Tydskr. letterkd. vol.53 n.2 Pretoria 2016
Chris Dunton; Professor of Literature in English at the National University of Lesotho, specialising in African literature and rhetoric studies.
Lerato Masiea,Teaches literature in English at the National University of Lesotho
Some years ago Chris Dunton read Traveller to the East, the English translation of Mofolo's Moeti oa Bochabela by Edmund Hugh Ashton (not Harry Ashton, as given on the title-page of the Penguin edition). Dunton found it generally rather dull. This might have had to do with his lack of enthusiasm for the novel's subject matter and for allegory. But that the problem lay elsewhere was suggested by the much more invigorating experience of a subsequent reading of the French translation of the novel, L'homme qui marchait vers le soleil levant. Could it be that the Ellenberger translation was on its own terms a better piece of writing than the Ashton?
The respective titles of the two translations suggested that this might be so. Traveller to the East is perfectly sound as a literal translation of the original.1 It is however rather lacklustre, reminiscent of a London Underground direction indicator. The French, on the other hand, seizes the imagination and has a beautiful cadence.
We undertook a critical comparison of the two translations, Lerato Masiea working between the Sesotho and English and Dunton from the English and French. In addition, Masiea prepared a new English translation of selected passages from the novel