Volume 1, Issue 3

Nollywood films increasingly circulate with English subtitles on streaming platforms, reaching viewers who do not speak the languages on screen. This study compares subtitled and original versions of twelve Yoruba- and Igbo-language films to show how subtitling flattens proverbs, honorifics and humour. It argues that subtitles are a site of cultural negotiation and calls for subtitling practices that keep more of the source culture visible.

Most Nigerian undergraduates now read set texts on their phones. A survey of 410 students and reading diaries kept by 30 of them reveal how mobile reading shapes attention, annotation and recall. Students read more often but in shorter sessions, and rarely annotate. The study proposes reading tasks designed for mobile readers and argues that libraries should license texts for phone use.

A growing body of Nigerian fiction follows characters who return home after years abroad. This review reads five such novels published since 2009 and identifies the conventions of the ‘novel of return’: the airport arrival, the misrecognised accent and the family that has moved on. It argues that these novels use return to examine what the nation expects of its diaspora.

A review of a study of the multilingual talk of West African markets, which combines fieldwork in Onitsha, Kano and Accra with an accessible account of how traders build trust across languages.