Journal for Translation Studies in Africa

Translation Studies Concepts

2023-09-14T08:26:12+02:00

In an attempt to address the title, this article will follow two lines of inquiry. It firstly will trace the development of several key concepts in Translation Studies and ethnography and show how these concepts have shifted in terms of interpretation and scope over time depending on the broader contexts in which they were used. In each case, the concepts were derived from observation of and reflection on translation. The paper will also point to theorization in anthropology (perhaps in contrast to philology) and how it stems directly from ethnographic observation and study in which translation plays an important role. In doing so, the paper will argue that these local insights have considerable staying power and theoretical reach, precisely because they are grounded in the lived experience that sustains them, which perhaps will make them adaptable in other places and situations far beyond their ‘origin’ or the place where the seed of insight germinated. This is considered important in relation to the theme of the special issue, namely community interpreting and translation in the African
context, as many concepts emerge from studies of communities and their cultural contexts. Secondly, the paper draws on and discusses ethnographic data of translational practices in a social housing scheme to shed new light on intralingual translation as conceptualized by Jakobson (1959) and set out in a model by
Korning Zethsen (2009). The data also illustrates how the various elements of intralingual translation belong in a broader economy of exchanges in the housing scheme.

Community Translation and Modern Philosophy

2023-09-14T08:35:20+02:00

The Rosetta Stele, an inscribed stone slab, was discovered in July 1799 near the town of Rashid, ancient Rosetta, which is situated in the western part of the Nile delta of Egypt, by soldiers of Napoleon Bonaparte’s invading army. After the French surrender of Egypt in 1801, the stele passed into British hands and is now in the British Museum in London. The commemorative stele contains three versions of the same text (in Egyptian hieroglyphic, Egyptian Demotic and ancient Greek script, representing two varieties of the ancient Egyptian language and the ancient Greek language). It recounts a decree issued on 27 March 196 BCE by Egyptian priests during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of Ptolemy V Epiphanes to commemorate his crowning. It took more than 20 years and various attempts by scholars to decipher the Demotic and hieroglyphic Egyptian texts. This was done by utilising the mechanisms of modern philology, which had been established as a field early in the 1800s. Standing on the shoulders of his predecessors, Jean-François Champollion was the first Egyptologist to crack the code of hieroglyphic writing by realising that some of the signs were alphabetic, some syllabic, and some determinative. The discovery and decipherment of the Rosetta Stele put multilingualism and the practice of translation and interpreting during the Ptolemaic reign over Egypt into focus. In this essay we describe the rediscovery, as well as the emergence and growth of new knowledge, that was unlocked by the decipherment of the Rosetta Stele, including its implications for African orthographies.

Setting the Bar Behind Bars

2023-09-14T08:48:15+02:00

As a continent with over 2 000 indigenous languages, Africa is complex regarding linguistic diversity. Whereas fluency in a major language is vital for communication in most bureaucratic, legislative and governmental environments, this skill is sometimes lacking in certain sensitive areas in Africa, such as prison facilities and courts. The term prisoner interpreting refers to the facilitation of communication by an interpreter between a prisoner or detainee and another party who do not share a common language; however, research regarding prisoner interpreting is currently marked by a huge hiatus. The aim of this study was to describe what prisoner interpreting in Nigeria and South Africa may entail; it was undertaken due to the lack of research in this domain. The setting is contextualised by providing background on community interpreting for prisoners and the substandard prison environment, and the necessary communicative competence required of interpreters is investigated. It was found that cultural considerations and dialectal differences are prominent factors to keep in mind when interpreting for prisoners. Power dynamics are examined, the first finding being that language status is problematic if a major language – in this case, English – is privileged above others. Moreover, it was determined that there are often large power gaps between parties. Regarding responsibility and role, it was established that parties in the interaction often have conflicting goals and the interpreter is tasked with deciding whether to comply with norms, or to challenge them. It can be deduced that prisoner interpreting in both Nigeria and in South Africa constitute unique challenges and require the community interpreter to meet a significantly high standard of expectations.

Lexical Creativity in Community Translation Corpus from Ghana

2023-09-14T08:53:58+02:00

Although corpus-based research is becoming more common in many languages and in translation studies in general, it tends to be scarce or even nonexistent in Akan and many other African languages that are often considered as minority languages. In fact, failure to use Akan in various fields has hindered its development to some extent, particularly in online electronic resources, human language technology and for optimising online presence. The
limited availability of resources, such as reference corpora and specialised dictionaries, suggests that translators who work from and into Akan often have to rely solely on their ingenuity in the process of translation. The study, therefore, explored a bidirectional English–Akan parallel corpus, built earlier by the researcher in another study. Using the descriptive translation studies approach, Skopos theory and Baker’s (1992) translation strategies, the paper
analyses lexical creativity as a strategy used to resolve translation problems specific to the language pair: borrowing, compounding and reduplication. Akan may not be a typical minority language, but it is in a disadvantaged position compared to English, which serves as the official language. Consequently, many documents are primarily written in the official language, thereby creating a form of imbalance in terms of language development and translation
challenges for community translators and interpreters who work from and into Akan. The research sheds light on how the abovementioned corpus can empower community translation in Ghana. It also identifies lexical creativity as an effective strategy to stimulate the need for the development of such a community language and to curb the imbalance in relation to English regarding terminology, text-type development, reference resources and translation tools. As translation tools such as Linguee rely on parallel corpora, the bidirectional English–Akan parallel corpus may be uploaded online or enlarged to develop general and professional language tools, and can serve as a basis for other enquiries.

Community Interpreting and Translation in Africa

2024-02-27T14:06:35+02:00

In an increasingly interconnected world, the relevance of effective communication cannot be overemphasized. Nowhere is this more evident than in the diverse and linguistically rich continent of Africa. With over 2,000 indigenous languages spoken across its vast expanse, Africa presents unique challenges and opportunities for community interpreting and translation. As a matter of fact, community translation and interpretation is a daily occurrence in many African communities, from the newsreader who takes an article from Reuters or BBC and renders it in the local language, adding their own cultural twist, to the master of ceremonies at a traditional marriage ceremony between a couple from different ethnic/ language groups, to the agricultural extension officer who
needs to translate his message of seedling management to a group of farmers who speaks a different language. In this editorial, we present selected papers from the ATSA conference on Community Interpreting and Translation in the African Context, exploring the significance of language empowerment and the bridging of linguistic divides.