Translation: Source of Dispute-Conflict and Perpetuation of Socio-Political and Political Hegemony

By CANUTE C.N. TANGWA

In trying to build bridges between cultures, the translator sometimes assists, in no small measure, in tearing them down. The upshot: disputes-conflicts ensue between parties or actors with, at times, dire consequences.

A dispute-conflict may arise from a wrongly placed comma, semi-colon to an outright mistranslation. This is quite common with legal texts.

Thus, the battle for the apt phrase, word or punctuation mark shifts from the translator to the law courts, arbitration centres or the field. Hence, belying some heated debates and disputes is a misplaced comma, colon or a mistranslation. Surely, most of us have not forgotten the translation of lettre d’intention as letter of intention over Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) when Cameroon decided to join the infamous IMF club in the early 90s.

At times, a translation gaffe is a source of amusement. The first reaction of the native speaker is to break into a grin and then outrage. For example Yaoundeans of English expression were first quite amused when they read on notice boards inanities such as Sweep, Clean away, To gather dirtiness is good, Not to make dirty is better that were translations of Balayer, Nettoyer, Ramasser la saleté c’est bien, Ne pas salir c’est mieux.

However, beneath the translation process is a latent interplay of soft power politics i.e. the fight for socio-cultural and political hegemony. This is very evident in the film industry, international relations (diplomacy) and within a bilingual and bi-jural country like Cameroon.

In Cameroon, at independence, the fight for political space and influence were not the preserve of the political class. Because of the bilingual character of Cameroon, translation inevitably took centre stage and translators could make or mar depending on what politico-cultural shade they belonged.

The first manifestation of a covert cultural battle was the rendering of the Cameroon national anthem from French into English. It was translated by the late professor Bernard Fonlon. He had several options before him. However, he elected to adapt the French version into English.

There is every reason for students and researchers in translation to ask why Fonlon opted for an adaptation. I would tread where wiser minds seemingly have dared not.

By adapting the French version, Fonlon placed at par both versions of the national anthem. By literally translating the French text into English, he could have placed the English version a step lower than the French. Thus, Fonlon skilfully avoided an osmotic situation whereby one culture sucks in the other. Hence, both versions of the national anthem have the same rhythm/melody but different wordings! He went a step further to write a second stanza of the national anthem that was adopted by the National Assembly in 1972. Literary critics still have to appreciate Fonlon’s poetic craftsmanship: the beauty, originality, melody as well as geo-cultural and historical sweep of the first and second stanzas of the Cameroon national  anthem. 

Apparently, at the back of his mind and which was a cause of rumbles within the Anglophone political firmament was the phrase at the end of the Federal Constitution: the French version is authentic. The legal drafters slotted in this phrase with the understanding that in case of dispute reference should be made to the original French version. However, at the political level, it was construed as dominance of one culture over the other. Small wonder, the ‘culturally offensive’ phrase in question was dropped in subsequent drafts of the Cameroon constitution with its probable attendant legal consequences.

Unlike the French, Cameroonians, except for the dyed-in-the wool Francophile crust, are not so prickly about the dominance of foreign films in English. In order to counter English and particularly American dominance in the film industry and to maintain and preserve its rich cultural heritage “France  to adopt dubbing ….in translating foreign films”.  

According to Agnieszka Szarkowska in The Power of Film Translation (2005), dubbing “is …the method that modifies the source text to a large extent and thus makes it familiar to the target audience through domestication. It is the method in which ‘the foreign dialogue is adjusted to the mouth and movements of the actor in the film’ and its aim is seen as making the audience feel as if they were listening to actors actually speaking the target language”. It is quite expensive but that it what it takes to gendarme a culture and language and to fulfil “a cultural mission within the film art form”.

 Though Cameroonians are not particularly ill at ease watching movies especially Nigerian films in English, there have been some clumsy efforts to dub Nigerian films into French. The aim is to reach out to the large Francophone market that has hitherto been consuming Nigerian films in English. Such endeavours are not backed by any official government policy on domestication of films either because of the bilingual nature of Cameroon, its attendant cost or the lack of an act of parliament laying down an official bilingual policy.

CONCLUSION

To parry disputes-conflicts that may arise due to translation, emphasis should be laid on trained and accredited translators executing translation assignments. As regards its perpetuation of socio-cultural hegemony, there is absolutely nothing wrong taking pride in and preserving one’s culture insofar as it does not entail the exclusion of all others.

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