A Study of Yoruba-English Proverb Correspondent Strategies in Niyi Ọṣundare’s "Dialogue with my Country"

Abstract

Proverbs are conventionalized expressions whose meanings and usage are context-sensitive. Yorùbá proverbs, like those in many other African societies, function as a powerful rhetorical device to code, embellish, and support arguments, thereby shaping moral consciousness and beliefs. They are essential tools for a skillful bilingual writer like Ọ̀ṣúndáre, who seamlessly manipulates both Yorùbá and English. While the cultural differences between English and Yorùbá people can complicate the transfer of certain ideas, universal concepts such as honesty, love, bravery, and hard work transfer easily. This study adopts Roman Jacobson’s approach to translation equivalence to examine Ọ̀ṣúndáre's essays in Dialogue with my Country. The objectives are to identify instances of Yorùbá proverbs used, analyze how their use constitutes the writer's idiosyncratic ability, and identify the categories of ideas that lend themselves easily to transfer. Using a purposive sample of fifty proverbs selected from fifty percent of the collection’s one hundred essays, findings reveal that Ọ̀ṣúndáre masterfully weaves the traditional elements of Yorùbá proverbs into the English language to represent the current experiences of the people. This is achieved without flaunting English linguistic rules while still maintaining the import of their Yorùbá essence. This corroborates the notion that when two languages have linguistic correspondences, transfer is easy and does not affect the meaning conveyed.