ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Opinion category.

Wen E Go Come: Of Creoles

Linguist John McWhorter comes to the defence of the African American Vernacular English (also called ebonics) as a distinct dialect of English with its own complex grammar – rather than an abberation – in this rather enlightening podcast on NPR. Recent discussions in my sociolinguistics class have focussed on the big controversy about the language (as it should be properly called) and teaching and cultural attitudes in the United States. Is the slang (as some have pejoratively called it) coming over to challenge the dominance of real English? And what exactly does it mean to make provisions for acknowledging its status (AAVE) as a language in the classroom when there exists a whole lot of other learners (like genuinely disadvantaged white kids) who have to take instructions in standard English, without any special preferences. It is fascinating, the discussions.

The part that gets me thinking however is how this relates to the language situation in Nigeria at the moment, with pidgin (which should appropriately be called a creole actually, since pidgins are more defined by simple grammars and spoken only by first contact generations alone) still being relegated to a low status position in a society from where it has evolved into its own place over many years. With an equally complex and systematically observable grammar, form and lexicon, the language has become a lubricant in the multilingual dynamic of our nation with its over 500 languages. The situation is not any different from what is happening in the US, at the moment, in fact. The codification of language usually takes informal means, and after a few generations become standard in their own place with or without government sanctioning. It has happened with AAVE as it has with Nigerian Pidgin, Jamaican/Haitian patois, among others. All that remains is the right institutional sanctioning to make them more relevant in official discourse. PS: Nigerian Pidgin could also do with a new name of its own.

Discoursing Translations

I spent a few hours last week in the house of an American colleague, Tom Lavallee, who teaches Chinese here. He had invited me and a few other friends for an evening of Chinese food and conversations in his St. Louis home. His partner is a Chinese woman who works as a writer as well as a translator from Chinese into English.

The conversation soon turned to the matter of writing, and the challenge of translating from one language to the other. What is lost in translation? What remains? How authentic is that product of translation in representing the original thought of the writer? Who makes the call of how translations should turn out? How much is taking too much liberties with original ideas? Where does translation end and improvisation/adaptation begin? They were interesting questions for me not only because I’d considered them many times myself before, but also because I discovered, a few years ago, that the translation of George Orwell’s classic book Animal Farm into German was not uniform because the translators belonged to different ideological camps during the cold war. I have spent countless moments pondering the literary tricks that would be needed to render something so clearly anti-socialism (or at least anti-leninism) as anti-capitalism. But then, that is the power of translation – which thrives on running an original idea through the conduit of the mind of a removed second reader-writer.

I’ve read a few Chinese literature in English. We discussed the ideas behind Soul Mountain, the famous novel by Gao Xingjian, translated by Mabel Lee into English. It is a travelogue of some sort incorporating elements of soul-searching autobiographical non-fiction, fiction, vignettes, ethnographic writings, musings, jottings, poetry, and story fragments. One of the challenge of translating from Chinese must also include rendering an idea of communality into an English-speaking culture of individualism. But therein lies the pleasures of translation – a special brand of serving that is not totally belonging to one culture, and not totally transformed into the other. In language learning, that would be a sort of “interlanguage” – a language that is neither the first nor the second language. What we read when we read something translated into English from Greek or Latin, or Arabic, is neither those languages, nor is it English. The ideas are most times successfully conveyed in the target language, but not enough to prevent literary/language purists from a snobbery that insists on the original as the most authentic standard bearer. And they are sometimes right. Yet, the “interlanguage” of translation carries in itself an original and yes authentic voice.

Garcia Marquez is famous in English speaking Africa even though we don’t speak Spanish. Vargas Llosa will be too soon enough, for good reason. How much did we lose if we did at all reading in English? Does it ever matter? Does my friend from Morocco have a better and richer literary experience than me because he speaks Tamazight (his local language), Arabic (his national language), and French (his country’s official language) and English and is thus able to read many more literature in original languages? If I read Naipaul in English and he reads it in French, what have I gained that he hasn’t? Does an Indian reading Naipaul or Rushdie (in English) gain something more? After all, they are co-sharers in the cultural conditioning that produced the texts? If I read Onitsha by JMG Le Clezio in French, do I gain any more or less than those who do it in English? After all, the writer is French. But then, after all, I am Nigerian, and the story in the book are based on the writer’s adventures in the Nigeria of the 60s. For those who have read George Orwell’s 1984 in German, or in Japanese, how does the writer translate words like “newspeak” and “thoughtcrime”. Does it make the same compact sense as it does it in English?

I first read Plato On the Trial and Death of Socrates in the early 2000s and what struck me the most was how beautifully it was written. It was a translation. Plato did not write in English. A few of the other plays we read as undergrads The Frogs by Aristophanes, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, and Wole Soyinka’s notable translation of D.O. Fagunwa’s classic novel into The Forest of a Thousand Daemons all struck me as bearing very distinct literary styles that stand in their own stead as authentic study of thoughts in translation. The last time I read Plato On the Trial and Death of Socrates was late last year in Edwardsville, and I was greatly surprised at how insipid it read compared to the one I read back in Ibadan. The conversation on the dinner table went back and forth within these many areas of literary translation and I learnt as much as I grubbed. By the time the evening was over, all I wanted was a financial grant to go live in a small house by river and complete all the pending translations I have been working on for many years.

The last time we conversed, I sent them a long Yoruba to English translation of some of my father’s poetry. Half insecure in my experimentations (I’d completed the translation in 2005 and haven’t worked on it since then), and half wondering if any of the beauty of oral literature is lost when they become text, I was pleasantly surprised to read as a response to it, an email from my colleague: “That is a lovely, rich and absorbing poem,” it read “I have read it twice and found myself drawn in so many directions, wishing I could climb its hills, listen to its music more closely and roll around in its musky earth – love is a vast world, mysterious and ordinary and always full of pungent flavors and astonishing depths and heights. I would like to read more.” See? Maybe all that is lost to translation should be the expectations we bring to it from our knowledge of the depths of the original. A few hours later, he sent me a work-in-progress Chinese to English novel translation excerpt that he and his partner (the writer) had been working on. I found it a delightfully splendid read. And I don’t speak Chinese.

Good literature will always speak out, in whatever tongues it finds.

American Mean Time

Universal time used to be determined at a village of Greenwich in the United Kingdom, and everything was measured against it. I never could figure it out and I grew up wondering why Nigeria was always one hour ahead of the BBC clock. Later in the Geography class, I figured out why. It had to do with the equator or something like that. Then one day I came to America and found out that there is something called Universal Time (UTC). Again, like the old British hubris, Americans expected everything in the world to be measured in relation to that so called universality. A few weeks ago, I had scheduled a phone interview with Rosetta Stone and it was due to come at 2pm (UTC). All I saw was the 2pm, and I planned my day accordingly. I was sitting by my desk at 1pm when the phone rang. It was the representative of the company, and they were calling for the said interview. Good thing I was not still in the shower at the time. What I didn’t bother to wonder at the time was why I seem always to be one hour away from the standard or universal time.

There are other things that have changed. Yesterday I scrolled through a list of the world ranking of universities. In the 60s and 70s when the now ruling leaders and of the Nigerian society were going to school, schools in the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union among others in Europe were the leading citadels of knowledge in the world. A few people came to the United States to study. Now, according to the list, the first dozen or so universities in the world are universities located in the United States. I scrolled down for a bit before locating my own institution somewhere down on the list, and it was enough to inspire a little urge for schadenfreude at the other ones a little farther down the list. But then, it could be worse, we could be one of the British universities who used to occupy the pride of place in the top list of world class universities. Now, they are somewhere scattered on the list, sometimes even farther lower than Taiwanese, Japanese, Swiss and Swedish institutions. I will not try to hazard a guess as to why.

Chuks is a MacArthur foundation scholar from Nigeria now here in the US. He has his own ideas of why it is a better alternative to go to school in the US in today’s world, beyond the common knowledge that its universities are ranked far higher now more than before. The system of learning and studying are such that the student is built to become independent in thought and research. What is wrong with European schools? “I know of the British schools,” he’d say, “and the system is built in such a way that you get to regard the professor as some repository of knowledge – a person high up there who knows everything and who should not be challenged – rather than a colleague like you who only happens to have read more, and spent more time on the field studying the same things that are available to you if you work just a little bit harder.” Chuks has never studied in the United Kingdom. The system in Nigeria is a mixture of both, with a slant towards the British, naturally, and unfortunately. I have been fortunate to have experienced the impatience with professors in Nigerian class who believe that just by the virtue of their age, experience or qualification, that they were beyond questioning or challenge. I have also been lucky to have met the right ones who would fix appointments with you in a bar so that you could both examine academic ideas over glasses of beer. I have met egoistic teachers who disallowed you from entering their class only because you didn’t scurry into the class when you saw them coming. I have also met those who set their evening classes under a tree just for a change of perspective. The progress in my academic development is mostly due to the inspiration and positive reinforcement of those good ones, and my rebellion against the hubris and negative reinforcement of the bad ones. At least, I survived.

Or so I think. The biggest misconception about the teaching and learning system of the American classroom today – at least from developing countries that I have some experience of – is that the presence of books and the internet makes it easy to get through. Well, it is true only to the extent of the student’s adequate balance of time and responsibilities. This takes me back to my title. American mean time refers not just to the new role of America’s very engaging, individualistic, and absolutely absorbing educational system in the world of academics. I am using it to refer to its absolute mercilessness when a student dares to take up more courses per semester than necessary. (Yes, this post is about me again). I have personally come to see the benefit of a more relaxed, yet ultimately absorbing schedule that allows the student to get all that is needed in, within a realistic time table that puts the least manner of stress on their mind. I do believe that I have become a better student of language due to the work of the past one year. And thanks to that is due to all my teachers, both the brilliant, open-minded ones, and the empty and needlessly hard-assed ones. At least I learnt something. Perseverance will get you through everything. Or almost everything. Brilliance (or modesty) plus an innate curiosity will compensate for the rest.

But maybe a few decades from now, we’d be talking about Chinese/Japanese Mean Time. Who knows?

The Art of Witness and Peace in Bosnia: Ways people have remembered and reconciled since the the war

This was written by guest blogger Sean Amiri who also works as a radiology technician and writes on the subject of top online universities.

In the close to 20 years since the beginning of the Bosnian War, much has happened. Thousands have been massacred, international forces have intervened, peace agreements have been negotiated, individuals have been tried for war crimes, refugees have fled. Yet, in the midst of this difficult story, it is inspiring to know that people have resisted against the brokenness and destruction that consumed the conflict. Here are two examples of how human spirit and creativity have used art to remember and reconcile the war from its very first year until today.

Witnesses to Evidence

The seige of Sarajevo began in April 1992. Six months later, in the shelled and rundown Sujetska Cinema, a gallery director and eight artists gathered to create something as a witness to the conflict. From that October to April 1993, the artists collaborated on a series of works inside the hidden hallways of the cinema, where Sarajevans frequently passed through to escape snipers outside. The gallery director, Mirsad Purivatra, and the eight artists – Nusret Paši?, Zoran Bogdanovi?, Ante Juri?, Petar Waldegg, Mustafa Skopljak, Edin Numankadi?, Sanjin Juki?, and Radoslav Tadi? – created a living testimony to the war they themselves were living.

The exhibit was themed around and subsequently named Witnesses to Evidence, after Nusret Paši?’s piece. The exhibit was invited to represent Bosniz-Herzegovina at the 45th Venice Biennale, but because of the wartime blockade, the artists and their works were unable to travel. However, later in the spring of 1994, they could finally leave. Witnesses was brought to exhibit at the Kunsthalle in New York, and the schedule was ideal. At the time, international audiences were gathering in New York to discuss the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict. More attention was being given to the consequences of the war.

What many found compelling about Witnesses was not so much its representation of the war, but more so the sense of obligation it passed on to its viewers to act as witnesses to history. After he saw the exhibit in New York, Johannes H. Biringer, an artistic director and the author of Performance on the Edge: Transformations of Culture, wrote a commentary about what the artists had done:

“They build meaningful compositions of the human spirit and intelligence in midst of the war’s insanity,” Birringer stated, “Thus they become also witnesses of our indifference; their irony and resiliency shame us. Their work also proves that it is neither impossible nor frivolous to make art in the time of war; perhaps making art in such a time is as necessary as finding food and shelter and healing the wounded.”

Most Mira

A little over a decade after Witnesses exhibited in New York, Bosnian-born Kemal Pervani? and social researcher Lea Esterhuizen founded Most Mira, a charity organization based in Britain and Bosnia. Most Mira means ‘Bridge of Peace’ and fittingly, the organization’s mission is to build understanding and tolerance among youth in Northwest Bosnia by means of creative community arts.

Imagine this: 500 Bosnian, Serb, Croat, and Roma kids frolicking around for a week dancing, playing games, playing music, painting, writing, and singing. It’s a picture in stark contrast to war. That picture is of the Youth Festival that Most Mira has organized since 2009. And now, the charity’s energetic and innovative Trustees and Action Team are in preparation to launch this year’s festival scheduled for May 16-20, five days of workshops in art, drama, circus skills, dance, music, media, and performance. With May approaching, they’re in the last leg of the hunt to recruit volunteers, the ones who really make the festivals possible. Though, the point of it all reaches far beyond the fun and games. In a fragmented society shadowed by the war’s aftermath, what Most Mira and these volunteers do is help continue the work of remembrance and reconciliation that began in Sarajevo all those years ago.

News from Home

The following conversation – or something very close to this – took place on the way from Lambert airport a few days ago. In the car were three of us: An American professor/director of international programs, a Nigerian professor of technology visiting our campus (and the United States) for the first time on a MacArthur Foundations scholarship, and me. What united us was our interest in Nigeria. All of us had lived there at one point in our lives and are connected strongly to her in some way or another.

“When was the last time you went home, K?” the new Nigerian asked.

“I was just there in the summer,” I replied. “That was just a few months ago.”

“Nice. Do you plan to come home sometime?”

“Yes, of course. As soon as I’m done with whatever I have to do here. But it is also important that I have something concrete to do over there. I wasn’t very impressed with the situation before I left.”

“Oh no,” He said. “Things have really improved. The new president is really doing things.”

“He is? That’s interesting, because all I’ve heard these days are very unflattering things. Bombs, do-or-die politics, and campaigning with convicts.”

“No. He is really doing things. Electricity has really improved. Even education. He is bringing professors from here (the US) back home to help shore things up. We will need all hands on deck when you are done. You should come back home.”

Here the American professor contributes. He is impressed by the news of progress. I remained skeptical.

“I’m surprised that all you hear are the good news,” I said. “I’ve followed the situation in Nigeria closely and I do not think that Goodluck stands any chance in the next election except for the power of incumbency. I have not seen or heard any thing about progress. I do know that last week when one convicted member of his party was released from prison, his presence was conspicuously felt – along with the ex-president – at a church service thrown to welcome him back. It was a celebration of corruption if you ask me.”

“Oh no. He is a smart man.” The guest replies again. “All those corrupt people are close to him now because they are afraid of what he will do to them when he wins the election. He is a strategist. Don’t believe all you read.”

“I don’t really care for smart men but smart institutions, or things would never change.”

The conversation went on for the stretch of the forty-five minutes it took to drive from the airport back to school. I was lost in contemplation of what could be the cause of a stark difference between what I read from ordinary commentators, citizen journalist, academics like this new Nigerian, and real pundits online about the state of my country. I have not been impressed with the Goodluck charm as I probably should have been, and have been known to show a certain interst in the prospects of ex-Military ruler Buhari and his vice Bakare, for some strange reason. For one more reason, some of my otherwise smart friends have taken to volunteering for his campaign organization. How could this have been?

Being stuck here means that even if I want to, I can’t cast a vote. All I have is an opinion, and a chance to scoff at faux optimisms. It is very possible that our guest was saying all he could to paint the country in the best of lights, especially because of the presence of an American. It is highly unlikely, I thought, for things to be all good and rosy without there being a way for outsiders to see it from this distance. From where I stand, the current president is just as much a savvy politician with love for his hold on the position as everyone else. How that translates to progress for the country, I have not yet seen. But then, we still get to have elections.

In then end, I return to my couch skepticism. It is not like changing our leaders will make our lives miraculously better. It at least provides a way to spend otherwise idle time, and a chance to have a say in how the process turns out.

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