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Item German studies in Africa: towards “Pan-African Germanistik”(Faculty of Arts, University of Uyo, Nigeria, 2018-05) Eke, J. N.This paper explores the conflict of interests between Pan-Africanist aspiration for an Africa (and her Diaspora) that is self-confident and free from cultural and other forms of foreign domination and the discipline of Germanistik1 in postcolonial Africa that represents German nationalist aspirations and advances in Euro-Western cultural identity ideals. This conflict resonates the paradox of being a Germanist and a Pan-Africanist that is relevant to the study, learning and teaching of 'things German'2 in institutions of learning in Africa. Adopting historical comparative and critical intercultural analyses of secondary historical and ideational data sourced through close reading, the paper reviews the respective (pan-nationalist) conceptualization and history of Pan-Africanism and Germanistik, examines the cultural context of conflict between the two and the mediatory approaches to the conflict in the study and teaching of 'things German' in Africa. The paper concludes that Germanistik needs to be 'truly' reinvented as “African-Germanistik” in the African postcolonial educational environment for it to reconcile itself with the aspirations of Africans and build a synthesis for mutual acceptance, cooperation, and development.Item Kinship honorifics and intercultural communication in German translations of things fall apart and arrow of God(Department of Communication and Language Arts, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, 2017) Eke, J. N.This paper examines honorifics that mirror cultural and social standings and attitudes within the kinship system of the Igbo of Africa and, thereby, provides an understanding of the cultural constitution and identity of the society. Variations in kinship systems and terms across cultures create difficulty in the transfer of cultural knowledge through translation - instanced here with Igbo and German cultures. This difficulty, therefore, demands that a translator does a close reading of cultural narrative contexts of kinship honorifics usages to avoid misrepresentation of cultures and to achieve intercultural understanding.Item Skopos translator theory, text-type and the African postcolonial text in intercultural postcolonial communication(John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016) Eke, J. N.The postcolonial text is a political and ideological text that is differentiable in translation. This is because of its location in the dialogic and discursive communicative exchange between former colonizer and formal colonized cultures and societies. This communitive exchange takes place in the situation and condition of asymmetrical relations and relations of inequality and involve the contestation of histories, cultures, meaning, identities and representation. The functionally of the postcolonial text with its message IS fixated on this dialogue and discourse; and each postcolonial text is a single statement directly and specifically responding to this dialogue and discourse in some ways. This paper examines the African postcolonial text and its communicative location in the of postcolonial theory and possibilities offers by the skopos functional theory in translation to set aside the purpose and function on the source text intended by the author. Using Chinua Achebe’s text, it would conclude that the mediator role of the translator in the dialogic and discursive exchange between former colorizer and former colonized cultured and societies need not become interference in the applications of the skopos theory.Item Benennung und umbenennung personennamen in interkultureller kommunikation: rechtschreibfehler als umbenennung in der deutschen ubersetzung von things fall apart und arrow of God von Chinua Achebe(2015-05) Eke, J. N.Personal proper names are often treated as mere ‘defining labels’ lacking in meaning, whose translation is a smooth process of transference that requires no serious decision-making process. This assumption in many extant studies quite often leads to a less adequate attention paid to their translations and, therefore, their full importance and significance in, especially narratives, are not emphasized in the target text. Employing textual and translation analyses and illustrating with purposively selected text units from the German translations of Chinua Achebe’s novels, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, this paper argues that personal proper names are meaningful beyond being mere referents. They are not only part of the cultural universe of a source text, especially an African cultural source text, they are also an important part of the cultural plot and can bear multiple shades of meanings. Close attention must, therefore, be paid to their orthography in the transference process of translation, in order to adequately render them into the target text in intercultural narrative communication contexts.Item Cultural distance, memory and the perception of otherness: Chinua Achebe’s narratives as intercultural mediation(Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, 2015) Eke, J. N.Cultural distance and cultural memory are two phenomena that are critical in intercultural dialogue and relations. This is because both are connected with the perception and management of difference in cultural knowledge, identity relations and representations. Intercultural relations between Europe and Africa have continued to be bogged down by the crisis of difference, asymmetry and inequality that engage the interest of African postcolonial narratives, for instance those of Chinua Achebe. This paper argues that Achebe's writing back to the empire through his narratives, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, rather than being seen only as a one-sided attack on Euro-Western chauvinism, is an act of intercultural mediation by an 'involved mediator', who engages cultural memory texts to reduce cultural distance and to call for mutual understanding and accommodation between African and European cultures.Item A historico-cultural trail of cultural distance in intercultural postcolonial relations: between the Igbo African and GermanEuropean Cultures(Department of European Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, 2013) Eke, J. N.Cultural Distance (CD), the mean of proximity and distance resultant from cultural difference, is critical to intercultural postcolonial relations of asymmetry and textual interpretive practices like translation, media imaging of the other and the like. This is because it potentially affects interpersonal, intergroup, business and interstate relations. It can also affect the understanding of cultural text units, images and contexts, as well as attitude to and reception of the otherness of the culturally different. Whereas CD has been measured by variables subjected to mathematical calculations, this paper used the spatial and temporal convergence and divergence between the Igbo African and the German European cultures as a subset ol that between Europe and Africa in general. Adopting a historical comparative and textual analyses of data, it suggests a view oi CD in an intercultural postcolonial context between Europeans and Africans in the relations of Europeans to their traditional pasts and to the African traditional cultural other.Item Postcoloniality, proverbs and intercultural dialogue: translating African postcolonial texts, things fall apart and arrow of god, into German(Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, 2013) Eke, J. N.The proverb is not only an oral form that enhances immediate communication and mends social conflict, especially in traditional societies, it is also a vista to the knowledge and understanding of the cultural other at the various levels of content and context of the proverb. This latter function makes the use of proverbs in African postcolonial literary texts particularly meaningful and significant in the relations of asymmetry that characterises ex-coloniser and ex- colonised societies in textual cultural relations mediated through translation. The cultural knowledge and cultural identity markers borne in proverbs can, however, be contested, distorted or affirmed in translations: thus making proverb translation a unique space of cultural identity and meaning contest. Illustrating with proverbs purposively selected from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God and their German translations, this article demonstrates the ‘embeddedness’ of proverbs in the conflictual dialogue and discourse of postcolonial textual relations and identity ascription. It emphasises the need that the approaches and strategies for their translation take cognisance of this dialogic discourse and of the authorial communicative purpose of the texts.Item Translating the African postcolony:the conflict of selves, Intercultural dialogue and the location of the translator in the German translation of things fall apart and arrow of God(2012) Eke, J. N.The translation of African postcolonial literatures into Western languages bespeaks the cultural encounter and intercultural relations of asymmetry that subsists at the dialogic and discursive spheres in the African postcolony between "ex-colonized" African cultures and societies and "excolonizer" Western cultures and societies. It also mirrors the location-in-conflict of the translator, especially the Western translator, of African postcolonial literatures, who deliberately or not, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or subconsciously mediates the conflict of cultural identities. This paper illustrates this in-between location-in-conflict of the Western translator of postcolonial African literatures in the German translation of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God and points to the critical position of the translator of African postcolonial texts in the dialogue between cultures in asymmetrical relations and, consequently, the ethical demand on the him/her to provide adequate and true representation of the identity of African source cultures in order to promote a progressive dialogue between cultures.Item Postcoloniality, interculturality and cultural identity: the African foreign culture classroom as a postcolony(Ibadan Journal of European studies, 2006) Eke, J. N.The experience of colonialism and the neo-colonial practices of the Western Metropole, including the categorization of Africa as area in the disciplinary structuring of knowledge in the academia, sustain in the African teacher of Western culture, in the least, an ambivalent attitude towards the African cultural self and sets off, as well, an undercurrent of cultural asymmetry and cultural identity conflict in the African foreign culture classroom. This ambivalent attitude potentially affects the representation of both the African and the Western cultural identities and shapes the attitude of the African learner of Western culture towards his/her African cultural identity. This paper emphasizes the critical positioning of the (African) teacher of Western cultures to African learners in the cultural identity dialogue between Africa and the West and posits that appropriate and authentic knowledge both of the West and Africa, cultural self-knowledge and cultural self-acceptance are critical base knowledge required of the teacher - of Western culture to African .learners. This base knowledge combined with a “postcolonial Intercultural” model to foreign culture teaching and learning will enable the teacher to deal with the postcoloniality, asymmetry and conflict of cultural identities inherent in the African foreign culture classroom.