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A couple of weeks ago I read a piece at this website entitled: ‘Is Twi Developed Enough to Become a National Language?’ The writer got me riveted by the title, besides the historical slant. However, he managed to consume his cake, yet contrived to keep it, and concluded categorically that Twi is not ready to become the national language. Though, I agree with his sentiments without reservation, on the other hand, it is his line of argument, which seems to be the Achilles’ heel that will prevent Twi from becoming the national language in the future. He was very much convinced that the beautiful Twi language is being destroyed by the infiltration of our colonial language. Now, to say that a language is beautiful is basically a misnomer, because there is nothing beautiful about any language. Every language, according to the uninformed, is beautiful to all those who speak it. When you don’t understand any language it sounds like a ding when spoken. Anybody who does not speak the Akan language is called ‘?potoni’: literally meaning someone who speaks a mashed or formless language. The word barbarian was coined by the Romans to describe people who do not speak Latin i.e. they make ‘baah baah’ sound like a goat. I quite remember when I was a boy we used to make a lot of fun about the Chinese language. One of the jokes was that Chinese parents name their children after the sound generated by dropping a metal on the ground. Clearly, I believed with my friends then, that Chinese names were formed from unintelligible sounds. But for the people who speak Mandarin it is the most beautiful language in the world. The Arabs, for instance, think that the language of God is Arabic, and for that matter the Koran should be read in its original text – Arabic. If they don’t believe that the Arabic language is divine and beautiful they wouldn’t be that presumptuous. Nevertheless, I have some few friends who speak Arabic and it is as unintelligible to my ears like I used to describe the Chinese language when I was a child. The English are startlingly arrogant about speaking other people’s language. Because they believe English is the ultimate language in the world. The French get irate because English is the international language of choice for communication especially in aviation. The fact is everybody thinks that their language is the best, and with a little bit of analysis it’s obvious that the assertion is a no brainer and absolute tosh.
Common Sense Advisory has published its study about the need for translation in Africa. The study was conducted in 2011 in cooperation with Translators without Borders, and received quite an impressive feedback of more than 300 translators in the African languages. Almost 77% of the responses came from people living in Africa, the rest from the various regions in which Africans form a large Diaspora. However, as Common Sense Advisory stresses, the regional distribution is somewhat heavy on South Africa, followed by Kenya, Cameroon and Nigeria.
The results are interesting. One of the major findings is the high level of training and education received. More than half of the respondents are university graduates and one Third have a Bachelor degree. But with the large Diaspora and the various possibilities of language related studies one can conduct in South Africa this is perhaps less surprising. What I find most surprising is the fact that 46.3% claim that African language translation is their prime source of income. On the other hand, the lack of organization and trade union representation is felt as severe as payment morale appears to be low and political repression an issue.
Most translators work also as interpreters which makes a lot of sense if one considers the high place of oral communication and the relatively low literacy rates in the continent. Read more: http://terminologyblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/translation-and-terminology-in-the-african-languages/
Terminology: Are African Languages Doomed? by Charles Tiayon Posted on May 4, 2012 | 3 Comments A Reuters article published in the Oman Tribune today states as follows: Most of Africa’s 2,000 languages have no word for cancer. The common perception in both developing and developed countries is that it’s a disease of the wealthy world, where high-fat, processed-food diets, alcohol, smoking and sedentary lifestyles fuel tumour growth.[...] How can a continent hope to diagnose and treat, let alone fight to prevent a disease that has no name? It’s a question David Kerr has been struggling with for several years….
The lack of ready-made lexical correspondents for the English term cancer in some African languages can hardly justify such an alarming generalisation. Besides, how does one expect users of a given endogenic African language to readily express referents like cancer (credited supposedly to the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC)) when the language used to inform about the disease (notably through formal teaching/learning, administration, the media, etc.) is systematically and often exclusively some other (usually exogenic) language? By the way, does it ever occur to anyone that many Western languages too do lack ready-made single-word correspondents to some of the most common concept expressions found in specific African languages? Why is it that most of the current investments in the area of terminology across the continent tend to prioritise exogenic language-endogenic language combinations rather than the reverse and combinations which bring together purely endogenic African languages? Whatever the case, no language can claim to have ready-made single-word correpondents for every lexicalised concept in all the other 7000 languages of the world. This seems to be the actual direction or sense of cognitive relativity/cognitive relativism, understood here to be clearly different from a certain conception of cultural/linguistic relativity which tends to confuse the scope of language currency with the limits of the users’ worldview (cf. the Whorfian hypothesis). Cognitive relativism consists of two claims: (1) The truth-value of any statement is always relative to some particular standpoint; (2) No standpoint is metaphysically privileged over all others.
Language users express world realities when they become aware of the realities and when they consciously make efforts (notably in contexts of actual interpersonal communication in general and translational communication in particular) to fill the gaps as appropriate. Such expression can be done in many ways, including borrowing and (cross-linguistic) word creation. All the words or concept expressions in a language do not develop all at once. Nor do such words or concept expressions just spring up ex-nihilo. It is therefore time to stop crying in the face of the realisation that x or y African language does not have a corresponding single-word name for this or that English or French or Spanish or Portuguese (or any other language) word. Instead, Africans, especially policy makers, should take the bull by the horn and effectively integrate professional translation (cf. http://terminologyblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/translation-and-terminology-in-the-african-languages/) and the setting up of (independent) local/national terminology committees in all national and continental development plans. The purpose of proper translational communication planning and well-organised terminology committees will be to ensure quality terminological partnership across endogenic African languages on the one hand, and between endogenic African languages and other languages of the world on the other, including exogenic languages which now serve as official languages across the continent (cf. Guidelines for Terminology Policies and http://www.infoterm.info/activities/terminology_policies.php). As of now, despite commendable efforts by such external initiatives as the Réseau International Francophone d’Aménagement Linguistique (RIFAL), there is a tendency throughout the continent to set up and structure norms and standards bodies for industrial, commercial and other sectors without any serious consideration for terminology norms and standards. Meanwhile, many local language committees either do not always see terminology as a central concern or do not have the necessary expertise to adequately address terminological issues. Yet, there is evidence that competitive industrial development, more often than not, goes hand in hand with some form of organised terminology development. This is the case in most so-called developed countries. In many instances, the approach to the adoption of terms and other expressions for new concepts (especially concepts from foreign languages) tends to be openly prescriptive. In others, the approach tends to somehow descriptive. In general, however, approaches to terminology in industrial settings tends to be ultimately prescriptive (with expert input), in order to minimise the risk of misunderstanding during interpersonal communication. Related articles
Africa is battling cancer with more than a million new cases every year, writes Kate Kelland IN EMMANUEL Adu’s language, Twi people call the skin cancer that is invading his cheek and nose “sasabro”. It means a disease that eats away at you. The 73-year-old former cocoa farmer has come to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, miles from his home, to be treated with one of the two radiotherapy machines in Ghana. .... Most of Africa’s 2,000 languages have no word for cancer. The common perception in both developing and developed countries is that it’s a disease of the wealthy world, where high-fat, processed-food diets, alcohol, smoking and sedentary lifestyles fuel tumour growth. Yet, Adu’s is one of an estimated one million new cancer cases sub-Saharan Africa will see this year - a number predicted to double to two million a year in the next decade. How can a continent hope to diagnose and treat, let alone fight to prevent a disease that has no name? It’s a question David Kerr has been struggling with for several years. A cancer specialist based at Britain’s Oxford University and former president of the European Society of Medical Oncology, Kerr set up the charity AfrOx in 2007 to help African countries seek to prevent and control cancer.
Clinical and technical information imparted in most African languages involves inexact terminology and code switching, so it lacks the explanatory power characterised by the English language. African languages are absent in the tertiary science education environment and forums where African scientists could present scientific material in the medium of African languages. This limits the development of African languages in the scientific domain. There has recently been a trend in several African languages to develop and intellectualise them, especially in the field of medical sciences. The ChiShona language is used to explore the ability of an African language to develop new terminology, to name the vertebral skeleton and describe it scientifically. It uses word compounding to demonstrate terminology development. ChiShona has similarities with several hundred other Bantu languages in East, Central and Southern Africa. Advancing this language can promote similar developments in others, making them more explanatory for the lay public and health professionals.
The President of AFRILEX, Professor Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, announces as follows:
The Board of AFRILEX, in conjunction with the Bureau of the WAT, decided to turn our journal, Lexikos, into...
AFRILEX 2012 – 17th Annual International Conference of the African Association for Lexicography (Pretoria, South Africa, 3-5 July 2012)
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP
LSP Lexicography (Pedro A. Fuertes-Olivera, Valladolid, Spain)
CONFERENCE KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
1: Sign-Language Lexicography (Rachel McKee and David McKee, Wellington, New Zealand) —
Mouvement des Africain-français, Le MAF En perspective des élections présidentielles de 2012, les Africain-français marquent leur adhésion aux valeurs de la République et expriment leur inquiétude...
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