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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Two languages books
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Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 04:38:19 GMT
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In article <56c43v$5n9@power.ci.uv.es>, Usuario SALA CIUV <guest@uv.es> wrote:
>
>  I am looking for books in what two or more language are mixed. That is, for 
>instance, a book in English in which some dialogues are written in Spanish 
>just to show the importance of Spanish culture in Miami (this is only an 
>invented exemple). I am interested, actually, in how have been translated 
>these books.

	A very interesting example is Ngugi wa Thiongo's _Devil on the
Cross_ (sorry, I don't recall the original title offhand), which is 
written in Gikuyu [a language of Kenya] with extensive passages in
English and Swahili [the most common lingua francas of that country].  In
the English translation that I read, passages originally appearing in
English or Swahili were printed in italics.  A few Swahili words (such as
Uhuru "independence") were not translated, but explained in notes.

	Although the non-Gikuyu passages can be quite long, they still
make up only a fraction of the text.  Nevertheless, this fraction is 
higher than for any other "multilingual" novels I've read.  Generally, the
proportion of text in the non-dominant language seems to be less than 1%
and confined mainly to dialogue.  Has anyone encountred books with a more
equitable mixture of languages?  (Besides _Finnegan's Wake_, which seems
to be the ultimate in language mixture; how people have managed to
translate this, I'll never understand.)
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
