MY ARGUMENT
Why and how should a country/a Regional Organization patronize Kiswahili to become an International African language? Because we need to seriously de-colonize the condition of Africa on the international table. Language is a solid starting point because it represents culture, defines personality, and is a tool of trade for Africa. Kiswahili is spoken by some 200 million people across East, Central Africa and the Great Lakes, and is followed by Haussa, spoken by some 80 million in the Sudano-Sahel belt. It therefore represents the best bet behind which Africa can rally support to mark our place in the world, with no complex, no apology.
1. My credentials
Among the various professions that I held in my public life, one of them was as a free-lance translator. Meaning, if I am in a crowd listening to an interpreter of a public figure, I will be among those who quickly identify if that interpreter knows what s/he is doing, or if s/he is just “winging along” and misinterpreting (misrepresenting). The expression “lost in translation” is a reality.
The mechanics of language transposition comprises three specializations: (i) translation, (ii) interpretation and (iii) proof-reading. A translator takes the writing from one language into the writing of another. An interpreter voices the voice of another person in live speech. The interpreter therefore requires a speed of understanding and transmission that is not required of a translator. In addition, there are two kinds of interpreters: interpreters for crowd meetings, who speak in intervals after the lead speaker makes a point and allows for the language transposition. And the simultaneous interpreter, normally used in conferences, where the interpreter is talking at the same time as the main speaker, in another language, into a transmission system that allows listeners to select the preferred language through microphone channels. This interpreter is normally isolated from the speaker and the audience in a sound-proof booth, and requires consummate learned skills.
Professional translation is backed up by a third specialization: proofreading. A proofreader is a learned translator who reviews translated documents for grammatical correctness, meaning integrity and the correct capture of cultural drifts, cultural expressions. S/he ensures that nothing of the original language is literally “lost in translation”.
Lastly, the interested reader may wish to know that these professions are highly paid. Way back in 1987, as a translator in four conferences of the OAU, precursor to the AU, I was paid US$24 per typed translated page. Thirty-six years ago, and translation being the least paid of the three professions!
2. The Case
A unifying continental language will be a key diplomatic tool in elevating the voice of the Continent on the international table. In international institutions, including the United Nations, six languages are official: English, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese. The African opinion tends to be ignored by the mass communication machinery that dominates the global space to-day. Should Africa wish to influence it, Kiswahili alone has the expansion capacity to become the first of such continental tools.
Kiswahili is an official language of the East African Community, of SADC and of the African Union. From the institutional and demographic argument therefore, I feel the basis exists and the case is made for Kiswahili to become the bridgehead language for the Continent.
Declarations and wishes alone clearly do not make a language international. Cultural institutes such as the Confucius Institute, Alliance Française and the British Council do. Merely celebrating the International Day of Kiswahili declared by UNESCO is a diplomatic nicety. We need to travel beyond, to enable us occupy our space on the international table and participate in shaping new universal norms, relations, and trade practices. That will allow Africa to present the world a different, constructive, and more affirmative narrative, and break the cultural oppressive and exploitative monopoly to which the Continent is subjected, directly and through control of information flows (and of the mindset).
As a longer-term objective, African countries in North, West and Southern Africa may come to appreciate the diplomatic, cultural and unifying import of Kiswahili and help move this language from an elective to a standard subject in schools, thus influencing the social and economic space of Africa. In particular for the conduct of international relations and diplomacy.
3. A Case for Patronizing
A country or Regional Organization should lead the charge. A University would be the natural primary place of academic, linguistic and philological development of this initiative with the establishment of an International Institute of Teachers, Translators, Interpreters and Proofreaders of Kiswahili.
The Institute would need to start with a School of Languages for Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Kiswahili and Russian, with a view to make Kiswahili enter the realms of professional (a) translation, (b) interpretation and (c) documents proofreading. Supporting the expansion of existing national research capacities in [a] selected University[ies] is necessary, and is a legitimate expectation of institutional support. This academic endeavour can benefit by learning from existing Chartered Institutes of Linguistics around the world (UK, Canada, US, South Africa, etc) and become a Charter of its own standing.
The nucleus of Patron Institutions: nothing moves without a mover.
Diplomatic and organizational support: this is the pillar for sustaining the initiative.
Academic Support: [a] University[ies], with the necessary institutional reinforcement.
Political support: African Union, EAC, SADC
Financial Support: African Development Bank, Global Fund for Education, etc.
4. Academic Strategy: Language Research and Development
The training of Kiswahili Professors,
Full graduation, preferably at the MA level, of Kiswahili Proofreaders,
Full graduation, preferably at the BA level, of Kiswahili Interpreters,
Full graduation, preferably at the BA level, of Kiswahili translators,
Graduation would be on bi-lingual and multi-lingual Kiswahili interpretation, translation and proofreading for the six UN Languages. Professions to be open to all African countries.
5. Language Internationalization (a multi-year programme schedule would have to be established/presented/agreed to an empowered forum)
First phase: National and Regional Advocacy.
Second Phase: Institutional support to [a] University[ies] for the strengthening of Kiswahili Teaching and for the professionalization of Translation, Interpretation and Proofreading capacity.
Third Phase: Reinforcement of current continental institutions already using Kiswahili (AU, EAC, SADC): invest more in improving and professionalizing their interpreters, translators and proofreaders.
Fourth Phase: Pilot Expansion Projects: take Kiswahili to global institutions headquartered in Africa: the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA- Addis Ababa), UNEP and UNHABITAT (Nairobi). This would be a build-up to the
Fifth Phase: Admission of Kiswahili into the United Nations Secretariats in New York and Geneva. Gradual expansion into the different Programmes and Funds of the United Nations System organizations.
While one specific country can validly claim academic, cultural and demographic mastery of Kiswahili, and may either initiate this project or be appointed to do so, co-opting other interested governments in East Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands, where Kiswahili is an official language, would be strategic diplomatic foresight. Managing this project requires the assumption of concomitant leadership in an academic, financial and institutional endeavour, without underestimating risks, opportunities and weaknesses.
Above all, this would not be intended to be a short-term programme and any country/institution championing it cannot hold it hostage to national politics of office-bearers. It is proposed as a Continental service.
6. Financing and Managing
This is a major undertaking on behalf of the entire Continent and any country/Regional organization taking leadership in this project can only implement it through grants. It is proposed that those grants be sought primarily among African financial institutions, such as the African Development Bank.
This is a cultural war, not a cultural conversation, where your interlocutor would be expected to declare “let Kiswahili be an international diplomatic language as well!” If you expect to just walk into a conference room and start delivering in Kiswahili because someone declared it, think again if your speech did not go with the wind. The world is not full of gifts for Africa.
7. A QUESTION FOR YOU ALL READERS, FOR OUR LEADERS
Why do we have the Christian bible (in all its several versions) translated into Kiswahili, in Nyanja, in Shona, in so many African languages, but we do not have translated in any of our languages books of mathematics, physics, geography, social sciences, chemistry, trigonometry or biology? How are we going to be able to build a bridge without running to the Chinese if our student does not understand trigonometry in English? We all know the colonial history of the bible and so the question can be cast in a different manner: when is the time coming when we should start using African languages to promote learning, academic research and scientific knowledge? The Chinese have their books in Mandarin, the Japanese in their language, the Indians in their languages. Why would we be surprised that limiting ourselves to French, Portuguese and English does not seem to offer us any technological headway? Can we not muster a pool of brains to take on this challenge as a continental effort?
After Kiswahili, can we not chain it with Haussa? And… and…?
There is a typical Portuguese saying: Quem põe o guizo ao gato? (Who will bell the cat?)
Jose, 04 May 2023
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