Invitation - Workshop "Traduisons ensemble! Hands on translation workshop from French into English"

« The original is not true to the translation », J.L. Borges

Join us on Tuesday 18 March, for an exciting workshop on translation, organised as part of IFRA-Nigeria Methods series! We welcome Mona de Pracontal, an award-winning translator of literary works from English to French. She won the prestigious Baudelaire Prize in 2009 for her translation of Half of a Yellow Sun, and went on to translate several of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novels in French (Purple Hibiscus, The thing around your neck, Notes on Grief and more).

Join her for a two-hour wander through the mysterious and magical meanders of literary translation. The group, working together, solo or in pairs, will explore and discuss not only the meaning, but most importantly the tone, nuances and references of the source text – in French, and find its "voice" in order to recreate it in the target text – in English.  You will work on the opening of a graphic novel.

The workshop will be followed by a  Q&A in which Mona will be happy to share her life-long experience as a translator, discussing any translating issues that participants might chose to  bring up, including questions on her approach to translating Nigerian fiction, namely novels and stories by Chimamanda N. Adichie and, more recently, Chigozie Obioma, with a focus on dialogues, oral English and Naijà.

Practical information

Date and time: 18 March, from 10am to 12pm

Location: IFRA's Resources Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan

Requirements: Participants should have an intermediate to advanced level of French, and an interest in translation.

Apply here: https://forms.gle/MKNmteswN2qL9cBaA

Deadline for application: 13 March 2025

Click below to learn more about Mona de Pracontal !

Biography:

Mona de Pracontal graduated in English and American Studies in Paris, and in film history and filmmaking in New York, where she lived for 3 years. She began translating as a student and has never stopped, with forays into the film industry and conference interpreting. Her major translations include works from various English-speaking countries, with fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chigozie Obioma, Hannah Tinti, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Rick Riordan, Frank Baum, Howard Norman and Kaye Gibbons, Cynan Jones, Melvin Burgess and Hanif Kureishi, Conor O'Callaghan and Neil Hegarty, as well as non-fiction by William Burroughs, Gloria Steinem and Eve Ensler.

She received the Baudelaire Prize for literary translation in 2009 for Half of a yellow sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Irish Foundation's translation Prize in 2019 for Nothing on Earth by Conor O’Callaghan, and, in 2024, the Translated Literature Award of the Gradignan Festival for her rendering of The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, by Nathaniel I. Miller.

 La Route qui Mène au pays, her translation of Chigozie Obioma's The Road to the Country, just came out in January in France.