The Translator as Co-Author: Wangũi Goro’s (Re)Writing of Gender Relations in Matigari

Nicholas Kamau Goro Department of Literary & Communication Studies: Laikipia University, Kenya

Keywords: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Postcolonial, African Literature, Translation, Nationalism, Gender

Translation has conventionally been seen as a practice concerned with the techniques

of representing texts written in one language in another language. This article, however,

claims that since the act of literary creation inevitably starts within a culture,

translation is a more encompassing practice that takes into its ambit not just the

transposition of language but of a whole culture. This is particularly so in the

postcolonial context where translation is a one-way process in which African language

texts are translated into the already dominant Western languages. In this context

translation poses challenges regarding the translatability of local cultures and

languages into European languages. This article examines Wangũi Goro’s translation

of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Matigari Ma Njirũũngi into English. I argue that that in

translating the novel, Wangũi Goro, emerges as a free agent who claims as much

creative leeway as the author. This is evident, I show, in the way the translator

proactively intervenes to redress gendered inequalities both in the Gĩkũyũ language

and in the representation of nationalism in African literature where the nationalist

project has often been presented as a male project.

APA Citation: Goro, N. K. (2021). The Translator as Co-Author: Wangũi Goro’s (Re)Writing of Gender Relations in Matigari. Ngano: The Journal of Eastern African Oral Literature, 2, 72-81.