Writing through Translating and Translating through Writing: Antjie Krog as writer/translator

Abstract

This dissertation explores Antjie Krog as translator within the Afrikaans and English literary field in South Africa. The focus of the study is primarily on Krog’s translation of her own work, namely her prose works Country of my skull and A change of tongue/’n Ander tongval, and poetry Down to my last skin, die sterre sê ‘tsau’/the stars say ‘tsau’ and Verweerskrif/Body bereft. Although Krog is also renowned for her work as translator of others’ work, the concept self translation is particularly relevant for this study: to write through translation and translate through writing.

The study has a dual objective: on a polysystemic level Krog’s position and status as translator and that of her translation products within the Afrikaans and English literary field in South Africa is researched; on a socio-cultural level Bourdieu’s concept habitus is employed in order to explore the underlying force behind Krog’s translation process. The focus throughout is on Krog’s double writing, the overlapping of the act of writing and the act of translating as it resonates on textual and metatextual level. Although a Bourdieusian reading of translations is a relatively unexplored terrain in the South African translation field, this study aims to add fresh insights into a dispositional view of the translator in his or her space within the literary field. In the course of this study philosophical concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, Kristeva andBhabha are employed. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept minor literature is employed insofar the act of translation and the translation product reflects a different subjectivity. Kristeva’s concept the abject is likewise explored in the way it is reflected in Krog’s writing and translating. In the end it is argued that Krog, when writing in her non-mother tongue and when translating, is situated in a hybrid space, an in-between space. This study thus shifts from a polysystemic analysis of Krog’s translation products to a more individual approach and the notion that Krog’s habitus as writer is inextricably linked to her habitus as translator; that translation is an embodied process.