Translation Challenges from a Romance Language into a Bantu language: Exploring Cultural Aspects in Camara Laye’s L’Enfant Noir

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to report on the translation of Camara Laye’s novel “L’ enfant Noir ˮ, originally written in French. The researchers discussed the  challenges  involved  in  the  translation with particular interest in  cultural  aspects  that  are  typical  of  Guinean  culture. Also discussed are some  strategies  which  translators  can  use to  solve to some extent culture-related  problems  while  translating  from  a source into a target language  for  the  national   audience  in  general  and  for  the  young  generations  in  particular. While the Latin aphorism goes that“ Traduttore, traditore!”,  it was found that although translating from a Romance language into a Bantu language is so difficult mainly because they are two distant languages from two far different cultures, through translation one speech community know some  cultural aspects from the source language context..