Introduction

This chapter presents a survey on the range of translation strategies used to render a variety of different types of basilectal and mesolectal usage, ranging from depictions of the French used by uneducated Africans in novels set in the colonial period to depictions of contemporary uses of French in more recent publications. It identifies and discusses the range of translation approaches adopted in dealing with basilectal French in the speech or narration of adult characters in post-independence novels. When describing the linguistic situation in Francophone Africa, the mesolectal varieties of African French, in the plural, rather than to attempt to define a single African French mesolect. The chapters also focuses on the translation of mesolectal variation to features: semantic neologisms, borrowings, calqued expressions, derivation, and grammatical and paralinguistic variation. The term 'franwolof' is listed in Les Mots du patrimoine, a dictionary of Senegalese French, suggesting that it forms part of the mesolectal variety of French spoken in Senegal.