Translation as Liberal Art: Four Voices

Abstract

This paper delivers to the reader something of the drama that was at the centre of the colonized countries, from beginning to end. It seeks to conceive the individual art of the indomitable Martinican poet and dramatist Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), for writing one of the classics of Caribbean writing -- A Tempest (AT). A strong social and political conscience informs the play, hoping to liberate the literary mind of Césaire against the classical colonial ambition of the disturbing work of Shakespeare-- The Tempest (TT). The key question to this paper is: how each of these two texts, in a feasible dialogic way, shades into one another, and if this new version one adapted with some distance from the original for more imaginative work? Thus, my take has been to deploy the dialogic ideas of the language philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, specifically the art of answerability. I argue here that Cesaire’s call for a reclaiming of a self-other duality marks as a force for social change and liberation.