SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In February 2023, Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho tweeted a cover of Muddassir S. Abdullahi’s yet-to-be-published Hausa-language translation of Coelho’s bestselling novel The Alchemist to his 15.2 million followers. At the same time Ibrahim Sheme was putting the finishing touches on his Hausa translation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Both cases show Hausa literary voices engaging in global conversations about world literature through translation. In this article, I draw on recent interviews with translators and publishers in Northern Nigeria to give a brief history of translation between English and Hausa, and then I make three linked interventions. First, I examine the ideal of translation as a cosmopolitan practice that enables stories and ideas to cross the boundaries of language. Second, I point out how this ideal is complicated by imbalances of power and by gatekeeping in both English- and Hausa-language literary spaces. Finally, I address the anxieties of publishers and editors about how readers of translations might respond to the crossing of language, cultural, and stylistic boundaries. I end with thoughts on the structures needed to successfully translate, publish, and market a translated literary text to audiences of Hausa and English.