Presenting a pre-translation text analysis of Chinua Achebe’s novel A Man of the People

Abstract

This article presents a pre-translation text analysis (PTA) of the novel A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe. PTA focuses on collecting intra-textual and extra-textual information (Nord 1991) about the source text. The process of gathering intra-textual information involves a thorough analysis of the source text’s linguistic peculiarities, whereas the analysis of extra-textual information focuses on the communicative properties of both source and target texts. In practice, PTA is essentially multidisciplinary, drawing on linguistics, translation theory, text typology and cultural studies. As such, the theoretical framework for this article is eclectic, borrowing from these fields of study. This study follows a qualitative approach. The data are derived from the satiric novel A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe and should not be regarded as empirical evidence. There is a dearth of published work on PTA relating to African indigenous-language literature, for example, literature in Setswana.
Contribution: This lacuna represents a gap in the knowledge base that warrants attention and provides a rationale for the current study. The findings of this paper will help guide translator trainees on the analysis required before embarking on the actual translation of a literary text.