Translation and tragedy: Aimé Césaire's La Tragédie Du Roi Christophe in English translation

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present a descriptive and comparative analysis of the play of Aimé Césaire, La tragédie du roi Christophe and its translation by Breslin and Ney, with a particular focus on the rich translators’ notes that accompany the English version. The analysis explains the intended function of the translation and the stylistic stance adopted by the translators in rendering Césaire’s heteroglossic style. Postcolonial literature and the uniqueness of its translation, as well as the expansion of the Caribbean literature and the Négritude literature in terms of translation are approached in the study. Gérard Genette’s (1997) model is used to examine the paratextual elements, while Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model serves to analyse the translation of the play from French into English.