Boosaaso (PP Comment) — The poet and cultural critic Yusuf Shaa’ir once argued that literary translators should respect cultural and religious boundaries. “Books written by atheists have translated into Somali to propagate their worldview” said Shaa’ir.
A prophet’s tradition (Hadith) enjoins believers to learn a foreign language. By its very narure a language is not value-free; it is a carrier of culture. The English language owes a lot to King James Bible. Phrases such as powers that be, a wolf in sheep’s clothing and the writing is on the wall are linguistic devices that a reader could be familiar with without knowing their etymological origin.
Translation is a cultural vehicle that enriches the target language and provides its speakers with an opportunity to expand their horizons. This culturally enriching benefit does not discount the ideological element that is sometimes inseparable from the enterprise of translation.
The Somali author and translator Abdiaziz Guudcadde noted that one of the state-sponsored translations in Somali was Jidka Loo Soo Maray Falsafadda Dhabta Ah (The Path to the True Philosophy) translated from Russian into Somali by Mohamud Abdi Dhunkal in 1977. Guud’adde translated Representations of the Intellectual by Edward Said, The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels into Somali. “ The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness” is a quote from the Communist Manifesto than comes to mind.
Providing selective examples of books translated into Somali does not fully capture the depth and diversity of translations available. Adan Salad Mohamud is a Somali translator who translated works by Karim Darwish and Jasim Sultan into Somali. Boodhari Warsame translated Richard Burton’s First Footsteps in East Africa into Somali. Saleh Saeed Essa, a Somali author and mathematician based in Britain, translated Burton’s travelogue into Arabic.
While Translation Studies is not currently taught in universities in Somalia, its introduction would offer ample materials for postgraduate students to explore in their dissertations.
© Puntland Post, 2024