BY MULUGETA GUDETA
Oral translation or the translation of a speech from one language to another has long been an integral part of Ethiopian daily life wherever and whenever two persons speaking two different languages wanted to communicate with one another in markets, at law courts and on many occasions. “Turjuman” (translator) is the name given to someone who helps translate one language into another so that people can properly communicate or understand one another.
In the old days, oral translators were in high demand as their service was sought by many people. One person speaking many languages was hardly available in those times when cross-cultural or cross-linguistic intercourse was a rare phenomenon. Linguistic integration or linguistic assimilation was not the order of the day. The “Turjuman” of olden days with multiple linguistic abilities who can be compared to the present day translation app of our computers, was indeed a rare bird.
With the development of oral literature came the “interpreter” of the meanings contained in folk literature and then followed the written text and the written translation which is a relatively new phenomenon dating back to this century.
However, Ethiopia was home to an original civilization dating back to millennia at a time when Europeans lived in caves and America was not yet discovered. Some of the relics from ancient Ethiopian civilization works of impressive arts and architecture, have now become world heritage sites. Ethiopia has its own script since many centuries and works or arts and literature have been translated from Arabic into Ge’ez, the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church dating back to the 4th century.
Similarly, Ethiopian scholars have translated the scriptures and also secular works from Portuguese and other European languages. Thus, translation was a divine occupation of church scholars who worked hard to convey heavenly messages to Ethiopian Christians and Muslims. Although this effort was less visible in the realm of secular life, Ethiopian scholars have been working on translations of foreign secular literature particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Civilizations rise and fall but cultural heritages stand testimony to the greatness of nations. China had an original and ancient civilization. This civilization declined in time and China was victim of cultural stagnation for many centuries. It is now rising to reclaim its ancient glories. Ethiopia too is doing the same thing. It is reclaiming its past grandeur in the new millennium. And the work of translation plays a pivotal role in this process. The Chinese could attain the present levels of arts and technology thanks in part by translating Western literature into Mandarin which is their national language.
Ethiopia too cannot avoid this path because no country can reinvent the wheels of civilization or restore the past as it was. The work of translating foreign literature in the arts, culture, science and technology should be seen as part of the national effort to rebuild a nation’s past grandeur. It does not matter whether the translation is done from English, Chinese or Japanese, Russian or Spanish into one of our national language as long as it serves or promotes the objectives of modernization or civilization. “It does not matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice” the Chinese say.
It does not matter where we copy the good things of civilization from, as long as it promotes our own vision of a modern Ethiopia. So, the work of translating knowledge from foreign languages into some of our national languages should be regarded as part and parcel of the process of promoting Ethiopia’s quest for modernization. The work of translation should therefore be seen in its broader perspective as a nation building enterprise through knowledge transfer.
In this sense, we have to see works of translation in both their narrow individual perspectives and their broader national significance. As such, works of translation should be taken seriously for they may contribute to or undermine the process of knowledge transfer and in the case of literary translation they may ruin or redeem literary, historical and other works. There are many prevailing misconceptions about works of translation both on the part of the translators and the readers. Many translators of literary works take their tasks lightly and perform them according to their own understanding or conception instead of following universally accepted principles, rules and procedures agreed upon by professionals in the field.
A late Ethiopian writer was once quoted as saying that it did not matter for a translator to have mastery of the source language as long as they have good knowledge of the target language. In simpler terms, he was saying that it does not really matter that you are specialist of English language if you have fluency in Amharic when you translate books from English to Amharic. In simpler terms he meant that it is enough to know Amharic well in order to translate books from English even though your mastery of the latter leaves much to be desired.
With is argument in mind, the late author translated dozens of books from English and published them in Amharic and they were well received by the reading public. The way he was doing his translation was not criticized by someone who had equal mastery of both English and Amharic. This was so maybe because the books the writer translated had not much literary value or because criticizing somebody’s work was seen in those days as an act of jealousy or envy of the success the translator was enjoying. Linguists, and there were many at universities, preferred to ignore his statement together with his works.
According to some theories of translation, competent translators should take the following points into consideration. A competent translator should have a good knowledge of the language written and spoken from which they are translating (the source language). They should have an excellent command of the language into which they are translating (the target language). They should also have familiarity with the subject matter of the text being translated, and a profound understanding of etymological and idiomatic correlates between the two languages, among other things. Last but not least, a competent translator must have a finely tuned sense of when to ‘metaphrase’ (“translate literally”) and when to paraphrase so as to assure true rather than spurious equivalents between the source and target language texts.”
Short of these important points that make someone a competent translator, nobody can claim the right to be a respectable translator. In the context of the above example, competence in translation is unthinkable without “a good knowledge of the language from which they are translating.”
Translating books had never been considered a serious business in this country simply because anyone who had an average command of English and has the courage can sit down and translate a book he thought could sell well. From my own experience, I know some translators who went around with a draft copy of the book they planned to translate asking people to help them with the job. In this way, they had many versions of the same text they could choose from.
The translator then collected all the versions and selected those they thought were the best ones and in this way translated much of the book and published it. It was a commercial success although nobody worried about the quality of the translation simply because many readers did not read it in the original English. The translator too did not acknowledge the contributions made by the “ghost translators” who helped him a great deal. Those who had good command of English simply ignored the book which was a spy thriller although a bestseller.
The 1980 and 1990 were thus periods of avalanches of all kinds of translated works rolling out of the printing presses and this process negatively impacted the growth of vernacular literature simply because people could make a lot of money by “translating” other people’s works instead of racking their brains writing original fiction in their own languages. Even established novelists turned to translating foreign books because they could make fast money that helped them cover their expenses. To the dismay of many, translations of foreign books were more popular and more commercially gratifying than original works written in Amharic or any other local language.
This trend is still going strong and there are new translators these days whose abilities might not have developed although many years have passed since the “translation booms” of the 1980s and 1990s. In those days, mainly books of fiction were selected for translation while nowadays books of history, psychology, philosophy as well as academic books are being translated and sold. This is a welcome development while it is also important to outline some of the shortcomings these translations might suffer because their translators might not have followed some of the universally accepted principles or tools of translation.
Perhaps the major types of translation which I discovered on the web can be summarized as follows and help would-be translator do a better job. They are literary translation, professional translation, technical translation, and administrative translation. In all cases you must translate the meaning of what is being said, rather than do it word-for-word. … Different languages also have different grammar, different word orders, sometimes even words for which other languages do not have any equivalents. There are tons of information online and translators can benefit from them to improve the quality of their works or do a better job than their predecessors of the 1980s and 1990s.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD AUGUST 3/2021
