ktravula – a travelogue!

As a speaker of French as a first language, how has writing in English affected your writing? And how difficult was it to render this book purely in English?

I find English a much simpler language for writing. French can become quite convoluted. My goal with African Expectations was not to write beautiful or intricate language but to convey ideas in the most direct and forceful manner as possible. I found the English language most suited to this requirement. Overall it was fairly easy to render the book purely in English but certain passages in the book, I have had to translate in my head from French to English. At this point, I mostly think and dream in English but sometimes I am unable to convey certain subtleties of thought directly in English. In those instances, I have had to think in French and translate to English. The translation part of the process has been a challenge because I have had to do research to make sure that what I wrote in English actually had the same meaning as the original thought.

From my interview with Mafoya Dossoumon, the author of African Expectations (a new book of essays, available on Amazon) in the new issue of the NigeriansTalk LitMag.