N°021_Vol.4_16

Introduction: Multilingualism is a pervasive feature of human communities due to linguistic diversity, colonialism, business, and migration. The invisible hand in language (Keller, 1994; Algeo, 2010) represents a key player in framing the coexistence and interactions between distinctive linguistic communities. In this context, and for the social and  professional need to bridge multilingual communities, translation appears both as a historical necessity and a contemporary imperative for education, science, and social inclusion (Antony-Newman, 2026; Brashi, 2025). With the tremendous development of Information and Communication Technologies, the world has become a global village, which allows professionals in business, legal, medical, and diplomatic fields to offer their services across various linguistic communities, which amplifies the significance of accurate translation (Chan, 2023; Chuanmao and Juntao, 2024).

This scientific study seeks to examine translation in its general border-crossing facility status and, more specifically, in the ability of translators to remain faithful  to cultural and language variation features. Indeed, translators are constantly confronted with  the task of mediating between multiple codes, identities, and communicative norms to bridge one linguistically coded message across communities while keeping the message unaltered. To accurately explore and analyse translation fidelity, this study first focuses on how translation negotiates the grammatical mismatches of syntactic complexity between languages, cultural linguistic patterns, and the stylistic representations of identity, class, and context in relation to the social varieties of language.

I was prompted to carry out this study following the linguistic dissonance I encountered upon reading Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy, a novel written in rotten English. The author’s deliberate choice to craft his literary writing in a non-standard, hybrid variety of English that combines Nigerian Pidgin, local idioms, and simplified English grammar led me to wonder how a translated version could remain faithful in all regards. Language responds to and reproduces the context in which it is used, and the socio-political, cultural, cognitive, and physical contexts strongly influence the messages and style of written literary works (Uwasomba, 2010). This study thus carries out a lexical, syntactic, semantic shift, and language variety on the French translated version Pétit Minitaire to shed light on the comparative stylistics operations undertaken by the translators and check its level of fidelity to the original text. The translators themselves are aware of the peculiar translation particularity of this novel, as they indicate:

• The essential problem confronting the translators of Sozaboy has been that of reconciling two contradictory demands: how to render this language, which Ken Saro-Wiwa himself claims is « rotten », accessible to the widest possible readership without betraying the author’s evident stylistic choice. …If one chooses to simplify — and to what extent? — in order to render the language immediately comprehensible to the entire French-speaking community, does one not run the risk of alienating the African readership, who is familiar with and speaks the variety of French adopted, and who rightly expects fidelity of tone? (p. 19) [My translation]

Thus, the main research question in this study is: What are the linguistic styles and language varieties deployed by the author in Sozaboy for meaning construction and the translation techniques applied in its French version Pétit Minitaire to remain faithful to the source text. In this perspective, this study aims to answer the following two specific research questions: first, what are the types of units of thought and deviant language patterns assembled by Ken Saro-Wiwa to construe meaning in Sozaboy? Second, what are the specific translation methods used to render it into French?

Through the answers to these main and specific research questions, this paper intends to set the overall direction and scope of the study which consists, in broad terms, in analysing, describing and assessing the way the translators managed to successfully bridge the marked and idiosyncratic language pattern used by Saro-Wiwa in his novel Sozaboy into French. This general objective branches into two specific components: first, the identification of the language techniques and meaning construction devices used by the author in his novel, and second, the identification, analysis, description, and assessment of the specific translation methods used to achieve its French version. To offer a preview of the anticipated outcomes of this research, the study hypothesises that the author used a deliberate authorial iconoclastic blend of linguistic features that have been rendered into French while considering the whole style, message, and sociolinguistic mind of the writer and not the lexemes taken individually.