ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by exposing the main debates over what constitutes oral literature, folklore, orature, and how orality is or should be disseminated, for what purposes, and by which means. To speak of oral literature is to speak of storytelling in its infinite manifestations. Oral literature occupies the liminal space between anthropological and literary fictions. The lore text makes its interpretative community feel at home, but, to others, stories. The translation of orature requires a face-to-face interaction that uses tradition to mark the continuity of human experience. Translation includes multiple modes of reading with ethical and political implications, and multimodal translation can be particularly hard because there are too many intercultural dimensions to consider at each turn. The rhetorical modes of signification in proverbs and their translation adhere to literary and cultural conventions as well as contest them by establishing a personal mode of reading.
