VIII
NITI CONGRESS & WORKSHOP 7 – 8
AUGUST 2008 --------------------------------------------------- A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT OF
THE ABUJA
BRANCH OF NITI, MR. EMMANUEL KOFI NKANSAH
THE
GREAT POTENTIAL OF THE LOVE AND PRACTICE OF AMATEUR TRANSLATION AND
INTERPRETATION IN OUR EFFORTS TO LIVE TOGETHER AS ONE PEOPLE
One of the greatest challenges
facing those of us in the profession of translation and interpretation seems to
me, to be the severe constraints we often find placed on our time, including the
time to gather for congresses and workshops of this nature, albeit
indispensable.
It is in the light of this
that I sincerely believe that every member of our profession who has found the
time to be present for this VIII Congress and Workshop needs to be congratulated.
The absence of the greater number of our colleagues from a gathering like this,
I believe, may not always be due to lack of interest. We are equally fully
aware that the road to the profession of translation and interpretation in
English-speaking Africa is fraught with
obstacles, the first of them being the dwindling interest and slow death in the
teaching and learning of French as a foreign language.
The theme for this Congress
and Workshop (“Translation and Interpretation in West Africa Today and
Tomorrow”) set me thinking about so many things which could bring even the
non-professional to consider the crucial role that the love and practice of
amateur translation and interpretation could play in bringing the peoples of
West Africa together as a united force, both today and tomorrow, both within
our nations and at the international sub-regional level.
How do I react when I hear a
fellow Ghanaian speaking his or her mother tongue, which may not be the same as
mine, and which makes no meaning to me? Is my first reaction that of developing
an interest in what those sounds could represent in my mother tongue? Or I
mutter something derogatory like, “These people are a nuisance!”
Do I consider the learning of
the official language of a neighbouring country as a duty of love in reaching
out to my own West African brother or sister?
Very often those who do not
speak the same African languages as we do are considered as “strangers” in our
local African languages, and this must not be allowed to subsist in our
conscience, particularly in this modern era of globalisation, where the ability
to reach out to the other person becomes the order of the day. West Africans
speaking French are at times branded “French people”, with all its negative
connotations. Animosity amongst us, inter-ethnic conflicts, superiority
complexes, and inter-national xenophobia in West Africa may not rear their ugly
heads if at our own individual levels, and out of a heart of deep love and genuine
desire to communicate with our fellow citizens, we crave for the meaning of key
phrases and expressions in both the African and non-African languages which we,
as individuals, do not speak as mother tongues or second languages.
Time will not allow me to go
into the great social and political benefits which we stand to gain if we
should always desire to understand and express ourselves in languages other
than our mother tongues, particularly in West African countries where, in the
midst of multiples of languages, dialects, and cluster dialects, there is the
tendency to attach prestige (and at times hegemonic sentiments) to certain
so-called ‘majority’ or ‘dominant’ languages, to the detriment (and at times
denigration) of those we have tagged ‘minority’ languages.
Brotherly and sisterly love demands
that one seeks to have the minimum knowledge of, and be capable of interpreting
and translating the other person’s language. This will promote cohesiveness in
nationhood, instil good neighbourliness among our nations, and remove all
traces of prejudice towards our fellow West Africans.
It is my sincere desire that
through the widespread language activity of translation and interpretation of
both African and European languages currently in use in West Africa, the
togetherness of our nations in West Africa will be greatly enhanced, more so
when a significant number of our West African languages are in themselves
inter-national languages, i.e. spoken and written across the official national
borders of the nations comprising West Africa.
* The author, a Ghanaian, was trained
as a Professional Translator (French to English) by CODIFOR: a professional
training institute based in Nancy-Maxéville, France, and awarded a Professional Diploma in
Technical Translation in 1996, at the ATTC, Accra, Ghana.
He once taught French Grammar, Linguistics and Translation (French-English) at
the University of
Ghana, Legon, as an
Assistant Lecturer (1993-1995). He holds a BA (French with Philosophy) (1987),
Second Class Upper Division, from the University of Ghana, and also a Licence
(BA) (1991) and a Maîtrise (MA) (1992) - in General Linguistics, with the MA
Thesis on French Grammar rated “Mention Très Bien” (Distinction), from the
University of Besançon, France. Since December 2004, he has been working as a
full-time Professional Translator at the ECOWAS Court of Justice, Abuja,
Nigeria.
The points made in this
presentation are all personal to the author and do not represent in any way
whatsoever the official stand of any organisation or institution.