Afterword: Feedbacks

Edo

"It surely was an interesting and challenging experience. First of all, there is no singular word for paint (or any of its derivatives) in Edo language. What you have is the word ẹmu (pronounced as eh -moo). This word covers paint, decorate, adorn etc. To my knowledge, there are only around 3/4 colours accounted for in Edo (worldview) and as you can guess they are all primary colours: red, black, white/yellow. So, imagine trying to translate canary yellow, azure and carnation. I had to describe them as different colours. Also, the one-liners in the story would not make sense if I did a word-for word translation. It would have felt stilted and unreal. Nobody speaks Edo like that anyway. It also dawned on me that there are no equivalents for the subject pronouns he/she. What you have is "iyen" a third person pronoun that loosely means 'this/tha't person. It is not gender specific. If you wanted to use a gender specific pronoun, it would be okhuo na/ni meaning this/that woman.
It really was an interesting experience and a sobering reminder about how much our languages have not really grown organically because of our heavy reliance on English. There is also a huge market for an English-Edo dictionary. I do not think it exists yet. But an Edo-English dictionary does exist. It was written in the 80s by Professor Rebecca Aigheyisi, who was a professor of Linguistics in UNIBEN. Since her work, I doubt if there has been a revision. The dictionary was my guide in checking spellings and grammar. I think the biggest challenge I had was with the keyboard. Our letters e and o are not in the English keyboard, so I had to resort to copying and pasting them every time I needed to use them which was in nearly every sentence.
We really need to use our indigenous languages more. I think more persons would prefer to listen to the Edo audio than to read it as not very many persons can read the language.
I really enjoyed doing it and will share it with as many Edo persons I know."

 

HAUSA

Translating the Dark-Blue Suit was intriuging. The hardest parts for us was trying to express concepts that exist in a different culture into our own language and society. As the story was originally written by an Angolan writer, translating some of the cultural nuances into Hausa, which is an entirely different culture, was hard. For example bringing a Christian Catholic marriage ceremony from the original language in translation, for a typical predominantly Muslim Hausa reader to understand and follow the story, was challenging.

Or translating concepts like fairies without a proper equivalence in Hausa society. The two of us relied on the wholeness of the story to do the translation rather than a direct word by word or phrase by phrase translation. It made for a challenging and rewarding exercise.

IBIBIO

The story, “Waiting” by E C Osondu is very relatable and engaging, because of the way the author relates many traumatic and difficult situations through a young person’s eyes, and in a young voice.

In translating the story to Ibibio, I had to consider how best to capture certain incidents and thoughts in order not to lose the innocence of that voice.

The issues in the story cut across language and cultures, so I aimed for a translation that is true to the spirit of the story even though it is a cross cultural translation - the original story is written in English, and set somewhere in Northern Nigeria. This was another concern as I sought approximate phrases or expressions for words that do not have exact synonyms in Ibibio.

In order to surmount these challenges, I thought back to the countless conversations I’ve had with my siblings and cousins from childhood to adulthood.

I also asked younger and older Ibibio speakers specific questions, then I compared their sensibilities with my own personal experience and interaction with Ibibio.

After this, I wrote the options down and read them out loud. This is how I finally arrived at what word or expression would work best, per time.

IGBO

Translating a 5-page story from English to Igbo can be challenging, especially when certain words or phrases do not have an exact equivalent in the target language. To overcome this, I relied on my understanding of the context and idiomatic expressions to convey the general sense of the original text in an idiomatic and natural way in Igbo language. I also used various resources such as dictionaries and online translation tools to find the most appropriate words and phrases and I made sure that the tone and style of the text were consistent with the original. Overall, it was a rewarding experience as it required me to use my language skills and cultural knowledge to deliver a high-quality translation.

NIGERIAN PIDGIN

I have always advocated for the promotion of indigenous language in Nigerian literature - I'm a huge fan of what Marlon James does with Patois - so I was excited when OlongoAfrica approached me to do this. One interesting thing to note is that translating to NP actually requires an editor to "think" in Pidgin for the transliteration to make any sense. It's a rich, complex language, so compartmentalizing in the brain takes some work, but it was ultimately fun, and I'm glad to be part of the process of making this come to life.

SWAHILI

I enjoyed reading Beach Boy by Troy Onyango and this is the first thing a translator does before doing any translation work. After immersing myself in the story, I went ahead into its translation. Translating Beach Boy was mind-blowing and a bit of a challenge because remaining faithful to the source text is critical when doing translation. I hope I did justice to the work. There's an aspect of politeness when it comes to translating words that may be considered "vulgar" in Kiswahili and that is what stood out for me. I found myself debating on whether I should use a certain term in place of another and at the same time, capture the original author's intended meaning. To say the least, it was fun working on the project.

TAMAZIGHT

My impression of the story is that a woman is struggling with a ghost baby during her pregnancy, a supernatural concept where she gives birth to a non-living or non-human child. The author uses vivid descriptions to convey the protagonist's feelings of confusion and isolation. Translating the story was a challenge because I had a hard time finding the right words and expressions to convey the nuances of the original text, ensuring grammatical accuracy, and conveying the tone and mood of the story. The translation was demanding but rewarding, requiring attention to detail and maintaining the integrity of the original text.

TIV

Till date, the Tiv language doesn’t have a standard orthography that is within my knowledge. What I feel has been responsible for this is the near-homogenous nature of the language. Thus, so far, the Tiv Bible remains the authority and reference material on the Tiv lexicography. However, ones finds that while the language is highly tonal with a number of homonymous mono- and disyllabic words, there is insufficient diacritics marking to facilitate the reader’s task, leaving him or her to rely mostly on context to understand what word has been used. I do not know why it has remained this way for a long time now, without Tiv linguists intervening.

Translating a word, phrase, or single sentence, isn’t always a big deal. However, over 1,500 words can be a task, because the manner in which we speak is different from how we write. In Tiv language especially, the manner of speaking relies heavily on co-articulation where monosyllabic word phonemes blend into word another in rapid speech but have to be separated on the page into their individual units for utmost clarity to be achieved.

One also finds that not all words and expressions in the English language have direct translatable equivalents, not even in the slightest transliterated expectation. As such, only a sense of what a sentence expressed in English is grasped and rewritten in Tiv. An example were the sentences:

She must have sensed his presence. Somehow, her body had sensed what her eyes could not perceive.”

I cannot boast of knowing a word in Tiv that means “sense,” derivative of its very English meaning; ditto the word “presence.” So while translating, I paused and asked myself what have I gotten into here? Especially, how was I going to cope with not just conveying the meaning of the words “sense” and “presence” but also making sure that the semantic is not lost when I try to translate the complete sentences they are contained in? This is what I wrote:

Mlu na lu inja er a kav nom na kyua ana nahan, er nom na lu ke iyol ver na. Sha mlu ne, iyol na kav kwagh u ashe na a fetyô u kaven ga yô.

Which translates to:
Her situation was as if she felt her husband close to her, as if he was in the house with her. In this way, her body felt what her eyes couldn’t feel.

But, of course, one notices the emphasis in the first sentence—as if he was in the house with her, supporting the sentiment of the “sense of her husband’s presence” in “felt her husband close to her.”

This manner of translation here incorporates Tiv speech and language mannerism, where emphasis is one of its properties. As such I found out that translation will only be complete and more meaningful if the story is written in the manner a Tiv writer will tell it, rather than breaking one’s back to follow an inflexible translation code of paralleling English syntax or semantics in the original story to the translated text. The translation was challenging in aspects like this but it was entirely worth it.

SHONA

Translating Sarah Ladipo Manyika's story Moráyọ̀ was an honour as she is a writer whose work I have immense respect for. As usual, I loved the play on language and consulting with folks who speak the same language (having a debate with writers Tendai Huchu, Tinashe Muchuri and some high school mates on the best way to translate "nightmare" in Shona has got to be the most memorable). As I read and translated, it hit me again how writing is possibly one of the few artforms where the artist creates alone and so is prone to misinterpretation from outsiders (as noted from the social worker's perspective of Moráyọ̀). It made me think, as a writer, that I want to fake my own death so I can get my obituaries now

YORÙBÁ

After reading the English version of the story for the first time, I was curious about how to translate some words such as "grueling", "premiered", "forkfuls", "rummage" etc. They appeared simple but they also demanded careful attention to translating them without blemishing their meanings. I also struggled with the title of the story. Initially, I thought I could use "Yẹ́ẹ́lò" as the Yoruba word for "Yellow" but a friend who is also a translator told me that most times people do use "Èsúrú" for Yellow. Interestingly, Èsúrú is eatable, and it's called Bitter yam in English. I also thought I could use "Sálúbàtà" for slippers but at the end I found "Bàtà Ìwọ̀seré" suitable because "Sálúbàtà" seems to connect more to "sandals" and not "slippers" as we all know it. So I settled for "Bàtà Ìwọ̀seré Aláwọ̀ Èsúrú". For the recording, I had to record more than 10 times before getting one that could represent the story well. I had to measure my pace, my lips moving forth and back. It wasn't easy reading the story at once because I was conscious of not mispronouncing the words in Yorùbá. In all, I enjoyed how tasking it was and how much I learnt in the process of translating this story.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Drawing is closely related to writing. I use black ink and a classic nib pen, that has to be dipped repeatedly into a small ink pot. Large areas I fill with rows of cross-hatching structures to create a dense mesh of lines. Out of these lines and the blank space on paper arises a text in the sense of the Latin word "texere", which means "to weave". Collaborating with writers, I have published several artists' books. For OlongoAfrica I selected artworks from my archive that visually comment on the stories. As a student of Èdè Yorùbá, I am myself a passionate reader of books in that language. Unfortunately, most of them – many with wonderful ink drawings – were published decades ago. I hope to read more contemporary publications in the near future and learn about the perception of the world through other languages. A dúpẹ́ ọ!