Translating cultural transition in Kgebetli Moele’s "Room 207"
Date
2010-07
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AOSIS Publishing
Abstract
This article deals with the issue of cultural translation in a
postapartheid text through the analysis of language, setting and
discourse to highlight cultural transition in a society where
socio-political mutations elicit new literary codes and symbols.
The discussion is developed around concepts such as gender
and ethnic identity or citizenship in a geographical environment
where multi- and transcultural identities are endlessly being
contested. The concept of translation is explored to show how
Moele’s text represents cultural transition within a postapartheid
urban context by analysing the authorial transposition of
everyday experience into the textual fabric. The article also
examines how the narrative voice negotiates across the current
multicultural divide in order to highlight cultural change both in
South African literature and in society as a whole. This article
addresses in the discussion the controversial debate raised by
Michael Titlestad’s (2007) review of the book published in the
“Sunday times” on 25 March in which the critic evinces a negative
reception of the book. This is used as a point of departure
in order to explore a wide range of possibilities that fiction can
offer by means of textual representation of the daily experience
of black people in a postapartheid urban context.
Description
Please cite as follows:
Ibinga, S. S. 2010. Translating cultural transition in Kgebetli Moele’s Room 207. Literator, 31(1):57-76, doi:10.4102/lit.v31i1.37.
The original publication is available at http://literator.org.za
Ibinga, S. S. 2010. Translating cultural transition in Kgebetli Moele’s Room 207. Literator, 31(1):57-76, doi:10.4102/lit.v31i1.37.
The original publication is available at http://literator.org.za
Keywords
Translating and interpreting, Cultural transition, Moele, Kgebetli -- Room 207, Moele, Kgebetli -- Criticism and interpretation
Citation
Ibinga, S. S. 2010. Translating cultural transition in Kgebetli Moele’s Room 207. Literator, 31(1):57-76, doi:10.4102/lit.v31i1.37.