Yarri Kamara on the importance of African translators in literature

Yarri Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-Ugandan writer, translator and policy researcher who has lived and travelled extensively in the Sahel. She has been awarded several translation grants and was a finalist for the National Translation Award in the US for her translation of Monique Ilboudo’s So Distant From My Life. Her own essays and poems have appeared on numerous platforms including Africa is a Country, The Republic, Lolwe and Brittle Paper, and her work has been translated into French, German and Portuguese. She recently co-edited the anthology Sahara: A thousand paths into the future (Sternberg Press). In this interview, Kamara talks to Poda-Poda Stories about the importance of literary translation in Africa.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ngozi Cole: You’re a writer, essayist and researcher. How did you get into literary translation? 

Yarri Kamara: I saw it as a necessity. I like playing around with languages, but I was happy for many years just doing technical translations.I lived in Burkina Faso for 17 years, so I was reading a lot of African literature written in French during that time. I'd come across great work and then I tried speaking to my family who don't read French about these books, but the books weren't available in English. That’s when I started paying attention to what gets translated and what doesn't get translated. 

Now, a lot of the Francophone African literature has been translated by non-African translators, which in and of itself is not a problem, but sometimes you come across some translations that are a little bit lacking in context. So you wonder how much of the local context of the way French is spoken and whether it is West African or central African, whatever the region is, how much that particularity did the translator understand and how much attention did they put into conveying that into the English form. When I came across a Burkinabe novel, So Distant from My Life—which was my first literary translation project— I read it and I loved it. And I thought, well I have many years experience translating, given not literary translation, but here I am thinking about why is it that there's so few African texts translated by Africans? This is my opportunity to change that. And so I jumped in and gave it a shot. 

Ngozi: What was the translation process of So Distant from My Life?

Kamara: I came across the book at its book launch. I picked up a copy and I read it almost in one sitting. It's quite a short book, but I like the rhythm and humor in it. So then I went to meet Monique Ilboudo and I told her I was interested in translating the book and would she be fine with that? And she said, sure, go ahead. I started looking for grants and came across the Penn/Heim grant program. I sent off an application and continued translating, even though I had no funding secured yet. And the translation process in and of itself was just a lot of fun and easy, because I knew exactly where her characters were coming from. Ilboudo bases her characters on the youth that grew up at a certain time in Burkina Faso. I could see her characters and in my head I could understand their expressions,what the thought processes were underneath what they were saying. 

Ngozi: What would be some of these gaps that you think are still holding us back in terms of literary translation, and what’s your mapping of the literary translation landscape in Africa? 

Kamara: There are a not lot of African translators between European languages, for example English and French or English and Portuguese. And I think part of that is a reflection of how foreign languages are not taught particularly well in our school systems, because to be a good translator, you absolutely have to be able to comprehend everything in the source language. On the other hand, thankfully you do see a lot of literary translators working between African and European languages. In South Africa, there's a lot of support for working and translating with the local languages like IsiZulu, Xhosa etc. I think it was just a few months ago that a celebrated translation of George Orwell's The Animal Farm came out in Shona. So I think it's fantastic to see these African writers and translators who master the languages that a lot of them grew up speaking and that they're now bringing works written in English and sometimes written in English by African authors. There's also now an impetus for promoting literature in the Swahili language, and some of that also goes towards translating texts into Swahili. I think Abdulrazak Gurnah winning the Nobel Prize for Literature has given a boost to that because now you have international bestsellers that can be translated into Swahili. So I think there’s a lot of positive development.

If we come back to West Africa, my overall observation is that there's still a lot more texts written in English by West African authors being translated into French, though often that's passing directly through France because we have such big name writers writing in English and most French publishing houses are interested in them. A lot of English to French translators emerge from Cameroon just because of that unique situation that Cameroonians have where a lot of people who grow up bilingual within the European languages in addition to indigenous Cameroonian languages they may speak. 

Portuguese speakers are in Portugal, Brazil, and then the three or four countries in Africa. But I do know a lot of publishers based in Angola or Mozambique that are actively looking for things to translate into Portuguese for the Angolan or the Mozambican audiences because there's quite some differences between African Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. 

Because so much of the world functions in English and through English, you can already access quite a variety of literature within Africa. There are so many Nigerian writers and so many South African writers. So maybe it takes us English speakers some time to realize that we're missing out on parts of the world when it comes to literature. Both the publishers and readers are not that actively looking for works being translated into English by African writers writing in other languages. Whereas I think certainly the Portuguese-speaking Africans, and also the French-speaking Africans are much more curious about accessing what is being written by Africans in English.

Ngozi: You’re right, English speakers do read in a bubble because so much is translated for us. I read Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and I really enjoyed it! And when she won the Nobel prize for literature, there was a debate on social media about the translation of The Vegetarian and that’s when I thought, oh, of course it was originally written in Korean! How do translators strive to stay true to the original version of the text? 

Kamara: I think that's why translation is an art rather than a science. It’s great that you enjoyed Han Kang’s The Vegetarian–I know the translator who translated it into English—and it didn't occur to you initially to think this was not written in English. I think that's a sign of a good translation where it feels like it was written in the language you're reading it in. At the same time, you're also able to glean the unique cultural world of the original author. I think that's the balance that translators are always seeking.

Ngozi: What have been some of the formative books or forms of literature that have shaped you both as a writer and a translator?

Kamara: I went to an international school and there was no African literature on the curriculum at the time, but I think that has changed now. As a young teenager, I did attempt to read some of the immediate post-colonial African writers. But I think I read them at the wrong time in my life. I found them very stuffy and that didn't appeal to me. I came back to African literature as an adult and fell in love . I read two remarkable memoirs by African writers: Equiano’s Travels, also known by its original title “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African” which chronicles the life of an enslaved Nigerian, who later buys his freedom, and his travels from Africa to the Americas and through Europe. And the other, more recent, “An African in Greenland” by Togolese writer Tété-Michel Kpomassie which recounts his long trip to Greenland in the 1960s. The observations that these two travellers coming from an-as-of-yet unglobalized Africa make of the foreign worlds they encounter are fascinating and a refreshing alternative to the prevailing Eurocentric narratives of those times. These books really opened my eyes to the importance of us Africans chronicling our times for future generations. A recent book that I come back to a lot is Ben Okri's A Way of Being Free, which are just beautiful reflections on the work of writers, or more broadly the work of artists in society, and how do we navigate the joys and also the heavy burdens of what storytellers are trying to do. In that book, Okri talks a lot about the responsibility that storytellers have and the kind of courage they need to have to do it well.

Yema Lucilda Hunter on Documenting Sierra Leonean Lives through Fiction.

Yema Lucilda Hunter is a celebrated Sierra Leonean novelist, biographer, and librarian. Her work includes Road to Freedom, Bittersweet, Her name was Aina, and a biography:  An African Treasure - in Search of Gladys Casely-Hayford. Lucilda Hunter was born and raised in Freetown, Sierra Leone. She attended the Annie Walsh Memorial School and studied in the United Kingdom, qualifying as a librarian. As a librarian, she worked for the the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Sierra Leone, WHO, and was made a Fellow of the British Library Association, since renamed The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. As a writer, Yema Lucilda Hunter illustrates everyday Sierra Leonean life into rich prose, through her keen eye as a documentarian.
 In this email interview with Poda-Poda Stories, Hunter shares the inspiration behind her writing.

 Poda-Poda: Thank you for joining the Poda-Poda. Tell us about your journey as a writer and librarian? Did you always want to be a writer or was it something you fell into?

 Yema Hunter (YH): I hesitate to call myself a writer as I don’t often feel compelled to put fingers to a keyboard, or pen to paper, though I always enjoyed and got good marks at school for what used to be called ‘Composition’.   However, I AM the author of six novels and a work of non-fiction.  My career as a professional librarian is what started it. While browsing the shelves of the Africana Collection at the National Library in Sierra Leone, I came across an old book in which a 19th Century visitor to Freetown mentioned a brief encounter with one of the black Nova Scotian settlers who arrived in the country in 1792. I learned some history of which I had been totally unaware and found it so fascinating that I felt other Sierra Leoneans, especially citizens of Freetown, might find it equally interesting, especially if it was conveyed in a non-scholarly manner. That was how I came to write my first novel, Road to Freedom, published in 1982. A new edition has recently been issued with the title Seeking Freedom.

 Poda-Poda: What is the inspiration for writing your novels, particularly BitterSweet and Redemption Song?

 YH: Sierra Leone, Freetown in particular, has inspired all my novels. The story line for Bittersweet occurred to me following the sudden death by road accident of a young cousin. I imagined the plight of a young wife and mother unexpectedly  widowed, and the story unfolded from there. Redemption Song came twenty-five years later and was inspired by the civil war in Sierra Leone. Though the country is never mentioned and the course of events is ahistorical,  anyone who knows Sierra Leone and experienced the war has no difficulty discovering the  story’s setting.

 Poda-Poda: In writing your novels, do you often find that you put a certain lens on, or a unique perspective? If so, what are they? What are some of the issues you want to highlight when writing?

 YH: I write novels about Sierra Leoneans for Sierra Leoneans, thought it is gratifying when non-Sierra Leoneans enjoy them as well. My main characters are usually, Krios, descendants of the Liberated Africans who were settled in the Freetown area early in the 19th century. Of course, over the years, their interactions with members of the indigenous populations has become more frequent, hence no novel is only about Krios. My intention is to write stories about  ordinary Sierra Leoneans living ordinary lives.

 Poda-Poda: What is your writing process like? Do you have a certain pattern or routine?

 YH: I am fairly disorganised . I have an idea for a story and once my first paragraph is clear in my mind, I  plunge straight in, seeking necessary information and fleshing out the main characters as I go along. Progress of the story tends to be organic as I never know exactly what is going to happen until it does. I edit chapter by chapter and do a complete revision when the work is complete.

 Poda-Poda: Poda-Poda Stories highlights authors from Sierra Leone, and it has often been difficult to discover the work of Sierra Leonean female writers pre the 21st century. You’ve also written a biography:  An African Treasure, in Search of Gladys Casely-Hayford, 1904 – 1950, about Gladys Casely-Hayford, whose work isn’t quite well known, especially in Sierra Leone. How important is it to know about Gladys, and also to discover Sierra Leonean female authors during her time?

YH: Probably, there were not many published Sierra Leonean female writers up till the mid to late 20th Century. Adelaide Casely-Hayford and her daughter, Gladys are the only two pre-independence female writers I can think of. After independence, female writers of textbooks and supplementary readers for primary schools began to appear.  Talabie Aisie Lucan and Melvine Stuart come to mind. I am not aware of any bibliography of Sierra Leonean female writers in the country, but I believe another  Sierra Leone-born librarian, Wilma Jones, has produced one. However, she lives and works  in the US and I am not aware that it has been formally published or is available in Sierra Leone. The problem is that Sierra Leone is not a nation of readers. Unless a literary work has been used as a school textbook, eg, my novel Road to Freedom, it remains largely unknown. I have the impression that most Sierra Leoneans acquainted with Road to Freedom, are not even aware that I have written other novels.

 Poda-Poda: You’ve also had quite an illustrious career as a librarian. In your work, has accessing information become easier and what is the future of digital archiving in Africa especially?

 YH: I retired more than twenty years ago, but even then, thanks to computer technology, accessing information had become far easier than it was at the start of my career. It has become easier still. Anybody can Google and search the internet in other ways.  However, the skills of librarians and other information professionals are still needed for assessing the relevance and accuracy of information obtained. Digital archiving is a boon to developing countries where document preservation and storage has often been most unsatisfactory.  I have been delighted to learn that archival digitization projects are being planned or are actually on course in Sierra Leone.

 Poda-Poda: We always ask writers this question. How has writing saved your life?

 YH: I would not say that, but it has certainly enriched my life, though sadly, not financially. I have always been an avid reader but writing my own books has forced me to widen the scope of my reading as works in progress often require considerable research.