A Critique of Uffelmann’s German Translation of Soyinka’s Aké Years of Childhood: Closing the Missing Gap
Ezekiel O. OLAGUNJU, Akintoye S. JAPHET

Abstract
Uffelmann’s Aké, Jahre der Kindheit is a German translation of Soyinka’sAké Years of Childhood. Uffelmann’s translation demonstrated a high degree of faithfulness to the source text as can be accessed by a native speaker of English. However, it failed to reproduce some prominent Soyinka’s styles rooted in his mother tongue, Yoruba. The paper therefore identified the hidden Yoruba styles in the source text with the aim to providing better German equivalence of the author’s original intention. Using Nida’s dynamic equivalence, Aké, Jahre der Kindheit and Aké Years of Childhood were closely studied with competence in the language of the source text, (English), the language of the target text, and the language of the prevailing styles in the source text (Yoruba). The paper recommends that the translation of Soyinka’s work of a similar style will require competence in the three languages.

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