Slipper Satin and the South African short story: Catalan translation and analysis

Abstract

[eng] The present study is meant to provide a syntactic analysis on the Catalan translation of Slipper Satin, a short story by Alex La Guma that is first contextualized from a postcolonial approach. This takes into consideration the geographic and the sociopolitical context that influence the author’s personal and professional background: his life and his writing career. To successfully engage in such a discussion, this project includes a translation proposal of one of the author’s most illustrative short stories about the South-African condition and the non-white community. Further on, the short story and the translated text will be under scrutiny by means of a syntactic analysis, focusing on a variety of translation techniques. Hence, the study will thus prove Slipper Satin to be illustrative of the intricacies of the South-African short story as a literary subgenre possible of covering serious political matters, such as the undermining social conditions led by the apartheid regime in South Africa, a central area of Alex La Guma’s literary career.