Importance of African Languages in African Literature

Once in a while, I check  the search engines terms that are driving the most traffic to my blog, Wealth of Ideas, and the searches are often revealing of what kinds of information people are looking for  at any time. Today, of the several interesting ones,  "the importance of African languages in African literature" stood out. It's a topic I too am passionate about. I have written about it before in a post entitled "Language in African Literature", but even this doesn't begin to cover the most important facts about the issue. Perhaps one day I will write treatise on the topic of language in African literature, and mini posts like this are my way of mapping a project description. But now let's go to some serious stuff on African languages in African Literature.

Let me start by saying that I am annoyed by glossaries. Their intent seems to be to appeal to a foreign audience, or, most importantly, to any speakers for whom the glossaried language is foreign. I also hate parenthetical translations of things written in African languages. The in-line translations make for awkward reading and are a waste of ink or bytes. Maybe not exactly in these words, but as you read you get the feeling that the writer is doing too much, or is writing too much, or is making it too obvious, whatever it is.

Here is what I want: If you are writing in French, English, Spanish, or any other language that's "non-African", and you feel the need to sprinkle the prose with African language phrases and words, go ahead and do so, in a way that does not confuse the reader. The story should still make sense despite the use of this drizzle of words. No need to translate, or glossarise. Suppose it's critical that readers know what that Shona word of phrase means, the writer could just creatively contextualize the unstranslatable concept. Write so well that the reader still understands your prose even though it contains unstranslated material.

I am currently reading two books by African writers, 'One Day I will Write about this Place' and 'That which Has Horns'. In the first one, the author, Binyavanga Wainaina, problematizes the whole issue of the co-existence of English and indegeneous languages. You get the sense that English is now an African language, which it is now, but it has a higher status than other African languages, it is the most official and preferred of them all. What Binyavanga does then is to dramatize this linguistic conflict as characters judge each other by how well they can speak English and how their use of the most official language becomes an identitarian index, marking Wambui, for instance, as existing between the axis of several conflicting linguistic positions: her identity is revealed most when the strength of her Gikuyu impinges upon her ability to speak and process English, and she doesn't seem to care that people laugh at her when she inflects English words inappropriatlely. Then there are other uses of English which seem more desirable than others--the Kenyan use, often influenced by languages like Swahili, Gikuyu and others, then the use which imitates the Queen's English (the almost-royal-not-London-cockney use); then most interestingly, the American use, which draws most of the people of the narrator's generation, the use that gives access to Michael Jackson's lyrics, of one that seems to open doors to Hollywood (in terms of comprehending the Hollywood nuances, if that's what we can call them).

Reviewers have praised Binyavanga's language craft, how he makes it musical, sometimes lyrical, but most importantly playful, the deconstructive effect, the deconstructive angel, how structure, in the Derridean sense, becomes play. Binyavanga becomes increasingly playful, as if he has the license to make fun of the medium of expression; and indeed, he has the license, and he uses it in a memoir, uses it well, I think, making up words as he goes. And he italicizes.  Binyavanga italicizes the element of play in his writing.

But elsewhere in much of African writing, italics have been used to apologize for including African words, phrases, and sentences in English text. That has been the norm for a long time, the etiquette of showing the untranslatable, or the gratuitous, and the indulgent. Here is what I mean: Translating certain African concepts into English can be daunting, if not outright impossible. So some well-meaning writers will italicize those untranslatable concepts and offer an explanation. Well-known African writers have done this--Achebe, Ngugi, Mungoshi, many others. The native speakers of the untranslatables will not have a problem understanding the concepts; in fact, most would appreciate their use as is, a sign, celebratory almost, that here is a concept English cannot convey. But most of such people, though, have not been a source of bread and butter for the publishers, and for the writers, so we have gone ahead and italicized and explained, giving the writing an expository quality, taking away the creative element, even if for a brief moment. Such maneuvers take us out of the story's dream. Some would argue that the purpose of writing is to communicate; and that's true, especially in non-fiction, or in business writing, where communication alone is the goal. Here we are talking about art, and even where we are talking about memoir, as in the case of  'One Day I Will Write about this Place',  the creative element makes the reading trip worth taking.

In 'That which Has Horns', Miriam Shumba gives her "contemporary romance" readers some extra perks in the form of sprinkles of Shona thoughout the book. Each chapter has a bilingual heading, for example, "Rudo-Love". Now, I liked that when I was reading, first because she convinced her publishers to let this happen, in a book published on US soil. This fits in very well with a lot of what should be happening in US publishing, something that should reflect the linguistic diversity of the country. Second, Shumba, who already is a teacher, was giving a language lesson to her readers. And these are just headings, no one is confused, no one is delayed. I know this because, as a reader, I should be able to represent what a lot of readers think, or, at least, to joke about it.

Now as we get into the novel itself, we continue to see more Shona. As a Shona speaker, I am not bothered or distracted by the Shona; I am even already looking for more of it. But I get annoyed when I see italics, followed by translations. Perhaps this is the critic in me. Maybe other readers want these translations. And, if that's what they want, then they should get it. But I suspect, as I always have, that sometimes what we think readers want is based on some practice passed from generation to generation, passed by publishers who are concerned more with the sale than the promotion of the literature. To publishers, this obviously does make sense. If they were not in it for the sales, would we even call them, at least in the American model, publishers?

The pressure then is on the writer.  To remember that offering those in-text translations, glossaries, and italics of African languages when writing in English is not always the most effective way to craft our literature. I challenge writers to learn to capture all the untranslatables without attempting a single syllable of apology.