intricate network of facets involved in translation practice? Differently 
phrased: why does Batchelor not give more prominence to her model of translation-
as-relocation from the outset of her study, even when it draws from the translation 
data gathered a priori? Rather than in the predictability of the translation data as 
formulated in Berman‟s système de déformation des textes and Venuti‟s fluency 
aesthetic, the source of the reader‟s discomfort with the macrostructure of the book 
lies in the deductive approach adopted by Batchelor and, more specifically, the 
amount of space dedicated to formal textual correspondence to the detriment of the 
author‟s articulation of her own translation model, which could have been more 
effectively developed had a more inductive methodology been adopted in 
conjunction with a more exhaustive argumentation of the implications of the 
translation-as-relocation model for translation studies ab initio.  
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This is made particularly acute in the last chapter of the book (chapter 8), 
where Batchelor engages with the postcolonial turn in translation studies in 
connection with her professed goal of a decolonized translation practice. While 
championing the facets of translation put forward by Berman and Venuti, Batchelor 
questions the connection that their models draw between translation strategies and 
intended effects to (finally!) problematize translation a propos of reception theory. 
Drawing from the indeterminacy of the relationship between the source text and the 
target text from the perspective of reader-response, the author turns to the notions of 
“in-betweenness” and “time-lag” developed by postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha 
and Maria Tymoczko‟s notion of “translation-as-metonymy” to approach translation 
as a multiplicity of possible readings that, rather than moving linearly from pheno-
text 1/source text to pheno-text 2/target text, involves a projection backwards 
through which the initial time-lag between event and enunciation is reopened and 
towards the enactment of the reader‟s secondary responses in connection with the 
broader significance of the text. Extrapolated to the four types of linguistic 
innovation analyzed, Batchelor effectively triggers a reconsideration of the 
theoretical implications of the translation of sub-Saharan Francophone African 
fiction into English that dissociates itself from the predominantly source text-
oriented translation analysis displayed in chapters 3 to 6 and yields significant 
insights into and beyond postcolonial translation theory.  
Despite the limitations of the translation situation from which her 
articulation of translation-as-relocation stems (i.e. translation of sub-Saharan African 
literature from French into English) and even when the conceptual framework of her 
study (as reflected in such recurring notions as “decolonized translation practice”, 
“hybridity”, and the very construct of “la francophonie”) would benefit from a 
deeper critical interrogation, Batchelor formulates in Decolonizing Translation a 
translation model that should inform translation studies. Nevertheless, the 
implications of translation-as-relocation are ultimately downplayed by the excessive 
amount of space dedicated to the collected textual data—which could have been 
presented using a more condensed format (e.g. graphs, tables, and charts)—and by 
the insufficient degree of interaction between the corpus analysis and the discussion 
of a decolonized translation practice. Although chapters 7 and 8 are meant to explore 
such interaction, they do not eventually suffice, particularly due to their conceptual 
density and undue brevity. Batchelor displays an extensive use of postcolonial 
translation theory but, as argued above, postcolonial translation models tend to be 
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instrumentalized to conform to the general argument of the book without previously 
questioning their embedded epistemological assumptions—of course, such a 
procedure might drastically lengthen Batchelor‟s study, but it would also strengthen 
the arguments articulated in it.  
Overall, Decolonizing Translation not only stands as an example of the 
empirical research championed by its author, but it also points in the direction of a 
new research trajectory in translation studies that, along with the work that is being 
done in other postcolonial geopolitical spaces (for example, by R. Anthony Lewis in 
the Caribbean and Vicente Rafael in the Philippines), will not only influence 
contemporary discourses on the ethics and politics of translation but also trace new 
intersections between postcolonial scholarship and translation studies. In this regard, 
the critical exploration of those intersections by way of a more fully developed 
model of translation-as-relocation should be the priority of the follow-up to this 
study. 
 
                


Kathryn Batchelor. (2009). Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 282 págs., 2009

Kathryn Batchelor. (2009). Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 282 págs., 2009

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