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.
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.
