On Wale Ogunyemi’s Translation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart into Yoruba, Ìgbésí Ayé Okonkwo: A ‘within-to-within’ Approach of its Challenges

Abstract

This essay examines the proverbs, and other wise-sayings as used in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart vis-à-vis the Ogunyemi’s Yoruba translations of the novel, Ìgbésí Ayé Okonkwo. The within-to-within approach is the lens through which the text and its Yoruba translation are explored. The approach establishes some level of similarities in the cultures and nuances of both languages (Igbo and Yoruba) due to their mutual intelligibility. The work encourages more translation of African novels written originally in English, French, or Portuguese into African languages. Doing so preserves the languages and cultures, the sustainability which Akinwumi Isola (2010) refers to as Literary Ecosystem. That is a way of giving back to the society from which the author got inspired. Further, there exists the idea of language retrieval, a process of translation which Isola viewed goes into translation when the novels involved are lexico-semantical and culturally close to each other.