On the Untranslatable and the Misinterpreted: Misunderstanding Ghana
I’ve been mulling this for too long, and not much more’s really going to come of it until I put pen to paper fingers to keyboard.
On the Untranslatable
A couple weeks back, I mentioned my trip to New York to visit my old proff and his family. His wife, Sandra, is a professional translator, and I mentioned that I’d been working on a translation of Sunthon Phu’s Nirat Mueang Klang (นิราศเมืองแกลงของสุนทรภู่), the poetic travel log that first brought attention to the man who would become Thailand’s most famous writer. As both Jon and Sandra had lived in Ghana with me, they were curious as to why I was only translating Thai — wasn’t I doing anything to keep up my Twi? (I should clarify now — though previous posts have featured my translations from other languages, I consider myself either a student or a hack, and really only feel comfortable in Thai and Twi.) I told them that, though I had access to a few books of Twi verse, it all died in translation: It just wasn’t material that could make the transition into English, leaving its culture behind.
Of course, I couldn’t say that without then trying to prove my point:
Anomaa a ɔrekɔ
Anomaa a ɔrekɔ e
Sɛ woni(m) no?
Sɛ woni no a, ma menkra wo ara o,
Kofi Bampo,
Kofi Bampo a mese medɔ no ara o,
Ne se nwɔtwe.
Ne se nwɔtwe a ɛsisi nyaanyaa ara o
Akatewa fufuo.
Obiri kɔmfoɔ akɔbɔ asommɛn mu pɔ,
Yaa Adanse.
Obiri Kɔmfoɔ akɔbɔ asommɛn mu pɔ,
Yaa Adanse.
Akua Afriyie Gyampɔtemmaa nana
Ɔhene a ɔbɛkye.
Mepɛ no, mepɛ no, mepɛ ne kɛtɛ a ɔda soɔ
Na mawo no so.
Mepɛ no, mepɛ no, mepɛ ne bommo a ɔda soɔ
Na mawo no so.
Atwerɛbo a ɛyɛ nam, yɛmfa nhyɛ tuo ano,
Mede ahyɛ ano.
Mede ahyɛ ano menna nyɛ bra bio
Na mawo me ba yi.
Da bi a mɛwoɔ, mɛwo bɛɛma ara o,
Ɔsɛe akoa.
Ɔsɛe Bonsu akoa bɛɛma ara o
Ɔbɛmpa nsu.
Gyae o, hinko!Ako ara, anomanini.
Gyae o, hinko.Nana Sɛe e,
Mabɔ ne din o.
Gyae o, hinko.Nana Ɔsɛe a,
Ɔgrasie.
Gyae o, hinko.Amma Anima,
Mabɔ wo din o.
Gyae o, hinko.Kwabena Mmaaboa,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Nko, nko, nko, nko
Gyae o, hinko
Gyae na wo ni yɛ hene ba.
Gyae na wo ni yɛ hene ba.
Ɔkrabodwo a wofiri ahene mma mu,
Gyae o, hinko.Agyeiwa Kɔdeɛ,
Mebɔ ne din e.
Gyae o, hinko.Nana Maanu,
Mabɔ wo din o.
Gyae o, hinko.Akosua Buroni,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Amma Pokua,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Dwaben Sɛɛwa,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Afua Fio,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Abasa Kramo Ɔgrasie,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Kwame Boakye, Ɔbɛɛma e,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Kwaku Dua Agyeman,
Mabɔ ne din o,
Gyae o, hinko.Nko, nko, nko, nko.
Gyae o, hinko.
Gyae na wo ni yɛ hene ba.
Gyae na wo ni yɛ hene ba.
Ɔkrabodwo a wofiri ahene mma mu,
Gyae o, hinko.
My direct translation:
The Bird That’s Leaving
The bird that’s leaving, ee
Do you know it?
If you know it, let me leave you, o.
Kofi Bampo,
Kofi Bampo, whom I say I love, o,
His teeth are eight
His eight teeth get red lazily o
Chewing on white seeds.
Obiri the priest has broken the elephant’s tusk,
Yaa Adanse.
Obiri the priest has broken the elephant’s tusk,
Yaa Adanse.
Akua Afriyie Gyampotemmaa,
It’s the chief that she’d like to make herself out to be.
I like him, I like him, I like the mat he sleeps upon
And I’ll give birth upon it.
I like him, I like him, I like the cloth he sleeps upon
And I’ll give birth upon it.
The flint that is sharp, let’s put it in the musket,
I’ll put it in.
I’ll put it in, and lay down and menstruate no more
And I’ll give birth to this child.
The day that I give birth, I’ll bare a boy, o,
Osei’s servant.
Osei Bonsu’s servant, this boy, o
A good boy doesn’t cry.
Stop, o, coo!Parrot, male bird.
Stop, o, coo.Nana Osei, ee,
I’ve praised his name, o.
Stop, o, coo.Nana Osei, ee,
The Red Rum.
Stop, o, coo.Amma Anima,
I’ve praised your name, o.
Stop, o, coo.Kwabena Mmaaboa,
I’ve praised his name, o.
Stop, o, coo.Go, go, go, go
Stop, o, coo.
Stop it, you’re a chief’s son.
Stop it, you’re a chief’s son.
Wailing message from a chief’s son,
Stop, o, coo.Agyeiwa Kodie,
I’ve praised her name, e.
Stop it, o, coo.Nana Maanu,
I’ve praised her name, o.
Stop it, o, coo.Akosua Buroni,
I’ve praised her name, o,
Stop it, o, coo.Amma Pokua,
I’ve praised her name, o,
Stop it, o, coo.Afua Fio,
I’ve praised her name, o,
Stop it, o, coo.Abasa Kramo Ograsie,
I’ve praised his name, o,
Stop it, o, coo.Kwame Boakye, the hero, e,
I’ve praised his name, o,
Stop it, o, coo.Kwaku Dua Agyeman,
I’ve praised his name, o,
Stop it, o, coo.Go, go, go, go.
Stop it, o, coo.
Stop it, you’re a chief’s sone.
Stop it, you know how to be a chief’s son.
Wailing message from a chief’s son,
Stop it, o, coo.
The original verse comes from B. A. Aning’s 1975 collection Nnwonkorɔ. It is semi-traditional, and has no individual author known to me. My translation almost certainly has errors — perhaps most outstandingly, I’m not entirely certain what the compound verb ‘bɔ mu pɔ‘ means, so I’m not certain what Obiri actually did to the elephant tusk. The best Twi dictionary I have is a missionary’s collection from the last fin de siècle — it’s not bad, for what it is, but its orthography is dated, its definitions are sometimes incorrect, and it is decidedly incomplete and out-of-date. I do know, however, that it is a reference to a story in which Ɔkɔmfo Anɔkye — one of the Asante kingdom’s founding mytho-historical figures — did something to an elephant’s tusk, and presented it to a fellow priest from Dankyira as a sign of respect.
Had that been the only culturally-specific reference, this poem might have survived translation. Nizār Qabbānī’s ‘Bread, Hashish, and Moon‘ (خبز وحشيش وقمر) survives very well in translation, even if you, like me, haven’t a clue who ‘Abī Zayyidi ‘l-Hilālī is.
This is not the case with The Bird That’s Leaving, and it’s not the case with most Twi verse I’ve seen. Line after line makes reference to Asante historical, mythological, or folkloric figures: Ɔsɛe Bonsu, the great early 19th-century Asante chief; Nana Maanu, the progenitrix of the Asante nation; Akosua Buroni, the feminisation of the generic White man: Kwasi Buroni. And so on and so on and so on. I recognise about half the names, and presume that the rest are actual historical or folkloric figures (like Nana Maanu and Ɔsɛe Bonsu), or comical characterisations (like Akosua Buroni). Can you get the heart of the poem from just the words? Yes, I think so: The singer is mocking a young woman’s love, a young man’s sloth and poor dental hygiene, and the rivalry between two young women. The subject of the verse sings crudely about making love to her beloved, and then we cut into a bit where she can’t get her heroic little baby to stop crying. But the last half of the song is composed of this woman calling upon a folkloric pantheon of ancestors to help silence the baby. Without the appropriate context, you just can’t get it. It dies in direct translation: it requires translation and interpretation.
Ethnography, Translation, and the Importance of Context
April 25’s New York Times ran the following op-ed:
A Fragile Success in Africa
Teetering on the verge of success, but with failure always threatening to knock at the door, Ghana has lately taken up the mantle of what passes for a success story in Africa. It is the new darling in the halls where donors like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United States and Britain talk about making sure foreign aid does not end up in the hands of corrupt regimes.
What they have in mind are people like Kofi Asare, who labors mightily on his modest farm high in the hills near his village SamSam, carrying his ripe yellow pineapples on his head to get them from the fields to his truck. Dripping with sweat, the 28-year-old Mr. Asare is the very picture of Africa getting its act together. Last year, he made $10,000; enough to make the transition from mud hut to cement house. This year, with an eye warily on the future, he has planted 2,500 of a new “low acid” pineapple pioneered by the Del Monte Foods Company that threatens to smoke the Ghana “smooth cayenne” variety out of Europe’s supermarkets.
But Ghana is a good kid in a really bad neighborhood. Its West African neighbors, from Liberia to Sierra Leone to the Ivory Coast, have bred so much fighting in the last 10 years that they make Ghana seem like Iowa. Ghana does not have insurgents running around its hinterlands dressed in wedding gowns and wigs (like Liberia and Sierra Leone) or 8-year-old rebel soldiers toting machine guns (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast).
It has had four successful elections since 1993, and has actually experienced a peaceful transfer of power between democratically elected governments, another rarity in the neighborhood. Indeed, it is becoming a haven for refugees who come not only from Ghana’s unruly neighbors to the west, but also from other conflict zones in Africa. Last week, a group of refugees from Darfur, Sudan, showed up. It remains unclear how they made it across the continent, crossing the Togolese border from five countries away, but the Accra government is busy making plans to settle the Sudanese refugees.
Ghanaians like to brag that they have passed the point of no return in making their humid patch of West Africa a functioning democracy with all the perks that brings: a free and vibrant press, steady though slow economic growth, tourism. There is even a shopping mall with a multiplex cinema going up in Accra. With such obvious payoffs for adopting good governance, many Ghanaians say it is inconceivable that the country will turn back to the failed-state practices that have taken so many other African countries down the drain. “If anyone tried anything like a coup here, this place would immediately become ungovernable,” says Kweku Sakyi Addo, the host of one of Ghana’s innumerable political talk shows. “We’ve seen what happens in other African countries. There is no way people will put up with that here.”
But for all the talk of what a model African country Ghana is, it is still, literally, dirt poor, a fact of life that demonstrates just how removed Africa is from the proverbial rising tide of the global economy that is supposed to be lifting all boats. Ghana has a per capita income of $421 a year; most people survive here on $300 to $400. Ten-year-old girls still run barefoot up to stopped cars in the sweltering midday heat trying to sell anything they think will bring in money - from oranges to cellphone batteries to toilet paper. Street children still sleep on the median separating highway lanes.
And while the Ghanaian government appears to have a clear idea of exactly what steps it must take to try to alleviate the huge divide between Accra’s growing middle class and the country’s rural poor, some goals are already slipping. Child mortality rates, already high, increased in 2004; nobody seems to know why. A huge gender gap remains in primary-school education: far more boys make it to school than girls.
Almost half of Ghana’s national budget comes from foreign aid; Britain is its largest single-country donor. But the size of the country’s budget, a scant $3 billion, supporting some 20 million people, is testament to just how far Ghana still has to go, and just how much more it still needs to climb out of poverty. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s proposal for rich countries to drastically increase their aid to Africa in a Marshall Plan approach would be a huge step toward helping to bring the continent back into the folds of the rest of the world.
Ghana shows what a tough road this is going to be. But it also shows that bringing Africa back is eminently doable.
So, this is taking two shifts, which might not be entirely comfortable for some readers. First of all, I’m seeing translation as a useful allegory for ethnography. Secondly, I’m calling journalistic writing that deals with cultural issues ‘ethnography’. But assuming the validity of those two moves, is this a good “translation” of the situation in Ghana? As best I can tell, it accurately reports events in Ghana — I catch no glaring errors or lies. And, most probably, as it’s generally positive, it will be well-received by Ghanaian readers (it has been reprinted on some Ghanaian Websites). But I would argue that, in fact, this is a bad translation, and because of that, results in a bad interpretation.
One of the key rules that a translator should follow is to pay attention to and serve as best she or he can the words of the original author. In this case, that author would be the people of Ghana, and our translator doesn’t even give the author the courtesy of considering her or his author a full adult: Ghana is a ‘good kid in a really bad neighborhood’, and is the ‘darling’ of Bretton Woods. As children are to be seen, and not heard, Kofi Asare is summoned as an image of Good Africa, but his opinion counts for nothing in the article. Only one Ghanaian, Kweku Sakyi Addo, is allowed to speak. It is significant that his words come at the end of a paragraph, to bolster what’s already been said, rather than at the beginning, to allow him to make central points.
In addition, lacking a Ghanaian context in which to understand events in West Africa, the New York Times substitutes an American interpretation. Now, in point of fact, most of the Ghanaians I know are quite proud of how well their country is doing for an African state, and invite comparisons with other West African countries (especially Côte d’Ivoire). But if we were to actually speak with them about the issues present in this article, what would they have to say? Would they be thrilled that the IMF approves of the economic policies of the Ghanaian government? Or would they still hold grudges from the IMF policies that helped cause Ghana’s economy to fail in the early 1980’s? Would they still be annoyed (as so many were two decades ago) at the IMF’s encroaching upon Ghanaian sovereignty? Would they consider being economically forced to plant a new breed of pineapple (because an American business wants them to) a step forward, or a step back? Would they see a multiplex in Accra as one of the more important perks that democracy brings? My impression, like the editorial staff of the New York Times’, is that Ghanaians are quite proud of their country, and that Ghana has done remarkably well. But here’s where a question of interpretation comes in: Is Ghana a success in our terms, or its, and is it a success through Ghanaian agency, or because Ghana’s accepted being Bretton Woods’ bitch? My questions imply certain answers: it is not that I believe these to be the correct answers, or that my view of Ghana is the best view, but that I mean to suggest that Ghanaians may have answers to these questions different from the New York Times’.
I have many, many other objections, but one concern in particular stands out: Most of us have either had the experience, or seen a parent or teacher praise one child as a proxy for scolding another. It seems to me that this article does the same thing: It’s far more interested in scolding the rest of Africa than in praising Ghana. If only those insurgents and rebels in Sierra Leona and the Côte d’Ivoire would be good negroes, like their cousins in Ghana. This is an even starker, and more depressing silencing than that which the supposed Ghanaian subjects receive.
26 November 2005 at 09:05
Here’s the thing:
That poem … lousy translation or mediocre or brilliant … is impossible for me to read in the original and the translation gives me a taste of something I have never otherwise accessed.
Work it up. Edit. Rewrite. Whatever.
But even as is, it gives me something I never had before. And the insight into that other part of the world was real nifty.
Don’t sell short the fact that this is what you are doing (at least in part). And it is worth doing.
Sure: make it better. Find a way. But even as a start: it gives us uninitiated people something.