Lexical Gaps and Ideological Shift in the Translation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as “Le Monde S’effondrein French”

Abstract

In translating Chinua Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart, Michel Ligny translates directly Igbo terminologies, realities and beliefs into the French language. This has contributed greatly in the preservation of the beauty and authenticity of the original text. However, the title of the novel is domesticated by Michel Ligny to present a different ideology. Within the framework of Lawrence Venuti (2004) theory of domestication and foreignization of translation, this paper examines the ideological divergence between the title of the original text and the title of the translation. The paper concludes that the ideology that the translated title projects to the French-reader is totally different from the ideology that the original title projects to the English-reader.