Publishing francophone African narratives in English: a short history

Abstract

This article presents and analyzes the editorial landscape of francophone African narratives translated into English since the inception of this literature in the early 1920s up to 2015. Although it is commonly accepted that small, mostly non-profit publishers and university presses are responsible for literary production and distribution of Anglophone translations, the analysis of a defined corpus of these narratives reveals a more nuanced picture of its evolution. As this “marginal” literature, predominantly published in France, enters the new literary (Anglophone) field it is appropriated and repackaged by the foreign editor who reframes the translated literary work in its new paratext. The corpus narratives are variously presented as translated (francophone) literature, world literature showcasing “windows on the world” or (“denationalized”) global literature, depending on the category of publisher involved. As expected, these agents and agencies shaping francophone African literature are driven by differential aesthetic, idealistic or commercial motifs, and operate themselves within a specific sociopolitical context. Since on the Anglo-American book market, it is the American university presses that have played a dominant role in the production of the corpus narratives in recent decades, their mission and its consequences will be considered in detail.

Keywords:

• Francophone African literature in translation
• reception
• publishing
• university press
• sociological approach of literature/translation

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Vivan Steemers is Associate Professor of French at Western Michigan University. Author of Le (néo)colonisalisme littéraire (Karthala, 2012) on the reception of Francophone African literature in metropolitan France, she has also published on reception and translation of African literature in various peer-reviewed journals, including Research in African Literatures, Présence Africaine, Nouvelles Etudes Francophones and the Journal of the African Literature Association.

Notes

1 See also the website “Three Percent.” http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/about/, (accessed 28 August 2018) created at the University of Rochester by Chad Post as a resource for international literature. 3% is the approximate figure for works in translation, “in terms of literary fiction and poetry the number is actually closer to 0.7%” (Three Percent website). For Britain and Ireland, this percentage has been confirmed recently by Alexandra Büchler and Giulia Trentacosti. Couze Venn denounces “the homogenizing ambition of Anglo-American as universal language” as well as “translation-as-colonization” (82); Edith Grossman apprehends the “iron curtain” between “xenophobic” Anglo-Americans and the rest of the world (43); while Gisèle Sapiro corrobates, “If we consider the language of origin as an indicator, linguistic and cultural diversity is almost nonexistent at the mass-market end of publishing, where […] English has a virtual monopoly” (2010a, 313).

2 The once dominant world language French has seen its share in translated literature globally fall to 7.7%.

3 Although the majority of the works in this corpus conform to the definition of novel, the term “narrative” is a more comprehensive designation comprising memoirs, autobiographies, and chronicles alike. The Oxford English Dictionary provides the following definition for this term: “In structuralist and post-structuralist theory: a representation of a history, biography, process, etc., in which a sequence of events has been constructed into a story in accordance with a particular ideology; […] a story or representation used to give an explanatory or justificatory account of a society, period, etc.” The current study is based on a corpus of 104 narratives (108 translations, since Ahmadou Kourouma’s En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages and Ahmadou Hampaté Bâ’s Kaïdara were translated twice and René Maran’s Batouala three times). Maran’s novel was considered the first francophone African narrative published by Albin Michel in 1921 and issued in an English edition in 1922, whereas Tram 83 (Métailié 2014) by Fiston Mwanza Mujila that appeared in an English translation in 2015 concludes the corpus.

4 While the agents and agencies involved in literary production are numerous and include jury members of award committees, critics, preface writers, and literary agents, I will concentrate in this article on the role of publishers and editors. Of course, translators as agents can also play an essential part in the selection of works to be translated and thereby perform what has been qualified as a “an act of political activism” (De Jager 2009, 85). Regarding our corpus of texts, for instance, certain scholars/translators such as Dorothy Blair—pioneer in the translation of francophone African literature who translated five corpus narratives, three by women authors—and Marjolijn de Jager—responsible for ten corpus translations, eight by women authors—have been strong advocates for the dissemination of francophone African female voices. Unfortunately, African translators are still rare. Bandia observes that African governments and public organizations have not been forthcoming in providing financial support in the form of grants for literary translation or facilitating the sale of book rights abroad, concerned as they are with “more pressing demands for public service translators” (2008, 160).

5 Chad Post observes that while in 2008 21% of new translated literature was published by mainstream corporate publishers this figure had been reduced to 16% in 2009.

6 For example, the organization of a book tour of foreign writers expressing themselves poorly or not at all in English is more complex and costly than for an Anglophone author.

7 For a detailed analysis of the two poles of production, I refer to Bourdieu’s publication “La production de la croyance: contribution à une économie des biens symboliques” (1999).

8 Similarly, John Frow in his work Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (1995) aiming to understand the cultural production and consumption in the postmodern world, refuses to distinguish between the realms of “the opposing mass-produced ‘low’ and the ‘high’ culture” as a “unified and hierarchical system” as described by Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Certeau (13). The blurring of the distinction between bestseller and intellectual bestseller, argues Frow, can therefore be connected to the inclusion of “high culture” as a “pocket of commodity culture. Its primary relationship is not to the ruling class but to the intelligentsia and to the education system, which is the locus of their power and the generative point for most high-cultural practices” (86). The preeminent role of academia in the production of “high culture” will be discussed below.

9 “Frontlist” refers to new and recently published books that gradually transition into a “backlist” after approximately one year, clarifies Thompson (29).

10 The supplementary leeway of the small independent non-profit publishers in the US is reiterated by Sapiro with regard to the selection of translations. In the case of a translated text, the editors will first and foremost consider the literary and intellectual quality of a text. Once it is endorsed, they will seek out grants that will allow offsetting the costs incurred for the acquisition of foreign rights and the translation (2012a, 22).

11 Of the 108 translations included in the corpus, four were published in the UK and US in the same year. In these instances, two entries have been taken into account creating a total of 112 publications. For instance, Batouala was published by Thomas Seltzer Inc. in New York and Jonathan Cape in London in the same year, adding one publication to the category of small publishers in the UK as well as another for the category of small publishers in the US. In addition, this double entry illustrates a high interest in the novel.

12 It must be noted that the first bar on the chart, contrary to the others, represents almost three decades (before 1950, that is 1921–1950) while the last one shows literary translations for only half a decade (2010–2015). Both periods nonetheless exemplify such relevance as an indication of on the one hand the inception and on the other hand the recent expansion of the francophone African narratives in English translation that their inclusion in the bar chart is justified

13 L’Enfant Noir (Paris: Plon, 1953), the first English edition was published by Collins (London) in 1954.

14 Le Regard du roi (Paris: Plon, 1954), first published in English by Collins (London) in 1956.

15 Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (Paris: R. Laffont, 1956), published in English by Heinemann (Oxford) in 1971.

16 Une Vie de boy (Paris: Julliard, 1956) published by Heinemann (London) in 1966 and Le Vieux Nègre et la Médaille (Paris: Julliard, 1956), also issued by Heinemann (London) in 1969.

17 For a detailed analysis of the reception of the work by Mongo Beti (notably The Poor Christ of Bomba) and Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir (The Dark/African Child) see Steemers, 2012.

18 In 1946, the constitution of the Fourth Republic instituted the “Union Française,” an entity that included the French Republic and its overseas territories. Although formally ending the status of the “indigenous people” as “subjects” in a “new empire” these changes fell far short of the aspirations of the colonized.

19 The rest of the story is well-known: Kourouma’s novel was consecrated by the Canadian literary prize “le prix pour la Francité” awarded for the first time in 1967, after which Les Editions du Seuil, finally recognizing the innovative qualities of the text’s style and contemporary theme, bought the rights of Kourouma’s preeminent work for the symbolical sum of one Canadian dollar. In a large measure due to its translational challenges Kourouma’s first novel was not translated into English until 1981. (See also Steemers 2012, 141–171). It must be noted that in general the African author publishing in French had access to a very limited local publishing and distribution infrastructure. Until independence, exclusively printing houses, generally specialized in printing official documents, were operative in West Africa. Gradually, publishing began to be included as a secondary activity by some, while others developed with support from churches (such as CLE, Centre de Littérature Evangélique, in Cameroon in 1963), or were controlled in majority by French publishers (such as CEDA, the Centre d’Edition et de Diffusion Africaines established in 1961 in Ivory Coast).

20 The novel was initially published in English by the small American press Lawrence Hill Books in 1977.

21 Henceforth, the abbreviation AWS will be used for the African Writers Series.

22 For instance, Wole Soyinka condemned the series as “the orange ghetto”—after the color of its book jacket—for confining African writers to a separately tagged category of books. A possible consequence of this specific “packaging” is revealed by Olabode Ibironke’s archival research for his book Remapping African Literature: Heinemann’s A.R. Beal contended that English teachers would accept Achebe’s Things Fall Apart more readily if it was part of a series written by authors from all over the English-speaking world than as a novel included in a series devoted exclusively to African writers (69).

23 For a detailed account of AWS creation and development, I refer to James Currey’s Africa Writes Back. The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature (2008).

24 The term “scramble” is also used by Wole Soyinka’s as a description of the activities of the British publishers. In fact, he refers to it as “the second scramble for Africa,” as evidenced by Ibironke’s research in the Heinemann archives (54).

25 Other rights acquired by Heinemann in the 1970s involved Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure in 1972 from Walker Publishing Company (US); King Lazarus by Mongo Beti in 1970 from Frederick Muller Ltd. (UK); and Agatha Moudio’s Son by Francis Bebey in 1971 from Lawrence Hill (US) (as well as Bebey’s The Ashanti Doll mentioned before).

26 Oyono’s first two novels, Houseboy and The Old Man and the Medal both appeared 10, respectively 13 years after their first publication (1966 and 1969); Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba and Dadié’s Climbié both 15 years after their French publication (in 1971), while Sembène’s The Black Docker remained untranslated for 31 years (until 1987).

27 As a result of the takeover in 1983 of Heinemann Group by British Tyre and Rubber (BTR) as well as a new management only one or two titles continue to appear in the AWS per year. This coincides with the collapse of the African book market and the beginning of the “African book famine” resulting in Heinemann’s concentration on sales in Britain and Europe (Currey 297). The AWS was discontinued in 2003 but revived in 2011 by Pearson that bought the series. (See the Naija Stories website for Nigerian fiction encouraging new African authors to send in manuscripts:http://www.naijastories.com/2011/08/pearson-revives-african-writers-series-calls-fo, accessed 28 August 2018).

28 Both during the colonial era—when relations existed first and foremost between the colonizing nation and its colonies—as well as post-independence, exchanges between the two linguistic, francophone and Anglophone, regions in Africa, at least regarding literary issues, seem to have been virtually nonexistent. In an interview with Elaine Savory, Abiola Irele explains that since neither at school, nor at university French courses were offered, he taught himself this European language–he mastered already several African languages—which allowed him in 1960 to obtain a scholarship to study in France, complete a doctorate at the Sorbonne and eventually become an advocate for francophone African (as well as Caribbean) literature in Anglophone Africa (Savory 117).

In the same vein, when asked in 1980 whether So Long a Letter would do well in English or in French elsewhere in Africa, Mariama Bâ revealed that having read only two books translated from English to French she discovered “to [her] great surprise,” “the same traditions, the same problems, the same way of doing things, the same reticence” in Anglophone Africa as in francophone Africa (Barbara Harrell-Bond 213) (emphasis added). Very few English-language African books were translated into French and available in francophone Africa. Even as recently as in 2013, Véronique Tadjo confirms the existence of this linguistic division in Africa, asserting that, “Unfortunately, our governments are not really interested in cross-fertilization. They rarely offer incentives for translation projects” (Tadjo 101).

29 Since it is beyond the scope of this study to explore in detail the reasons for the late burgeoning of African female literary talent, suffice it to adumbrate here the two primary explanations that scholars generally concur on: colonial ideology—initially, schools were accessible for boys only—and African traditions that strictly defined gender roles (see also d’Almeida 1994, 5; Volet 14–17).

30 Une Si Longue Lettre by Mariama Bâ, Le Baobab fou by Ken Bugul and La Grève des Bàttu by Aminata Sow Fall.

31 Mariama Bâ’s second novel Le Chant écarlate as well as Nafissatou Diallo’s De Tilène au Plateau.

32 On average their translation time lag amounted to less than 5 years (4.8)—increasing to almost five and a half years for all translated texts by African women writers—when in fact the overall average time lag for translation of our corpus narratives—that is contributions by male and female writers—reached 8 years in the 1970s and 10 years in the 1980s.

33 Bâ’s first novel was translated in 1980 into German; by 1981 a translation in English, Dutch, Japanese, Italian, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian had appeared.

34 In the 1990s, the (original) literary production of our corpus of African Francophone is cut in half, from 20 titles to 10 titles.

35 The Renaudot laureats include Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah Is Not Obliged in 2000, Alain Mabanckou’s Memoirs of a Porcupine in 2006, Tierno Monénembo's The King of Kahel in 2008 and Scholastique Mukasonga’s The Lady of the Nile in 2012.

36 Obviously, a sociopolitical account of these complex developments as well as their ties to the repercussions from the cultural establishment require a profound analysis that is not the primary subject of this article focusing on the Anglo-American editorial landscape.

37 In her study on the literary exchanges between France and the US from 1990 to 2003, Sapiro paints a somewhat different general picture of the editorial landscape of overall French translations in the US. The share of the non-profit sector—in which she includes university presses—has indeed increased to almost one third of all French translations during the period analyzed, Sapiro states (2010b, 24). However, comprised in her analysis are retranslations of classics by 17–19th century French authors that account for one quarter of all translations, as well as new editions of work by deceased 20th century authors in the process of becoming classics that make up one third of all translated titles. This leaves us with approximately 40% of translations by contemporary French writers, though Sapiro reports a rise in this category since 2003, due precisely to the increased activity of small non-profit presses (2010b, 47–52).

38 http://www.upress.virginia.edu/series/caraf-books-caribbean-and-african-literature-translated-french, accessed 28 August 2018

39 These are the numbers up to and including 2015.

40 Personal email correspondence on 19 January 2016. Again, the editorial director of Indiana University Press, Dee Mortensen, expresses similar expectations for the Global African Voices series: “We hope that books published in the series will appeal to a wide reading public. The novels have been sold in bookstores and have been adopted in classes that deal with African topics in all subject areas” (personal email correspondence on 12 January 2016).

41 http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/advanced_search_result.php?keywords = Global + African+Voices&osCsid=6toe6pmsfvd4lau8snvcghb183, accessed 28 August 2018.

42 Mongo Beti’s article “Afrique noire, littérature rose” translated as “Romancing Africa” was first published in the journal Présence Africaine in 1955. The author’s initials, A.B., refer to his real name Alexandre Biyidi.

43 This qualifier is by Abdourahman A. Waberi (10).

44 The accomplishment of the series’ mission is acknowledged by the following blurb from Saturday Nation: “With every new translation in its Global African Voices series, Indiana University Press, USA, moves a step further towards the realization of its goal of overcoming the fragmentariness of modern African literature by integrating originally French-language literary works into the English-language stream” (website of Global African Voices, Indiana UP. http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/index.php?cPath=1037_3130_3754, accessed 28 August 2018).

45 In this article the Cameroonian author, as a profoundly committed writer—in the Sartrean sense of “engagé”—attacks in vitriolic terms literary representations of Africa as a peaceful society unmarred by colonizers thereby targeting, of course, Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir.

46 Damrosch distinguishes world literature from “global literature”, the type of reading “unaffected by any specific context” and available worldwide at airports (25).

47 These data do not take into consideration small numbers of new or second-hand copies still available via Amazon.

48 In the UK it is Pearson that publishes the AWS.

49 See the Archipelago Books website https://archipelagobooks.org/about/ accessed 28 August 2018.

50 See the Serpent’s Tail website https://serpentstail.com/about-serpents-tail accessed 28 August 2018.

51 See Deep Vellum Publishing website at http://deepvellum.org/about/ accessed 28 August 2018.

52 Launched as an imprint of Amazon Publishing in 2010, AmazonCrossing’s mission is to publish translated works in English. The King of Kahel was its first translated book. With the backing of Amazon’s reputation—that justifies AmazonCrossing’s categorization as a large corporation—the latter has become by 2015 the biggest publisher of translated fiction in the US (Heyman).