A linguistic account of the translations of Saint-Exupéry’s “Le Petit Prince” into two Portuguese Upper Guinea Creoles, Santiaguense Capeverdean and Casamancese
Résumé
In 2013 and 2015, our linguistic team successively published two translations in Capeverdean Creole (CVC) and in Casamance Creole (CAS) of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince 'The Little Prince', the most famous book ever written in French, now available in almost 300 different languages of the World.
The process of translations of Saint-Exupéry’s “Le Petit Prince” into two Afro-Portuguese Upper Guinea Creoles, Santiaguense Capeverdean and Casamancese, was a very rich linguistic experiment, which allowed us to better understand or investigate various facets of both Casamance and Capeverdean Creoles.
First, the contrast between the original language (French) and the target languages (the two Creoles at stake). Second, the necessity to find exact equivalents of the French original. Third, the opportunity to better understand the contrast between CVC and CAS, specifically in what regards their lexical relationship to Portuguese. Fourth, in particular in the case of CAS, the translation of Saint-Exupéry's book gave us the chance to gather a first series of data concerning the internal variation of the language.