The encounter of James Kirkup's The African Child with Camara

Laye's L'Enfant Noir has resulted in the latter work enjoying an

apparently everlasting popularity, with its latest Plon edition coming

out as recently as March 2006.

Our intention here is not to make a purely literary study of the two

works, but rather a parallel study of problems of translation that they

contain. By translation is meant here Laye's transposition of his

Malinke culture into the French language on the one hand, and on the

other, Kirkup's rewriting of Laye's text into English.

Our objective is twofold:

- Go along with what translation specialists have been discussing

for quite some time now-that the translator necessarily works under

the influence of external factors such as historical, cultural, even

economic contingences.

- Go beyond this conception and argue that, depending on

circumstances, the influencing factors can come right from within the

translator him/herself.

In the final analysis, a possibly utopian but perfectly relevant claim

is expressed: the need for some sort of freedom of translation!