Introduction

Abstract

This Special Issue of Current Writing on “Translating (South) African Literatures” takes as its main focus what we described in the Call for Papers as “one of the most significant interventions in the field of South African literature in recent decades”: the publication by Oxford University Press in its Africa Pulse series (2018) of eight translations or retranslations into English of key African language literary texts from southern Africa. The series comprises: The Lawsuit of the Twins (1914) and Don Jadu (1929) by SEK Mqhayi; No Matter When (1935) by BW Vilakazi; Home is Nowhere (1996) by MJ Mngadi; She’s to Blame (1960) by BM Khaketla; Senkatana (1952) by SMMofokeng; Tears of the Brain (1968) by OK Motsepe; and Stitching a Whirlwind: An Anthology of Southern African Poems and Translations (2018), edited by Megan Hall and Antjie Krog. The initial translation project was funded by the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and co-ordinated by Antjie Krog through the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), with translation work by Thokozile Mabeqa, Nosisi Mpolweni, Thenjiswa Ntwana, Nakanjani G Sibiya, Nkosinathi Sithole, Biki Lepota, Tšepiso Samuel Mothibi, Stephen Masote, Koos Oosthuysen, Fred Khumalo, David wa Maahlamela, Gabeba Baderoon, Loyiso Mletshe, Zukile Jama, Johannes Lenake, Ncedile Saule, Rita Barnard, Seleka Tembani and Lucy Ndlovu. The Special Issue seeks to stimulate critical debate about African language literatures and their ‘translations’, with an emphasis on the southern African context, but pursuing also the transnational reach, resonances and connections of many of the texts. It is therefore significant, and thrilling to us, that these texts from various indigenous languages are now for the first time being put into scholarly conversation with one another as well as with other South African texts. Although some of these texts have been analysed by scholars specialising in one or other of the indigenous languages, they may now be placed in new, less ‘bordered’ conversations with one another. This provides a much needed continuity for the source text, giving it a ‘second life’ as a more integral part of the broader South African literary history and present. In the true sense of the word, translation has rescued some of these texts, especially the poems, from obscurity, enabling them to survive for a new set of readers, and to speak to a new set of scholars from various languages. It is perhaps significant, then, that this Special Issue also moves slightly beyond its initial focus on the Africa Pulse series, to consider other writers dealing with the same, or analogous, issues (Sithole’s focus on the work of RRR Dhlomo, for example). The Special Issue itself was conceptualised and supported by the AWMellon funded project on “Rethinking South African Literature(s)”, based in the CMDR at UWC. This is a collaborative, multilingual, interdisciplinary project that seeks to rethink the ways in which we conceptualise and understand the field of South African literatures, almost three decades after the legislated ending of apartheid,