Paper short abstract:

This paper takes the visit of Kofi Awoonor to Beijing in 1963 as an example. It argues that translation as an event on the textual, diplomatic and epistemological level was used to form transnational solidarity and emotional bonds among the newly independent nations in a joint decolonizing movement.

Paper long abstract:

Translation has never been a one-way travel and cannot be detached from the context. On August 25, 1963, Kofi Awoonor, still known as George Awoonor Williams, dressed up in traditional clothes and performed his poems Black Eagle Awakens with an African drum in a poetry recitation concert in Beijing. His performance and translation of the poem together with Chinese writers’ travelogues about Africa formed Chinese understanding and literary representations of Africa. The event was also part of the literary decolonization among the “Third World” in the 1960s. Coming to China as the secretary of the Ghana Society of Writers and editor of the magazine Okyeame, Kofi Awoonor actively engaged with the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau and the Ghanaian politics. How national, international and global politics gave rise to textual and cultural translations? What kind of power dynamics, relationality and strategies were involved in the translating process? And how oral and written texts as well as paratexts feature in the process? This paper takes the visit of Kofi Awoonor to Beijing in 1963 as an example. It argues that translation as an event on the textual, diplomatic and epistemological level was used to form transnational solidarity and emotional bonds among the newly independent nations in a joint decolonizing movement.