Project Description
A Translation-Theory Approach to Texts from the “African-French”
The linguistic remnants of French colonization in Africa remain tangible today, because French is an official foreign language in many postcolonies. In postcolonial discourse, the very strict rules of this language were mocked by African writers, whose novels formalized subaltern forms of the language. My project addresses the translation-theoretical problems that arise from these novels’ translation into German.
CV
Messan Tossa studied in the Department of German at the University of Lomé, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2014. He now works as an honorary lecturer at the University of Lomé and as a research assistant in the Togo State Archive.
Publications
Friedensdiskurse in der neueren deutschsprachigen Literatur, Berlin 2019|„Das Bild der Togoer in Karl Hasselmanns Erzählung lou“, in: Anna Babka, Amatso Obikoli Assemboni, Laura Beck, Axel Dunker (Hg.), Postkolonialität denken. Spektren germanistischer Forschung in Togo, Wien 2017, S. 245–252|„Versuch über eine afrikanische Moderne“, in: Marie-Therese Mäder, Chantal Metzger, Stefanie Neubert u. a. (Hg.), Brücken bauen – Kulturwissenschaft aus interkultureller und multidisziplinärer Perspektive, Bielefeld 2016, S. 245–256.