What is a South African Folktale? Reshaping Traditional Tales through Translation and Adaptation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21153/pecl2004vol14no1art1273Keywords:
South African folktales, translation, adaptation, censorshipAbstract
In lieu of abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article:
He arrived at home and it said, 'No! Let me go! I’m a bird that shits amasi!''
He said, "Please shit, that we may see!'
It produced some amasi. Oh, the man tasted it,he tasted it. He ate it.
(Scheub 1977.p.47)
'Kethani. Don’t harm me If you spare my life, I’II make milk for you.' … And Kethani watched as the weeds became uprooted and then ordered the bird to make milk for him. He took out a calabash and the bird filled it with thick warm milk.
Kethani savoured the milk as it slithered down his dry throat. It had been a very long time since he had tasted milk.
(Heale & Stewart 2001, p.18)
The first extract is taken from a Xhosa tale recorded in 1967, and transcribed and translated by a Wisconsin researcher. Harold Scheub (1977). The second is taken from a recently published collection entitled African Myths and Legends, and was written by Dianne Stewart in 1994 (Heale & Stewart 2001). The sinking discrepancies between these two accounts of the same title were the motivation for an examination of the ways in which traditional South African titles have been the object of rewriting and appropriation by English writers and translators over a period of one hundred and fifty years, initially in a colonial context, and more recently in a postcolonial context.
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