The problems of finding acceptable isiXhosa expressions for 21st Century political vocabulary came under the spotlight at an isiXhosa terminology workshop in Cape Town on Thursday.
The workshop, hosted by the Western Cape provincial legislature and the isiXhosa National Language Body, follows up on a conference in 2001, which tried to solve the problems that government translators were coming across.
”We would find ourselves using long and complicated isiXhosa phrases to try to express terms such as ‘Affirmative Action’ and ‘Order paper’.” said Saliwa Faith Ncebakazi, senior language practitioner for provincial Parliament. ”People couldn’t make sense of the documents that we produced”.
At the 2001 conference, academics, translators, and government employees worked through a list of terms and found acceptable isiXhosa translations for them.
This became the backbone of the first isiXhosa parliamentary dictionary which will be launched officially on Friday.
However, the dictionary was a very small step towards promoting the proper use of isiXhosa in provincial government, Ncebakazi said.
The workshop, which continues on Friday, was a forum to highlight other problems and stumbling-blocks.
She said these problems included a lack of proper isiXhosa education options in school, a reluctance on the part of MPs to speak in isiXhosa, and problems with distributing translated documents to the people who would benefit from them.
She also mentioned that inadequate translation during court proceedings has been known to interfere with the legal process and result in wrongful sentencing.
Ncebakazi pointed out that the new terms provided by the National Language Body were only valuable if they became generally understood and utilised.
To this end they were negotiating with the South African Broadcasting Association to launch a discussion program on isiXhosa terms and phrases on national television.
Speakers at the workshop include Professor Peter Tshobisa Mtuze, official translator of Nelson Mandela’s Autobiography ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, and Cape High Court senior advocate, Dumisa Ntsebeza.
Mtuze said the challenge to a translator was to maintain the original intention of the author, while still doing justice to the language into which you were translating.
He spoke strongly on his view that hybrid variations of isiXhosa should not be accommodated. He said mother tongues should be presented with some measure of ”integrity, respect and love”, and argued for a common language to which all isiXhosa speakers should aspire. – Sapa