Souleymane Bachir Diagne's (Columbia) book, From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation is in line with a philosophy that, from the German Romantics to Antoine Berman and Paul Ricœur, considers translation to be a human and humanistic response to “the curse of Babel.”

But does viewing translation as “linguistic hospitality” mean failing to see the power relations and violence between languages that come into contact?

In particular, the relationship, in a (post)colonial context, between colonised imaginaries and the imperial language into which they are translated?

We will ask these questions in relation to the notion of African literature written in French.