Overlapping Sociolinguistic Underpinnings with Semantic Aspects of Cross-cultural Communication in African Drama Texts Translation

Abstract

Analyzing semantic aspects of cross-cultural communication in drama texts translation within the African socio-cultural perspective constitutes a major challenge in the field of sociolinguistics, especially in this era of globalization influenced by aided technology, linguistic diffusion, and socio-cultural identity adulteration. Within this perspective, it is obliging for translation problems to constitute the core of communication across cultures, especially African cultures that are still considered rudimentary. The fact that many African languages do not exist in written forms constitutes a limitation to the effective transference of mother tongue socio-cultural linguistic nuances to learned official languages entangled with sociocultural context meanings of actions, thoughts and feelings as lived and experienced within the immediate or larger linguistic community. Present trends on effective drama text translation – (delocalization, polarization between performability and readability) are in favor of reviewing social structures as meaning oriented, while observed behavior is now equally being recognized as a manifestation of a deeper set of codes and rules. From this, the task of the translator is seen more as that of unraveling contextually appropriate communication within cultural frames than just a lexicosemantic restitution of texts. This study sets out to examine the convergent stances in sociology and linguistics and to postulate that the language used in a social context raises serious questions about language and communication in heterogeneous speech communities. The paper further argues that analyzing semantic aspects of cross-cultural communication in drama texts translation within the African socio-cultural perspective constitutes a major challenge in communicating across cultures since translators must sort to establish the highest possible degree of semantic agreement and intelligibility. The paper rabes up with the justification as to why sociolinguistic analysis should have precedence over semantics, for not only what is said is central to translation but how, to whom, in what manner and under what particular social circumstances must be seen as semantic markers.