Mirrors between North and South: the translations of Brian Chikwava’s Harare North into French and Spanish

Abstract

This article examines the French translation of Harare North and proposes a Spanish translation, reflecting on the challenges that both versions pose for translators. To this end, we commence by identifying the polyphony of fictional varieties of English represented in the speech of the hero and the other characters —Zimbabwean Pidgin English, broken English, Standard British English and the English spoken by the Afro-Caribbean community in Brixton (London). We then examine the equivalences of these fictional registers in French and in a proposed Spanish translation. The outcome of our analysis is to shed light on the degree of foreignization of the French version, which would meet Ricoeur’s concern with the ethics of translation, as well as present a more foreignising Spanish translation, consistent with the source text’s heteroglossia.