If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OSo we’re talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people’s lives in history.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name!
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So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.
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Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa’s souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind?
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I’m more trying to connect; I’m more listening to people. Whatever I get is very meaningful to me.
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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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Then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.
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Another phenomenon developing in Kenya is ethnic cleansing – and that’s the thing that has made me very sad. Because some people will use the cover of the problems of rigged elections to do things that are unacceptable like ethnic cleansing and displacement of people. It’s completely unacceptable.
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Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised – so it’s no longer “in the closet,” as it were. It’s part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature.
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Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it.
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They want to be the ones telling people: “This is what we have done in history” but when people begin to say, “No this is what we have done in history” it’s a different thing.
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The same questions are there in Native American languages, they’re there in native Canadian languages, they’re there is some marginalized European languages, like say, Irish.
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It was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an audience beyond that language through the art of translation.
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Those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow […] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes
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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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