Teeth Marks: The Translator's Dilemma

by
Chigozie Obioma
From the January/February 2016 issue of
Poets & Writers Magazine
12.15.15

A Nigerian-born author and professor provides an in-depth look at two versions of the same text, one in the original Yoruba, and an English translation by Nobel Prize–winning author and translator Wole Soyinka. In his comparison of the two, Obioma poses the question: Is the writer who translates another writer preforming an act of creation or destruction?