A First: Chinese Poetry Rendered in Kiswahili

http://qz.com/760197/for-the-first-time-a-collection-of-chinese-poems-has-been-translated-into-kiswahili/

Comments

# 1.   

Literary translations between Chinese and Africa’s indigenous or colonial languages are a relative rarity, as documented several years back here on Paper Republic (Stuck on Things Fall Apart?). Hopefully things have progressed since then.

It’s good to see the poetry of a China-based ethnic writer — Jidi Majia is a member of the Yi-Nuosu from Sichuan — appear in Swahili, the lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region. His work is also featured in Rhapsody in Black, with translations from the Chinese by Denis Mair.

But there are three factors that make the Kiswahili debut a bit less impressive than it appears. They are:

1) The poetry was not translated from the Chinese or Nuosuo. According to the report, it is based on an English translation (aka a relay translation);

2) Words of Fire has been published in several languages, including Polish, French and Spanish, and benefited from a subsidy for ethnic writers that is administered by the China Writers Association;

3) Jidi Majia (吉狄马加) is currently Deputy Chairman of the Secretariat in the Chinese Writers Association.

For a list of China’s ethnic-themed literature in translation, including several works by non-Han authors, see Quick Guide.

Bruce Humes, August 19, 2016, 11:03a.m.

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