What is translated from English and into English – and in what quantities – is a question of power.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OIf 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.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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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.
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What’s good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.
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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 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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If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
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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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Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.
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Through the act of translation we break out of linguistic confinement and reach many other communities.
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I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
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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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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.
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Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language.
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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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