The Expertise of the European Translators of African Poetry: An Appraisal

This paper appraises the European translators of Wole Soyinka’s poetry to underscore their significant role in bringing it to a broader audience. Subconsciously, the literary translator is deemed invisible. However, this need not be retained. The decision process of dealing with the challenges of rendering cultural references and maintaining the aesthetic structure of source poetry is viewed as an expert action by the European translator of African poetry rift with the nuances of other African languages. This paper reveals an adaptation of Francis Jones’s model of the expert action of the Poetry Translator to model appraisal. The model is also a review of European translators’ lives and an overview of their translations, particularly relating to Soyinka’s poetry, a review of their publications on Soyinka, a review of readers’ comments about their translated poetry and other works, and a review of their awards and recognitions, which eventually highlights their expert actions as poetry translators. This appraisal gives credence to discourse on the visibility of literary translators in translation studies.