Berman’s trials of the foreign and postcolonial translations

Abstract

Antoine Berman’s concept of “the trial of the foreign” has proven particularly useful inelucidating and accounting for postcolonial translation practice. African European-language writing is characterized by the practice of vernacularization and literary diglossia as a writing strategy in what is generally an intercultural communication context. This raises questions of identity and ideology with respect to the use of colonial languages, as well as issues of power relations between the center and the periphery. The strategy of deterritorializing and reterritorializing often used by postcolonial writers as an attempt to reappropriate the colonial language and thus claim their own space is an example of what Berman refers to as “writing as translation”. This style of writing, heavily grounded in ideological as well as sociocultural considerations, raises some serious questions about translation choices which can only be addressed through a sound and comprehensive ethics of translation. Postmodern theories can help us define an ethics framework for translation which will allow us to move away from the binary opposition, or the dichotomy, of foreignist versus domesticating translation that has been at the basis of much theorizing in translation studies.