Posts featuring Ken Walibora

Principle of Decision: Translation from Swahili

October 5, 2023 | in Principle of Decision, Translations | by Albert Mwamburi, Hassan Kassim, Idza Luhumyo, Jay Boss Rubin, and Wambua Muindi

. . . the auditory and visual imagery that gather as you read the Swahili version . . . How [to] transfer the same to the English version?

This edition of Principle of Decision—our column that highlights the decision-making processes of translators by asking several contributors to offer their own versions of the same passage—provides a look at how translators render the subtleties of a poem with multiple layers of meaning in a new language. This round, Asymptote contributor Wambua Muindi leads our Swahili edition of the column.

Ken Walibora’s Kufa Kuzikana was originally published in 2003 and just clocked two decades since publication. For this edition of Principle of Decision, I chose the first two paragraphs of Walibora’s novel partly to celebrate it but also to appreciate the story it follows in the context of what occupied the first half of 2023 in Kenya—the cycle of anti-government and cost-of-living protests, the ensuing police brutality, and the ethnic targeting and profiling.

I also found these paragraphs appropriate here given that introductions are always novel and always set the tone for a story. In this case not only do the two paragraphs borrow the geography of Kiwachema, the fictional country the novel is set in, they also illustrate the constant movement and consequent contact that is the backdrop against which Walibora animates post-colonial Kenya. The friendship between Akida and Tim—the novel’s main characters—becomes a fable for the nation and demonstrates the exclusionary logic of national politics despite the promise of nation-building.

I wanted to see what different translators’ English renditions of the novel’s opening lines would sound and feel like. Of particular interest was the auditory and visual imagery that gather as you read the Swahili version, and the way these sentences introduce the tone of the narration. How does a translator transfer the same to the English version? This is also a question many of the translators asked themselves. Phrases like ‘dhahiri shahiri’ and ‘miinamo ya vilima’ which embody the particularity of Swahili sounds, posed an interesting challenge. The particularity with which the translators supply the tonality of Swahili is fascinating. Take for instance the last word: It is translated differently by each of the translators below, showing the different interpretations given and techniques employed in English translation.

—Wambua Muindi

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

April 14, 2023 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by Julia Sherwood, Sofija Popovska, and Wambua Muindi

Literary news from Poland, Kenya, and North Macedonia!

In this week of updates on world literature, our Editors-at-Large bring news on an upcoming film adaptation of Władysław Reymont’s The Peasants, a monthly calendar highlighting African writers and literatures, and the most recent winner of the esteemed Golden Wreath in North Macedonia! From Asymptote contributors’ recent accolades to a brief look into Vlada Urošević’s poetry, read on to learn more!

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Poland

A film version of the modern Polish classic, The Peasants by Nobel-prize winning author Władysław Reymont, will hopefully hit the screens later this year, following a lengthy delay caused by COVID and the war in Ukraine. Those familiar with the Gdańsk-based filmmakers Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman will know that this won’t be your run-of-the-mill costume drama; the film uses the same painstaking hand-painted technique that the team pioneered in their earlier acclaimed short film Loving Vincent. Originally scheduled for release in 2022, the production of The Peasants came to a standstill, as twenty-three of the artists working on the film were Ukrainian and based in a studio in Kyiv. Interestingly, it is the film that we have to thank for the new English edition of The Peasants; since the existing translation published in 1924 was rather outdated, Welchman commissioned Anna Zaranko, winner of the 2020 Found in Translation Prize, to translate a couple of chapters for him and subsequently managed to persuade Penguin Classics to publish the complete novel, which is nearly 1000 pages long.

In 2021, one year after Zaranko won it, the Found In Translation Award went to Ewa Małachowska-Pasek and Megan Thomas for their new English version of Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz’s 1932 satirical novel The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma. They discuss the novel with Daniel Goldfarb in the first episode of his series of Encounters with Polish Literature. Now in its third year, this consistently illuminating series of monthly videos that Goldfarb has been producing for the Polish Institute in New York has clocked up twenty-six episodes so far. In Episode 2, which focuses on Andrzej Sapkowski, Goldfarb is joined by David French, who has translated six out of the fantasy writer’s eight novels in the Witcher series into English, as well as all three parts of his Hussite Trilogy. In the most recent Episode 3, Goldfarb and the scholar and translator Benjamin Paloff introduce Leopold Tyrmand, author of one of the great Warsaw novels and popularizer of jazz in mid-twentieth-century Poland, a transformative figure in Polish culture between the death of Joseph Stalin and the post-Stalin thaw.

There have been nominations and prizes galore for Asymptote contributors: Marta Dziurosz has won the First Translation Prize of the UK Society of Authors 2022 for her ‘truly astounding translation’ from the Polish of Marcin Wicha’s Things I didn’t Throw Out, sharing the prize with editors Željka Marošević and Sophie Missing. Mikołaj Grynberg’s heartbreaking collection of short stories, I’d Like To Say Sorry But There’s No One To Say Sorry To, translated by Sean Gasper Bye, has been named a finalist of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature (the winner to be announced on September 12). Olga Tokarczuk’s monumental The Books of Jacob in Jennifer Croft’s translation finds itself on the shortlist of the 2023 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Literary Prize alongside fellow Polish author Maciej Hen and Anna Blasiak, translator of his book According to Her (see interview).

And finally, if you are a writer or translator with at least one published book, are currently working on a writing project, are interested in learning more about the Polish literary community, and have a connection with any UNESCO City of Literature outside of Poland, don’t miss the opportunity to apply for a two-month literary residency in Kraków (July 1 to August 31, 2023). The deadline for applications is April 23.