This paper provides a contextual frame from which to examine translation processes on the continent. Bandia examines the importance of translation in shaping African history and culture, extending the notion of translation beyond the mere transfer from one language to another to include contemporary understandings of transnational and transcultural encounters in the global context. The chapter traces translation activity on the continent and the representation of Africanness from pre-colonial to post-colonial times. In his discussion of literature in West and East Africa, Bandia considers how the notion of colonial subjects as ‘translated beings’ and African oral tradition have informed African writing and expression. Writing orality, he says, ‘paradoxically imposes a state of bilingualism’ marking African writing as different and making it possible to subvert and challenge dominant literary hegemonies. The translation and representation of Africanness through the writing of orality becomes a movement from a ‘relatively homogeneous oral culture to a more heterogeneous or hybrid global culture’. He concludes that the relationship of African writers to language is one of translation, and the assertion of identity through linguistic difference challenges rather than submits to the ‘unsavoury legacies of colonialism’ while constituting an important aspect of the creative hybridity of African writing.