Browsing by Author "Mengistu, Melakneh (PhD)"

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    Existentialism in the Selected Creative Works of Adam Reta
    (Addis Ababa University, 2010-06) Dessalegn, Aklilu; Mengistu, Melakneh (PhD)
    Adam Reta, who has been writing for the last quarter of the century, has published a novel and three collections of short stories and novellas. Nevertheless, the critical attention given to his works was very insignificant. The author’s relationship with existentialism, however, is much stronger and conspicuous. Thus, the study aims at discussing the tenets of existentialism found in the creative works of Adam Reta, which eventually gear up to elucidate his overall existentialist philosophical thinking as the term existentialism applies to a bunch of philosophers, whose philosophical views reveal their differences rather than their similarities. To this end, the philosophy of existentialism and its concepts are employed to analyze the selected works of the author; his novel, Giracha Kachiloch, and six other narratives from his anthologies. The researcher has also employed descriptive and textual criticisms as methods. From the analyses and interpretations made, the writer of this study found out that the characteristic tenets of existentialism are shared by Adam Reta; but with his own differences in relation to the philosophy of the proponents of existentialism. Absurdity, alienation, freedom of choice and responsibility, authenticity and inauthenticity, death and repetition are among the major ones. Thus, Adam Reta is found to be a literary existentialist, who achieves in turning his philosophical ideas into symbols and myths, which greatly add up to the aesthetic value of his works.
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    A Post-colonial Ecocritical Reading of Ecological Violence and Resistance in Selected Anglophone African Novels (2000-2010)
    (2020-06) Adefris, Dagnachew; Mengistu, Melakneh (PhD)
    African post-colonial environment is defined as a system of human-nonhuman interactions where pressing ecological violence has been intensified, rather than abated, since the end of formal colonialism as the continent is at the heart of the relationships with colonialism and its legacies. Likely, African post-colonial environments are also battlefields where resistances are met with unabated struggles to protect and preserve environments of African natives from colonial and post-colonial destructions. This study examines ecological violence and resistance as reflected in Helon Habila‟s Oil on Water, Zakes Mda‟s The Heart of Redness, Kaine Agary‟s Yellow-Yellow and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong‟o‟s Wizard of the Crow. In the analyses and interpretations, attention has been paid to the texts‟ treatment of different forms of ecological violence, resistance strategies used by the writers, interactions of human and the nonhuman in the contexts of those actions and reactions, as well as the writers‟ articulations in bringing attention to the ongoing ecological violence and resistance. In doing so post-colonial ecocriticism approach has been employed to carry out the critical reading, analysis and interpretation of the selected novels for this study. Employing this approach, in Habila‟s Oil on Water, ecocidal activities, petroviolence and environmental injustices on the ecologies of Niger Delta are found depicted as major forms of ecological violence. Mda‟s The Heart of Redness has found depicting ecological imperialism, geographical colonization and flora and fauna genocides as major forms of ecological violence. In Agary‟s Yellow-Yellow, environmental despoliation, pollution, petrocapitalism, and capitalist patriarchy are found as forms of ecological violence in Niger Delta. In Ngũgĩ‟s Wizard of the Crow, deforestation and loss of natural ecologies have been found as major forms of ecological violence. Regarding post-colonial resistance, the selected novels are found ecologically conscious.Habila‟ Oil on Water offers ecological journalism as a reflective agency to voicing for nature as resistance strategy. Similarly in Agary‟s Yellow-Yellow ecoactivism, interconnectedness and ecological feminism are found as important resistance strategies in fighting against ecological destructions in Niger Delta. In The Heart of Redness ecological education and ecofriendly based economic development approach has been found as resistance strategy to the restoration and preservation of the endangered ecology. Ngũgĩ‟s Wizard of the Crow offers perspectives to understand nature through rehabilitation, glorification of nature, and reforestation by equally revealing the anthropocentric limitations. The writers of the respective novels try to articulate the ongoing ecological violence and resistance employing narrative strategies, such as narrative voices, point of view and environmental tropes. The novels are also found showing complex networks of interaction and relation between human and the nonhuman. On the local human side, there is tranquility and strong affliction with natural environment while discordant relations and exploitative kinds of interaction among the locals, the nonnatives and the physical environment.
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    Translation Strategies In Yismake Worku's 'Dertogada' From Amharic Into English
    (AAU, 2019-06) Ayele, Sewnet; Mengistu, Melakneh (PhD)
    This research paper aims at answering the very question of the translation strategies and procedures applied to translate Yesmake Worku‟s “DERTOGADA” from source language Amharic into target language English. However, the research also attempts to give analysis how the translator translate culture- specific terms found in the original texts, by presenting some of the most popular theories related to the culture-bound terms and their equivalents. This is because every language has its own way to perceive reality, which influences the way in which reality is expressed by the members of a community. When translating, people find out things about others, about a world which is not theirs. If translation did not exist, it would be difficult to communicate with people from other countries, by communication meaning not only the transmission of words and phrases but also the sense of a text, because what translators should translate is messages, senses, and texts. Different translation scholars offer various translation strategies and procedures in which translation problems could be solved so that the receiving audience may perceive the culture and the otherness of another world. Finally, to a certain degree and losing a part of the otherness of the source culture, culture can be translated by using some translation strategies and procedures like the so-called equivalence, according to the functionalist theories. In view of that, the researcher has find out that some figurative languages and cultural terms which have universal equivalents posed relatively fewer problems to the translator. As a result the translator used a translation strategy like partial translation i.e. kept most cultural terms which are culture bound un-translated with his own explanation as part of the text. Moreover, the translator used explanatory translation strategy to translate some cultural specific terms. This means the researcher find out that the translator tried to transmit meaning as literally and meaningfully as possible to the form and content of the original texts using descriptive and explanatory translation strategies predominantly. He also used what Fernandez explains untranslatability translation strategy when he faced texts which are so culture-bound for the original language.