You get another person who operates only in an African language and there are many persons who operate only in African languages; he or she is excluded from all the goodies that come with English.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OThere is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.
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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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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Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
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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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I’m more trying to connect; I’m more listening to people. Whatever I get is very meaningful to me.
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And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.
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A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.
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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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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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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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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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How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?
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Through the act of translation we break out of linguistic confinement and reach many other communities.
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What is translated from English and into English – and in what quantities – is a question of power.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O