Metaglossia: The Translation World

....Ngugi was arrested and imprisoned without charge at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison at the end of the year, December 31, 1977. An account of those experiences is to be found in his memoir, Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary (1982). It was at Kamiti Maximum Prison that Ngugi made the decision to abandon English as his primary language of creative writing and committed himself to writing in Gikuyu, his mother tongue. In prison, and following that decision, he wrote, on toilet paper, the novel, Caitani Mutharabaini (1981) translated into English as Devil on the Cross, (1982)....

Ngugi has continued to write prolifically, publishing, in 2006, what some have described as his crowning achievement, Wizard of the Crow, an English translation of the Gikuyu language novel, Murogi wa Kagogo. Ngugi’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages and they continue to be the subject of books, critical monographs, and dissertations.

Paralleling his academic and literary life has been his role in the production of literature, providing, as an editor, a platform for other people’s voices. He has edited the following literary journals: Penpoint (1963-64); Zuka (1965 -1970); Ghala (guest editor for one issue, 1964?); and Mutiiri (1992-)...

At the flag off ceremony of the 2012 edition of ‘Read Africa’ project, an initiative stemming from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of the United Bank for Africa (UBA), UBA Foundation, held at the bank’s headquarters in Lagos, the renowned Kenyan writer, Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who was the guest speaker at the event lamented the total neglect of African languages in affairs of Africans and African states. He frowned at the preference among Africans for European languages and culture. Flaying what he referred to as the enslavement of Africa by Africans, the literary icon expressed the view that Africa will not be free through the mechanical development of material forces, but it is the hand of African and his brain that will set into motion and implement the dialectics of liberation of the continent from self-imposed mental slavery.
Ngugi, who flew into Nigeria from California, United States of America, spoke with CHIJIOKE IREMEKA on the need to give a face-lift to the dwindling reading culture in Nigeria and Africa. He also called on Africa to take its place and secure its base through the promotion of its languages, literatures and culture. The author of Weep Not Child was pained by what he termed ‘criminality,’ raising Africans that speak European languages but do not speak African languages, adding that it amounts to empowerment for an African child, when he speaks African languages as well as foreign languages.
Ngugi called for linguistic power sharing in African, just as he extolled Nigerian literary giants — Prof. Chinua Achebe, Prof. Wole Soyinka and JP Clark, among others, describing them as the sources of imaginations for all African writers.

Popular author, Prof. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, has lamented the rate at which Africans are abandoning their indigenous languages for foreign languages, saying this trend is tantamount to self-enslavement.

Wa Thiong’o said this on Monday while speaking at the second edition of the Read Africa initiative of the United Bank for Africa Foundation to promote reading culture among pupils in Lagos.

According to him, most Africans are neglecting their indigenous languages in preference for foreign languages, noting that this trend was dangerous for the sustenance of Africans and their traditions.

He noted that Africans who have the mastery of other people’s languages at the expense of their own indigenous languages have subjected themselves to “second slavery.”

The Kenyan writer, who teaches at Yale University, added that those who were proficient in their indigenous languages and added mastery of other foreign languages had truly empowered themselves.

The writer of the popular Weep Not Child, warned Africans against killing their indigenous languages, noting that the consequences of this would be too much to bear.

“For me, enslavement is when you know all the languages of the world but you don’t know your own language. Empowerment is when you know your own language and you add other languages to it. We should promote our languages. We should encourage our children to speak our own language,” he said.

The author, who was accompanied to the formal inauguration of the second edition of the Read Africa by his 17-year-old son, Thiongo Ngugi, said he stopped writing in English Language about 10 years ago, to spearhead this campaign.