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'OThey 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.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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The Bible in translation is being read to thousands and thousands in Africa. It is an integral part of their functioning and the way they look at the world.
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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 Bible affects everybody’s life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia.
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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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Through the act of translation we break out of linguistic confinement and reach many other communities.
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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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People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.
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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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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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I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.
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So 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.
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We think of politics in terms of power and who has the power. Politics is the end to which that power is put.
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If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O