MOSES ESTHER OLAWUNMI

This study looked at several selected Yoruba proverbs that were translated into English. For the selected proverbs, the researcher used a contextual and functional analysis. According to the results of the contextual study, despite the proverbs serving various contextual purposes in our daily interactions, the English translation reflected some lexico-semantic qualities, such as meaning distortion, meaning substitution, meaning modification, meaning constriction, and sometimes, the meaning is actually kept. However, the study found that the poetic elements embedded in Yoruba proverbs were not well disseminated through translation practice in the use of proverbs in communication.