In this Perspectives article, Anna Bernacka considers
the role of the translator as a mediator between cultures. Rather than
merely supplanting one form of words for another, the translator has
the capacity to enhance our understanding of development issues and
indigenous cultures by mediating ideas across cultural and national
boundaries. The article presents case studies where translation has
played a crucial role in bringing new learning and wider understanding
to rich, indigenous cultures in India and South Africa thereby enabling
languages to become more widely ‘utilized and promoted through
education, working towards formal protection by the respective state
constitutions and curricula’
Introduction
Translation is not
merely an interlinguistic process. It is more complex than replacing
source language text with target language text and includes cultural and
educational nuances that can shape the options and attitudes of
recipients. Translations are never produced in a cultural or political
vacuum and cannot be isolated from the context in which the texts are
embedded (Dingwaney and Maier, 1995:3). As David Katan in Translating Cultures
puts it: ‘...the translator is a bilingual mediating agent between
monolingual communication participants in two different language
communities’ (2004: 16). Therefore translators not only have to be
intermediaries between different language systems, but also have to be
intercultural mediators – or as it has been stated by Aniela
Korzeniowska and Piotr Kuhiwczak in Successful Polish-English Translation Tricks of the Trade – they
have to be both ‘bilingual and bicultural’ (2006: 71). Thus,
translation performs a crucial role in our understanding of the cultural
‘other’.
The
role of the translator in mediating source ideas across cultural and
national boundaries places him or her in a unique position in particular
for understanding a range of development issues. Translating
narratives from the global South is an invaluable source of knowledge
about unfamiliar languages, indigenous cultures and experiences, and is
immensely useful for gaining an understanding of non-European
societies. Moreover, translation can also have a critical influence in
politics and can act as an agent for reconciliation or social
integration. Translations can therefore have a distinct effect on how
global and human rights issues can be conveyed and communicated.
The
aim of this article is to emphasise different aspects of the
translation process that are often misunderstood during a mainly
linguistic and uncreative operation where one set of textual material is
replaced by another. I will firstly focus on ‘unifying’ aspects of
translation in view of the current situation in South Africa where there
are eleven official languages recognized by the constitution, but where
English has become a dominant language. Secondly, I will discuss the
newly discovered Koro language and the difficulties that accompany its
translation, a perception based on the Whorfian hypothesis that language
is shaped by the world in which we live. This is where the translation
of a language will allow us to open the doors to unknown cultural and
linguistic environments. The results will arguably introduce rich
developing world reference points to translation methodology and
development education. Finally, in summary, I will stress the
translator’s creative role, which often involves creating a new
vocabulary in order to successfully convey the message of the source
text. In doing this the interaction between the disciplines of
translation studies and development education will become more apparent.
Interpreting Meaning
Translations are never
a product of a cultural void and there is a general agreement between
translation scholars that ‘in seeking to transport words (and sentences
and texts) from one language to another, the translator cannot merely
search for equivalent words in the target language to render the meaning
of the source’ (Dingwaney and Maier, 1995: 3). Therefore, as stated by
Aniela Korzeniowska and Piotr Kuhiwczak, translators not only have to
be intermediaries between different language systems, but also have to
be intercultural mediators. The role of the translator is to mediate
source ideas across cultural and national boundaries placing him or her
in a unique position to understand various development issues. Thus
translating narratives from the global South is an invaluable source of
knowledge about unfamiliar languages and cultural experiences and is
immensely useful for gaining an understanding of different societies for
development education purposes in particular.
In
the case of South Africa, the social as well as political need for
translation is immense. At present, there are eleven official languages
confirmed by the constitution in South Africa, not two as in previous
years, although some critics would argue that official multilingualism
is a façade given the dominance of English. The government has been ill
prepared for a complex linguistic project where all the indigenous
languages could coexist simultaneously on an equal basis. In
consequence, English has regularly become the only means of
communication in everyday political, business and educational life. The
other languages, most prominently Zulu and Xhosa, have become neglected
in the social, cultural and political spheres as well as ‘the
historically compromised Afrikaaner population’ which is still is
‘witnessing the decline of Afrikaans’ (Tonkin and Frank, 2010: 17).
The
urgent need for the translation of indigenous books and other forms of
literature in South Africa was the central topic of scholarly debate in
2009 at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia
University (Ibid: 17). At this symposium Antije Krog, Rosalind C.
Morris and Humphrey Tonkin discussed an ongoing initiative to translate
African literature into English. They all concurred that in such a
multilingual country, the translation of African literature and culture
should be treated as a matter of primary national importance in that it
would contribute to spreading the knowledge about lesser known social
and linguistic groups such as Zulu or Xhosa. Furthermore, such a
project would ‘not only make other voices heard but also… broaden the
cultural base of English, the other cultures and peoples of South Africa
in a multilingual discourse’ (Ibid). Translation can be seen in this
context as an act of mediation and ‘a form of reconciliation’ between
the periphery and centre, the dominant and aspiring cultures.
This
translation initiative encompasses not only the translation of African
literature, but also introduces and incorporates indigenous African
languages into the South African education system. When implementing
the project, which comprised of work ranging from African poets to
astronomers, the scholars identified some frequent difficulties with the
absence of equivalents and a vocabulary ‘gap’ in Afrikaans in
particular. One of the linguistic difficulties encountered was the
translation of the term ‘black hole’ that literally ‘in a direct
Afrikaans translation would be “swartgat” – the infamous derogatory term
for indigenous Africans’ (Ibid: 18). Antje Krog, who was in charge of
the translation into Afrikaans, had to create new words borrowed from
Dutch and to incorporate them into the target language.
Moreover,
she identified a similar phenomenon in African languages such as Xhosa
and Zulu related to scientific vocabulary. The absence of words
describing not only the universe and the planetary system, but also the
key terms used in maths or geography would restrict the implementation
of these languages into the South African educational system. In
consequence, the team of translators used their creative skills and
constructed new words instead of ‘simply Zulu-ifying the English word’
(Ibid: 19). However, the concept of the vocabulary gap does not only
occur in the translation of English terms into African languages. It
can also be observed in the reversed process where the English language
lacks an equivalent term as in the case of the Afrikaans word
‘mede-menslikheid’ which literally means ‘fellow-human-ness’.
Some
scholars in South Africa claim that ‘the officialization of the various
African languages was more a gesture than anything else’ (2010: 21),
that it was politically motivated rather than culturally enhancing.
Officially African languages were supposed to be treated equally, but in
practice nothing much was being done to popularise lesser known African
languages. Currently, however, scholars such as Antje Krog, Rosalind
C. Morris and Humphrey Tonkin are undertaking an initiative to promote
the translation of African languages – such as Zulu or Xhosa – in order
to spread a better knowledge of these cultures.
Innovative Translating for Cultural Understanding
Another example where
translation facilitates the understanding of global South cultures is in
the case of the newly discovered Koro language, an indigenous language
that linguists have stumbled upon while researching Aka and Miji – two
minority languages spoken in India. Koro was discovered during an
expedition in 2008 that was a part of National Geographic’s ‘Enduring
Voices’ project (Morrison, 2010: 1). The linguists reported that the
newly found language distinguished itself from the widely known ones in
terms of words, sounds and structure. What is even more interesting is
that it would appear that the territorial proximity of the Aka tribe has
not influenced Koro to a significant extent and that the differences in
sounds between the two languages can be compared to the difference
between English and Japanese. Linguists have expressed concerns over
this endangered language spoken only by an estimated one thousand
people, especially because of the fact that Koro does not have a written
form (Ibid). This crucial feature might also appear to be one of the
prime difficulties that translators will have to face in this regard.
However,
the challenge of translation in this case amounts to more than the lack
of the written form. Gregory Anderson, who stressed that Koro depicts
‘reality in very different ways’, stated that Koro ‘uniquely codes
knowledge of the natural world in ways that cannot be translated into a
major language’ (Hotz, 2010). One of the possible reasons for this
interesting means of describing the surrounding world and environment
might be the isolation of the Koro speakers who as a community have been
‘hidden’ from external influences. Therefore, from a linguistic point
of view, Koro could be a great example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
that language is strongly influenced by the reality we live in. Koro
words reflect the unique perception of the surrounding world by this
north eastern Indian tribe. Thus, the translation of this indigenous
language can be seen to be an invaluable source of knowledge about this
fascinating culture and their existence. The language could provide an
invaluable insight into their world view, their values system and their
perception of the environment in which they live. In effect, sensitive
and culturally appropriate translations can act as methodology for
development in its most innovative sense. The role of translation in
development education becomes self-evident as K. David Harrison, who
introduced Koro to the rest of the world, suggests: ‘Language
revitalization will prove to be become of the most consequential social
trends of the coming decades. This pushback against globalization will
profoundly influence human intellectual life…’ (2010: 12).
Conclusion
As these two examples
have shown, translation can play a number of different roles such as a
‘unifying’ or constructing new words but also, most crucially, as a
source of knowledge about foreign, lesser known cultures. Thus,
translation is not merely a linguistic process, but can also make a
political and social impact - as in the aforementioned cases in South
Africa and India. The translation process can be viewed as a way of
introducing linguistic as well as cultural equality by enabling Xhosa,
Zulu, or Koro, to become languages utilised and promoted through
education, working towards formal protection by the respective state
constitutions and curricula. Moreover, translation can act as a
‘bridge’ between the global North and the global South. If it were not
for the translators’ investigations and research into Asian indigenous
languages we would never have heard about the Koro language. Indeed, it
is through translation that we will eventually be able to become
acquainted with the world of the Koro. The translation of this language
will allow us to open the doors to an unknown cultural and linguistic
world. It will also introduce a rich developing world reference point
to translation methodology and development education alike.
References
Budick, Sanford and Iser, Wolfgang (1996)
The Translatability of Cultures. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press
