Having envisioned a publishing infrastructure for Mozambicans and by Mozambicans after becoming the first published literary translator in her country, polyglot Sandra Tamele established a literary translation prize, attended the Breadloaf Translators’ Conference, obtained a diploma in translation from the Institute of Linguists Educational Trust in the United Kingdom, and eventually co-founded consortiums of literary translators and book publishers. She did all this while translating works from the English and Italian into the Mozambican Portuguese, from Premio Strega-winning Italian novelist Niccolò Ammaniti’s Eu não tenho medo (I Am Not Scared) to Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus’s A Perseveranca (The Perseverance), and learning other languages—including the Mozambican Sign Language.
Throughout all this, establishing The London Book Fair award-winning independent press Editora Trinta Nove Zero (30.09) and the As Sete por Quatro (7×4)—which champions works by marginalised Mozambican writers writing in Mozambican Portuguese, English, and other local languages such as Makhuwa, Sena, and Changana—seems to be her career’s crown jewel so far. In this work, she has engineered a landscape more consequential than any edifice and armature: the new age of Mozambican literature, translation, and publishing. “Literary translation is still underrated in Mozambique,” Tamele laments in her essay ‘Desassimilar: Decolonizing a Granddaughter of Assimilados,’ “But I have chosen a different path now, and this work is too important for me to give up.”
In this interview, I conversed with Tamele on the intricacies of translating from English and Italian into the Mozambican Portuguese language; finding readership in the Mozambique and the rest of the Lusophone world; and being one of the architects of Mozambique’s literary and publishing scene.
Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): Did you have a road map to develop a publishing infrastructure with your many contributions to Mozambican literature? What went unmentioned behind the scenes?
Sandra Tamele (ST): I have to admit that I did not have a roadmap, but wish I had one when I decided to become a ‘PublisHer’ back in 2018; most of the shifts in my career, through this past decade, were a result of my restless, problem-solver spirit. In hindsight, I think that I never expected or even dreamed that today I could win any literary or publishing awards, nor act as a PublisHer advisory board member and president of the Mozambican Publishers and Booksellers Association, among others.
Long story short, I left a career where I felt unwanted for one where I felt invisible—and with less prospects of succession because I had never heard a single child say they wanted to become a literary translator when they grew up. The solution: a literary translation competition to raise the profile of language professionals, while promoting reading and literary translation practice among young people in Mozambique. Three years later, we had this amazing collection of stories that no publishing house in Mozambique was willing to invest in, in spite being written by award-winning authors like Alain Mabanckou, Marguerite Abouet, and Imbolo Mbue, to mention a few.
Establishing 30.09 was the solution. It went from strength to strength and now encompasses a creative writing initiative for women, workshops for illustrators, the transcription of children’s and YA books to build a Braille library, agenting for Mozambican writers, and the project of a groundbreaking bookshop and community library. I guess I am The Architect without a plan. Despite the steep learning curve and the many hats I have to wear, I believe that I’m gaining focus as I grow as a publisHer.
In 2024, I plan to be more intentional in working with my peers to provide training for a cohort of female high school graduates in key publishing and related fields, to start building the book sector infrastructure in Mozambique. A roadmap for those who follow on my footsteps is also on the agenda, in addition to building a database and statistics for the sector. I’m now also in the position to advocate for book and literacy policies with key decision makers.
AMMD: You disclosed that most Mozambican writers do not share your views about the potentials of literary translation. In what ways has 30.09 been a solution to the many challenges you previously outbraved and myths you tried (and are still trying) to dispel as a translator and publisher?
ST: When looking at literary production and publishing in Mozambique, one has to bear in mind that, at forty-eight years as an independent nation, the country is still relatively young and striving to build a national literary identity, as claimed by scholars like Letícia Santana Gomes. During the first republic, books and education were high on the political agenda, with high print runs and a wealth of content and publication channels that aimed to educate, inform, and entertain at affordable prices; these were mostly short stories and comics inspired by folktales, transcription of the local tradition of storytelling, and some poetry.
The early 1980s was marked by literary movements and journals like Charrua that aimed to break from the post-independence writing (deemed pamphlet-like), and to formally experiment with poetry and to appropriate the national language, Portuguese. Unfortunately, this departure from the philosophy of the First Republic resulted in the erasure of female intellectual and creative production, as proven by the extensive list of male names among the “Charrueiros”—founding members of the Mozambican Writers Guild, who are revered by contemporary poets and novelists.
The 1990s were marked by the end of the civil war and the democratization of the country, thus enabling the emergence of a younger, more experimental generation of writers. Despite the exposure they garnered with the advent of the internet and social media, this group still focuses on circulating their work within the PALOP (Paises Africanos de Lingua Oficial Portuguesa)-Portugal-Brazil confines, from which they also source their references.
With 30.09, I believe that I shifted from mere spectator and aspiring translator. I began trying to pitch projects to both Mozambican writers and Anglophone publishers, and earned the agency to publish off the beaten track—which is not easy with the limited number of authors. In the last couple of years, I launched a call for submissions and hosted creative writing workshops with a cohort of twenty-eight female debut authors—who I published in the collection As Sete por Quatro, inspired by Mozambican Women’s Day, 7 April. The stories were then translated into the three most spoken Bantu languages—Makhuwa, Sena, and Changana—and distributed worldwide through the African Books Collective.
I believe that this will be one of the drivers in shifting the mindset of established writers; with 30.09 translating and publishing their work into Kiswahili, English, or French, they could reach global readerships through this channel.
AMMD: The latest African Small Publishers’ Catalogue indicated that your press “wants to be inclusive by translating and publishing mostly female writers and writers with disabilities or from other minorities in both print and audiobook formats.” D/disable-inclusivity aside, what was the reason behind the inclusion of audio formats? Is this also the same reason why you’re learning the Mozambican Sign Language?
ST: I remember listening to audiobooks at an early age. When I was a toddler, mom and dad bought me a 45 RPM vinyl story collection. I think that is where the decision to publish audio comes from. Then, one day in early 2018, while listening to BBC 4, I heard the story of a laundress who knew the entire Dickens collection by heart because it was serialized in radio. This was my second aha! moment. In addition, I had the sad realization that 39% of Mozambicans are illiterate, and illiteracy still affects women disproportionally—including my late nanas. I don’t know if this comes from my parents—the utopia generation that built the first republic—but this was when I decided I’d publish books and try and make them available to these women, who are mostly rural.
I decided to learn sign language after meeting Professor Jemina Napier at the 2017 FIT (International Federation of Translators) World Congress in Brisbane, and I had watched in awe as she shared her story of being the first hearing person in six generations of her family, while making history as the first signed keynote—with spoken language interpretation—at such an event. To be honest, mastering sign language is proving to be harder than I thought, but despite my slow progress, I’m committed to always highlighting the importance of having sign language interpreters at cultural events in Mozambique.
AMMD: In an issue on Luso-African writings of the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, you are the only Black woman mentioned among publishers behind independent presses from Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau. You are also the first published Mozambican literary translator. On a personal level, how do these materialities make you feel?
ST: I believe that I’m just the Black, female indie publisher from the PALOP that was given some visibility. I’m aware of the existence of other Black women in Mozambique who have been active in publishing years before I established 30.09: the likes of the late Fátima Langa and Tânia Tomé, and newcomers like Virgília Ferrão and Mel Matsinhe.
It is rewarding to see my work being recognized and making myself, my family, and friends proud, but there are also many bittersweet moments, like when my peers—the writer community and cultural agencies in Mozambique—deny or downplay any recognition by international entities if there is no financial award involved.
I’m fortunate to have a group of women who are keen to lend a ear or provide a much needed pep talk. They make it easier for me to focus on work and ensures that if I’m the first, I’ll not be the last.
AMMD: You confessed in an essay that you used Modern Standard European Portuguese from Portugal in translating Italian novelist Niccolò Ammaniti’s Io non ho paura (Ndjira, 2007) because, as required by the grant from Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “it should be readable across the Portuguese-speaking African countries . . . [implying that] the metropolitan matrix [is] superior to the colonized [Portuguese] variants.” But a decade later, you re-edited and re-translated the said novel into Mozambican Portuguese, “showing that we Mozambicans made Portuguese our own.” Can you speak about your experience in retranslating from ‘standard’ Portuguese into Mozambican Portuguese—in word choice, sentential structures, among other Mozambique-specific nuances?
ST: 30.09 granted me more agency to stress the Mozambican readership’s worthiness of a book in their variant. I’m successful in many translation rights negotiations precisely because we are committed to publishing the Mozambican variant and/or for a readership within the PALOP. In this specific project, Ammaniti wrote in colloquial Italian and I was indeed pressured by my lecturer, and reviewer, and the terms of the grant to use a more elegant, standardized variant instead.
From the 2007 Edition published by Ndjira:
A minha bicicleta era um ferro velho, com o selim remendado, e tão alta que devia dobrar-me todo para tocar a terra.
Todos a chamavam a “Escangalhada”. Salvatore dizia que era a bicicleta dos fuzileiros de montanha. Mas a mim agradava, era do meu pai.
Se não andávamos de bicicleta estávamos na rua a jogar à bola, ao rouba bandeira, ao “um dois três macaquinho chinês” ou debaixo do alpendre do barracão a fazer nada.
From the 2019 Edition published by Editora Trinta Zero Nove:
A minha burra era um ferro velho, com o selim remendado, e tão alta que tinha de dobrar-me todo para tocar o chão.
Todos lhe chamavam Xikórókóro. Salvatore dizia que era a bicicleta dos milicianos. Mas eu gostava, tinha sido do meu pai.
Se não andávamos de burra estávamos na rua a jogar à bola, ao lencinho, ao “um dois três macaquinho chinês” ou debaixo do alpendre do barracão a fazer nada.
As shown above, in 30.09’s edition, Michele and his friends from Acqua (singular word) Traverse (plural word) [there is a street called Acqua Traversa in Rome] ride their burras instead of their bicicletas through the scorching grain fields. The very name of the main character’s bike changed from Escangalhada to Xikórókóro, dropping the inverted commas and borrowing a word from Changana. The games the children play are also named like we Mozambicans do now.
AMMD: In that same essay, you wrote:
[M]y translation resembled that of a native European Portuguese translator. A white mask I used to pride myself on wearing, until repetitive remarks like ‘If I heard you with my eyes shut, I’d suppose I was talking to a white woman’ by strangers and friends alike.
Can you speak more about this powerful imagery of the ‘white mask’ that translators like us (from postcolonies who translate into the languages of our former colonisers) wear?
ST: The ‘white mask’ discussion is not an easy one to have, particularly for me, a Black female married to a white, Mozambican man. Both my social and professional environments result in me often being the only black person in a room, which can easily lead to episodes of racialization or, worse, fetishization. But that is a different conversation.
The metaphor of the ‘white mask’ in our context encompasses several layers of meaning, highlighting issues related to identity, power, language, and cultural representation. We, translators from postcolonial backgrounds, often navigate a complex space where we have to straddle multiple identities—which in my case can lead to imposter syndrome. Assimilation was a tool for survival in my family, and also in my first years as a translator, but like the First Republic, I too was unconsciously working to continue the colonial linguistic legacy.
With the discourse of decolonization and efforts to change racial and linguistic paradigms, we gain agency to wear that ‘white mask’ strategically as a means of gaining access to wider audiences or challenging stereotypes and misconceptions about our own cultures. I feel that especially in my position at the helm of 30.09.
AMMD: Can you tell us about Mozambican Portuguese in comparison with European Portuguese in Portugal and the Portuguese in other Lusophone post/colonies? And given these variances, were you able to find readership in Portugal and the rest of the lusófono like other African countries (Angola, Equatorial Guinea) or as far as Brazil and Macau?
ST: Mozambican Portuguese incorporates a variety of loanwords from indigenous languages spoken in the region, as well as from the English, like machibombo (bus)—which etymologically stems from machine pump. It also includes variations in the pronunciation of certain vowel and consonant sounds, as well as intonation patterns. While the core grammar and syntax of Portuguese remain consistent across regions, Mozambican Portuguese has syntactic patterns influenced by local languages or unique grammatical constructions; one example is muito, which is used to stress the frequency of something, and it comes from ngofu in Makhuwa/Kiswahili. The Mozambican variant also has other sub-variations according to the settings being rural or urban.
30.09 has recently partnered with three Brazilian indie publishers to enable circulation of literature between the two territories. Though I normally adapt the Brazilian into the Mozambican variant, my peers across the Atlantic deem their readership as more open to reading Mozambican writers without adaptations. Finding a market in other territories is still a work in progress, and it’s not easy. We are still advocating for recognition of the many linguistic variants and territories instead of acquisition of world rights, when negotiating book deals.
AMMD: You translate from both Italian and English—such as Niccolò Ammaniti’s novel Io non ho paura and Raymond Antrobus’ poetry collection The Perserverance—into Mozambican Portuguese. Can you contrast your process in these various works, as well as translating from Italian versus from English?
ST: The distinct challenges of translating poetry from English and a novel from Italian, due to the inherent differences in the two genres and the unique features of each source language, resulted in me developing a close, emotional experience with these projects—and as such, they have more similarities than one may initially think. Though completed almost eleven years apart, they were both first ventures. And with both texts, I knew I wanted to translate these books as soon as I encountered them.
The translations happened in two different temporal and spatial contexts: Ammaniti was a kitchen-counter, weekend project that started as a collaborative class project in my sophomore year at the School of Architecture. When the translation was completed four long years later, my Italian teachers, Antonella De Muti and Maria Spina, played a key role in making my naïve rendering of the novel more readable, by helping me detect false cognates and providing cultural contextualization. In the new edition by 30.09, the dialogues and colloquialisms of the regional variant from the imaginary South of Italy found an equivalent in regional variant of the real life South of Mozambique.
Antrobus was translated in my office with Lenna Bahule’s Nômade playing in the background. That album was crucial to equivalizing the lyrics of a Jamaican church songbook that Ray’s grandma used to hum. As my first contact with D/deaf and Caribbean language and culture, translating The Perseverance challenged me to convey the imagery and metaphors while maintaining the rhythm and meter. Translating Aunt Beryl Meets Castro, which is written in Jamaican patois, was particularly challenging because I couldn’t find an equivalent in the Mozambican variant. Borrowing words and contractions from the Cape Verdean Creole brought the target closer to the source.
AMMD: 30.09 also published the Portuguese edition of South African writer-performer Koleka Putuma’s widely-translated poetry collection, Collective Amnesia. What is your view on translating non-Mozambican African authors for Mozambican readership?
ST: Collective Amnesia, for financial reasons, is still one of the projects in our pipeline—but yes, I think that it is important to translate non-Mozambican African authors because, geographically speaking, Mozambique is a Portuguese-speaking island surrounded by English speaking countries on the continental side, and Madagascar, a French speaking country, to the East in the Indian Ocean. That being said, it means that most of the literary production from those territories doesn’t cross our borders, and neither do ours arrive to readers in those markets. Here is where translation plays a pivotal role in terms of making our borders more permeable to culture and knowledge and the circulation thereof.
Koleka is an amazing performer and poet; she has even entered the canon in South African college syllabus by the hand of Professor Danai Mupotsa. I couldn’t risk not making that amazing work of poetry available to those Mozambican who do not speak or read in English.
AMMD: Who are the Mozambican, African, and Global Majority translators whose works in turn shaped your translations? What about writers and publishers who influenced you and your work?
ST: Literary translation is still underrated in Mozambique, which limits the number of references available. I look up to Professor Bento Sithoe, a scholar who spearheaded the project to standardize the spelling of Mozambican languages and wrote the first bilingual, Portuguese-Changana novel, Zabela. He is the reason why I’m now publishing bilingual children’s books in an attempt to both preserve, and create, a written record of the languages while creating new readers.
The couple Fernanda and Matteo Angius are another reference. They translated Terra Sonâmbula by Mia Couto into Italian in the 80s, and the fact of it being a collaborative translation out of her mother tongue made it even more impressive. Daniel Hahn is another translator I admire. I owe to him my PELTA (Portuguese-English Literary Translators Association) membership, which has led to many rewarding collaborations.
AMMD: In your opinion, which works from the Mozambican Portuguese and other Mozambican languages, modern or from antiquity, deserve another look—and retranslation?
ST: I’ve been discussing with feminist intellectuals the need to document ancient Mozambican writing and deities. The novelist Paulina Chiziane once shared in a panel discussion that she was working on a book about Achivangila, the Slave Queen founder of Niassa. I believe that there is a wealth of similar herstories that were subjected to euro-centric patriarchal erasure over the centuries, which need to be retold.
I recently read and am interested in translating Sensuous Knowledge by Minna Salami into Mozambican Portuguese. I think that her voice and writing, as a Nigerian-Swedish feminist, are key in a moment where only books by Afro-Brazilian and Afro-American thinkers are translated by indie and trade publishers alike.
AMMD: If you were to teach a course on Mozambican Literature, what books and works (in Makhuwa, Sena, Changana, English, Portuguese, and other languages and/or in translation) would you wish to include as key texts? Who are the writers—classic and contemporary—that you that you would be inclined to incorporating to the syllabus?
ST: Unfortunately, most of the Mozambican literary production is still written only in Portuguese, though efforts are being made to foster writing in the author’s mother tongues. At forty-eight years since the independence, Mozambique is still a relatively young country to have ‘classics’. Poesia de combate, or guerilla poetry, is one of the genres I’d recommend for the syllabus. Sangue Negro (Black Blood) by Noémia de Sousa is a great example of poetry by militant women fighting for the country’s liberation. Niketche by Paulina Chiziane and her entire body of work are also a good selection.
Sandra Tamele is the founder of The London Book Fair award-winning independent press Editora Trinta Zero Nove (30.09), championing Mozambican writers in English, Mozambican Portuguese, and other Mozambican languages such as Makhuwa, Sena, and Changana in print and audio formats. An alumna of the Breadloaf Translators’ Conference, she has a diploma in translation (DipTrans) from the Institute of Linguists Educational Trust in the United Kingdom. Her debut translation was Premio Strega-winning Italian novelist Niccolò Ammaniti’s Io non ho paura (I’m Not Scared, Ndjira, 2007) into Portuguese. She has translated 21 books—poetry and short story collections, novels, and children’s books—from English and Italian into the Mozambican Portuguese to date. She speaks Portuguese, English, and Italian, and is learning German, Mandarin, and Mozambican Sign Language. A founding member of the Mozambican Translators Association (2016) and the Mozambican Publishers Association (2022), she has attended the international book fairs in Frankfurt, Bologna, Cairo, Sharjah, and London. Born in Pemba, Mozambique, she is now based in the Mozambican capital Maputo. Some of her works appeared in Words Without Borders and the Tilted Axis Press anthology Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation (2021).
Alton Melvar M Dapanas (they/them), Asymptote’s editor-at-large for the Philippines, is the author of In the Name of the Body: Lyric Essays (Canada: Wrong Publishing, 2023) and Towards a Theory on City Boys: Prose Poems (UK: Newcomer Press, 2021). Published from South Africa to Japan, from Finland to Australia, and translated into Mandarin and Swedish, their latest works have appeared in World Literature Today, BBC Radio 4, Oxford Anthology of Translation, Sant Jordi USA Festival of Books, and the University of Alabama Press anthology Infinite Constellations. Their lyric essay has been nominated to the Pushcart Prize and their prose poem was selected for The Best Asian Poetry. Formerly with Creative Nonfiction magazine, their works can be found at https://linktr.ee/samdapanas.
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