Sudanese literature in English translation: an analytical study of the translation with a historical introduction to the literature
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis sets out to record, analyze, and assess modern Sudanese literature within its historical, cultural, and political context. It highlights the diversity and distinctiveness of that literature, the wide range of its themes, and the resilience and complex background of its major practitioners. A principal preoccupation of the study, however, is to point out the various challenges this literature, its universality and appeal notwithstanding, poses to translators. The close and intimate connection between its bold and vibrant colloquial expressions and the cultural and geographical environment in which these expressions are entrenched makes the task of the translator, especially one translating into a somewhat “remote” language like English, fraught with difficulty, at times unachievable. The near impossibility of rendering such expressions, proverbs, allusions to religious texts, and metaphors into English is illustrated in many examples. Paradoxically, such inadequacies and challenges, analysed from a semantic and syntactical perspective and investing in translation theory, point to a remarkable resilience and inventiveness of the translators involved as well as to the importance of translation in acting as a bridge between cultures. This thesis is structured in three parts. Part One examines the historical, cultural, social, political, religious, and linguistic factors that went into the making of modern Sudanese literature. Using postcolonial theory, it explores in some depth Sudanese cultural identity and self-identification as expressed in and partly shaped by the evolving literature. That body of written, and, in part, oral expression, was traditionally nourished by the two main streams of Arab and African cultures, but was steadily enriched under British occupation by exposure to Western, and principally English, literature and literary criteria as well as by a modern system of education. The study highlights what it claims to be highly distinctive and…
abstract: This thesis sets out to record, analyze, and assess modern Sudanese literature within its historical, cultural, and political context. It highlights the diversity and distinctiveness of that literature, the wide range of its themes, and the resilience and complex background of its major practitioners. A principal preoccupation of the study, however, is to point out the various challenges this literature, its universality and appeal notwithstanding, poses to translators. The close and intimate connection between its bold and vibrant colloquial expressions and the cultural and geographical environment in which these expressions are entrenched makes the task of the translator, especially one translating into a somewhat “remote” language like English, fraught with difficulty, at times unachievable. The near impossibility of rendering such expressions, proverbs, allusions to religious texts, and metaphors into English is illustrated in many examples. Paradoxically, such inadequacies and challenges, analysed from a semantic and syntactical perspective and investing in translation theory, point to a remarkable resilience and inventiveness of the translators involved as well as to the importance of translation in acting as a bridge between cultures. This thesis is structured in three parts. Part One examines the historical, cultural, social, political, religious, and linguistic factors that went into the making of modern Sudanese literature. Using postcolonial theory, it explores in some depth Sudanese cultural identity and self-identification as expressed in and partly shaped by the evolving literature. That body of written, and, in part, oral expression, was traditionally nourished by the two main streams of Arab and African cultures, but was steadily enriched under British occupation by exposure to Western, and principally English, literature and literary criteria as well as by a modern system of education. The study highlights what it claims to be highly distinctive and…
author: Soghayroon, T.
date published: 2010
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:02:09Z
provider: University of Westminster
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Westminster

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.34737/90804