Translating Insila kaShaka into English: literal or free translation in rendering idioms

Abstract

The controversy about whether to adopt the word-for-word (literal) or sense-for-sense (free) translation approach when rendering a piece of text has characterised the field of Translation studies from as early as the first century AC to present. The debate was intense in the 1950s. This debate has been investigated in most parts of the world, but not in Africa. Therefore, this study seeks to fill this void by investigating the approaches adopted by two English translators of the isiZulu novel Insila kaShaka. The investigation is confined to idioms as a unit of analysis. The first translation was produced in 1951 and the second in 2017, and the study seeks to compare whether translators of the two versions adopted a similar approach. The study adopted the equivalence-based approach as theoretical underpinning, which advances the notion that translators should seek to achieve equivalence when translating a piece of text. The corpus-based method was used for data analysis and interpretation. The findings reveal that the free translation approach was predominant in the first version whereas a balanced use of the two was observed in the second version. These findings coincide with the trends that have been observed in other parts of the world, especially dominance of the sense-for-sense approach until the 1950s.