“I Have Taken Ownership of English” Translating Hybridity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Transcultural Writing 1

Abstract

This chapter highlights the manner in which linguistic hybridity, reflected in the author’s specific use of English, becomes a challenge for readers and translators alike. Without a doubt, both reading and translating her creative writing is an interesting experience that enables the reader to appreciate the extent to which English is currently used in many and varied ways around the globe. One of the ways in which the tension between the global and the local is negotiated in Adichie’s writing is in her use of a transcultural form of English within the text. In her transcultural writing, Adichie succeeds in conveying the cultural and linguistic complexity of the Nigerian environment in great detail, but this is not always adequately transmitted in the Spanish translations of her works. The emergence of transcultural art forms, including musical genres, offers new perspectives for diverse fields of study.