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from=lycos Chinua Achebes first novel focuses on the early period of colonialism in Nigeria, beginning with the initial influence of the British. Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe, was published in 1958. Achebe extraordinarily portrays the impact of a Europeans on the way of life in an Eastern Nigerian village. Chinua Achebe creates a coherent picture of coherence being lost, of the tragic consequences of the AfricanEuropean collision (Culross Chinua). In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe relays an indigenous perspective of European imperialism. Achebe uses his vivid imagery and symbolism as a guide to portray the post colonialism transitions of the African society. Post Colonialism is the social, political, economic, and cultural practices which arise in response and resistance to colonialism (post colonialism). In some cases of the postcolonial theory, resistance became a major concept. Resistance in many colonized countries leads to the new ideas of human freedom (Some Issues, 1). This independeant ideology had never been an issue before. Many cultures became a hybrid, an integration of cultural signs and practices from the colonizing and the colonized countries (Some Issues, 4). Post colonial literature is often self-consciously a literature of otherness and resistance, and is written out of the specific local experience (Some Issues, 7). Nigerian literature before colonization was past along thru oral traditions. Oral literature required skilled artists to chant lengthy tales that were about their history and genealogy. In Bade Ajuwons article, Oral and Written Literature in Nigeria, he explains: Pre-literate Nigeria once enjoyed a verbal art civilization which, at its high point, was warmly patronized by traditional rulers and the general public. At a period when writing was unknown, the oral medium served the people as a bank for the preservation of their ancient experiences and beliefs. Much of the evidence that related to the past of Nigeria, therefore, could be found in oral traditions. During the Eighteenth Century, Western influences such as Arabic ideas and culture began disturbing Nigerian Literature. Throughout the nineteenth century, western missionaries brought the ideas of western education into Nigeria. Over the years, more and more authors wrote in English telling the tales of African history. Among these authors was Chinua Achebe, who in his novel, Things Fall Apart, wrote about how the arrival of European missionaries caused the decline and division of the Igbo clans in Africa. Igbo folklore saturates the novel, preserving the African elements despite the English prose (Gardner, 3). Nigerian Literature went from a focus on oral story telling of the history to written in other languages such as Arabic and English. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe uses the quote from William B. Yeats poem The Second Coming: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; More anarchy is loosed upon the world. (Achebe, 1). to illustrate the chaos when the African system collapses due to the rise of the British Empire in Nigeria. Achebe opens his novel revealing the protagonist in the novel Okonkwo. He is a young, wealthy and respected warrior who is a prominent man of the Igbo society. His father, Unoka, was a poor man and a failure in the minds of Okonkwo and the fellow villagers. This substantial fact led to Okonkwos strive to never become like his father. To achieve this, he ruled his household with fear and saw feminity as weakness. These drastic traits distinguished him so differently from his father, that he believed he had achieved masculinity. At a meeting of clansman, it is decided that Okonkwo will travel to Mbano,

to make an offer of peace to prevent the outbreak of war. He chooses to receive a fifteenyear-old boy named Ikemefuna, onto his household. As time passes, Ikemefuna builds relationships with family members and eventually comes to call Okonkwo, father. Later, Okonkwo is informed that the Oracle of the Hills has decreed the death of Ikemefuna. This sends Okonkwo in a deep depression, beginning his downward spiral of flaws. At the announcement of the death of an elder tribesman, whom was a great warrior, Okonkwo accidentally fires his gun resulting in the death of Ezedues sixteenyear-old son. By this abominable act, Okonkwo is forced to exile and is stripped of his titles he has worked so vigorously for. After his seven years in exile, he returns to Umuofia in hopes to salvage his superior status. Upon his arrival, he is surprised when he finds that strange, new people have inhabited the area and have began to express their ideas upon the villagers. The converts to this new way (Christianity) increase, and soon came to include Okonkwos own son, Nwoye. These events spark a further depression in Okonkwo as he realizes his society is falling apart and all the achievements he has worked for have diminished to nothing. This forces him to commit suicide by hanging himself on a tree. Achebe transforms the language throughout Things Fall Apart, to in turn distinguish between his writings, from other English novels. All through the novel, Achebe keeps a sense of Nigerian tradition by translating Ibo proverbs into English words and connects them throughout his writings. Achebe deliberately introduces the rhythms, speech patterns, idioms and other verbal nuances of Ibo (Culross Use of Language) to give readers a sense of understanding behind Africans background and culture. He uses the language through the novel to in turn describe the relationship between the society, the individual and the destruction of their culture. In the novel Achebe provides an example of the differences between African languages. The villagers of Umuofia make fun of the translator for Mr. Brown, because the language in which he uses is slightly different from their native tongue. The struggle between change and tradition is very well shown through the novel. The reality of the change affects different characters in different ways. As seen throughout the novel, the main character Okonkwo, resists the new political and religious changes once returning from exile. In turn some of Okonkwos resistance to the changes are due to his social status among the clan. Things Fall Apart is indeed a classic study of cross-cultural misunderstanding and the consequences to the rest of humanity, when a belligerent culture or civilization, out of sheer arrogance and ethnocentrism, takes it upon itself to invade another culture, another civilization (Emenyonu,84) The government of Umuofia is not made up of kings or chiefs but is a highly democratic and respected government. This in turn is something that the outsiders, in this case the British Empire, do not seem to see. The British culture calls for a leader among the people or an anarchy and they insist on influencing that upon the African culture. One of the main reasons for such a cultural clash is the lack of social interaction and understanding between the two cultures. In this case the British culture does not speak the same language as the Nigerian people in the novel. They have different religions and ideas. At the end of the novel, this misunderstanding between them did not in fact end, it continued on because we see that by the history itself it was the colonizers who wrote the history of that area. Achebe portrays the Nigerian society, especially the Ibo society before colonization by the white man. Achebe shows the role of women in the Ibo tradition, wife beating was allowed. There are several instances in which Okonkwo beats his second wife. The first time Okonkwo beat his wife was when

she did not return home to cook his meal, and in return he beat her. The second time was when she referred to him as guns that never shot. However, it is not until Okonkwos exile that the importance of womens roles comes forth. In his society anything strong was considered manly and anything weak was considered feminine. It is obvious that to the characters in Things Fall Apart, women are "things" to be exploited and to serve as second-class citizens to the rank of male privilege. "It was clear from the way the crowd stood or sat that the ceremony was for men. There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe like outsiders" (Achebe 62). Achebe shows that women were seen as wives, mothers and were to tend to the household chores while the men took on the more important responsibilities. In conclusion, Achebe extraordinarily portrays the impact of a European society on the way of life in an Eastern Nigerian village thru his use of language, cultural perspectives and the role of the women seen within the novel. He successfully uses his vivid imagery and symbolism as a guide throughout the novel to portray the post colonialism transitions of the African Society.
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Anthropology (pron.: /nrpldi/) is the "science of humanity." [1] It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences.[2] The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrpos (), "man", understood to mean humankind or humanity, and -logia (-), "discourse" or "study." Since the work of Franz Boas and Bronisaw Malinowski in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anthropology has been distinguished from other social sciences by its emphasis on in-depth examination of context, cross-cultural comparisons, and the importance it places on participant-observation, or long-term, experiential immersion in the area of research. Cultural anthropology in particular has emphasized cultural relativity, holism and the use of findings to frame cultural critiques.[3] This has been particularly prominent in the United States, from Boas's arguments against 19th-century racial ideology, through Margaret Mead's advocacy for gender equality and sexual

liberation, to current criticisms of post-colonial oppression and promotion of multiculturalism. Ethnography is one of its primary methods as well as the text that is generated from anthropological fieldwork.[4][5][6] In the United States, the discipline is traditionally divided into four sub-fields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and biological anthropology. In Europe, the discipline originated as ethnology and was originally defined as the study of social organization in non-state societies. It was later renamed social anthropology. It is now generally referred to as socio-cultural anthropology in most of Europe, the commonwealth, and in the parts of the world that were influenced by the European tradition.[7]

Chinua Achebe is one of Nigeria's greatest novelists. His novels are written mainly for an African audience, but having been translated into more than forty languages, they have found worldwide readership.

Early life
Chinua Achebe was born on November 15, 1930, in Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria. His family belonged to the Igbo tribe, and he was the fifth of six children. Representatives of the British government that controlled Nigeria convinced his parents, Isaiah Okafor Achebe and Janet Ileogbunam, to abandon their traditional religion and follow Christianity. Achebe was brought up as a Christian, but he remained curious about the more traditional Nigerian faiths. He was educated at a government college in Umuahia, Nigeria, and graduated from the University College at Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1954.

Successful first effort

Achebe was unhappy with books about Africa written by British authors such as Joseph Conrad (18571924) and John Buchan (18751940), because he felt the descriptions of African people were inaccurate and insulting. While working for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation he composed his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1959), the story of a traditional warrior hero who is unable to adapt to changing conditions in the early days of British rule. The book won immediate international recognition and also became the basis for a play by Biyi Bandele. Years later, in 1997, the Performance Studio Workshop of Nigeria put on a

production of the play, which was then presented in the United States as part of the Kennedy Center's African Odyssey series in 1999. Achebe's next two novels, No Longer At Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964), were set in the past as well. By the mid-1960s the newness of independence had died out in Nigeria, as the country faced the political problems common to many of the other states in modern Africa. The Igbo, who had played a leading role in Nigerian politics, now began to feel that the Muslim Hausa people of Northern Nigeria considered the Igbos second-class citizens. Achebe wrote A Man of the People (1966), a story about a crooked Nigerian politician. The book was published at the very moment a military takeover removed the old political leadership. This made some Northern military officers suspect that Achebe had played a role in the takeover, but there was never any evidence supporting the theory.

Political crusader
During the years when Biafra attempted to break itself off as a separate state from Nigeria (196770), however, Achebe served as an ambassador (representative) to Biafra. He traveled to different countries discussing the problems of his people, especially the starving and slaughtering of Igbo children. He wrote articles for newspapers and magazines about the Biafran struggle and founded the Citadel Press with Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo. Writing a novel at this time was out of the question, he said during a 1969 interview: "I can't write a novel now; I wouldn't want to. And even if I wanted to, I couldn't. I can write poetrysomething short, intense, more in keeping with my mood." Three volumes of poetry emerged during this time, as well as a collection of short stories and children's stories. After the fall of the Republic of Biafra, Achebe continued to work at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka, and devoted time to the Heinemann Educational Books' Writers Series (which was designed to promote the careers of young African writers). In 1972 Achebe came to the United States to become an English professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (he taught there again in 1987). In 1975 he joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut. He returned

to the University of Nigeria in 1976. His novel Anthills of the Savanna (1987) tells the story of three boyhood friends in a West African nation and the deadly effects of the desire for power and wanting to be elected "president for life." After its release Achebe returned to the United States and teaching positions at Stanford University, Dartmouth College, and other universities.

Later years
Back in Nigeria in 1990 to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, Achebe was involved in a car accident on one of the country's dangerous roads. The accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors recommended he go back to the United States for good to receive better medical care, so he accepted a

Chinua Achebe. Reproduced by permission of AP/Wide World Photos . teaching position at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In 1999, after a nine-year absence, Achebe visited his homeland, where his native village of Ogidi honored him for his dedication to the myths and legends of his ancestors. In 2000 Achebe's nonfiction book Home and Exile, consisting of three essays, was published by Oxford University Press.

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/A-An/AchebeChinua.html#ixzz2NPTq9uAr

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Translation studies is an interdiscipline containing elements of social science and the humanities, dealing with the systematic study of the theory, the description and the application of translation, interpreting, or both. Historically, translation studies has long been normative (telling translators how to translate), to the point that discussions of translation that were not normative were generally not considered to be about translation at all. When historians of translation studies have traced early thinking about translation, for example, they have most often set the beginning with Cicero's remarks on how he used translation from Greek to Latin to improve his oratorical abilities--an early description of what Jerome ended up calling sense-for-sense translation. The descriptive history of interpreters in Egypt provided by Herodotus several centuries earlier is typically not thought of as "translation studies"-presumably because it doesn't tell translators how to translate.[1] As an interdiscipline, translation studies borrows much from the different fields of study that support translation. These include comparative literature, computer science, history, linguistics, philology, philosophy, semiotics, terminology, and so forth. Note that occasionally in English, writers will use the term translatology to refer to translation studies. However, the term translation studies has become implanted in English, whereas in French, it is la traductologie that is used.

1) When an emerging literature from a relatively new culture adopts translations from more established literatures in order to fill the gaps that exist within its own system, due to it being unable to instantly create a wide range of text types and genres. Translated literature introduces features and techniques that did not previously exist, such as new poetic structures. 2) When a smaller nation is dominated by the culture of a larger nation it may rely on imported literature from the dominant culture in order to keep its literary system dynamic, as well as being possibly the only source available for the creation of new genres, for example Breton culture in Brittany may rely heavily on literary styles from France in order o fill the gaps that exist in its own literary system. 3) When there are turning points in literary history, such as when established forms lose popularity or when there is no existing model. This could conceivably be the role that Harry Potter occupies in Chinese Mandarin.