https://archive.org/details/ngugi-lol

The Language of Languages: Reflections on Translation by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Topics
#translation, #literarytranslation, #linguistics, #sociolinguistics, #colonialism, #Africanlanguages, #PanAfricanism, #languagepolicy, #languagepolicies

With clear, conversational prose, this is the first book dedicated entirely to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s writings on translation.

Through his many critically acclaimed novels, stories, essays, plays, and memoirs, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has been at the forefront of world literature for decades. He has also been, in his own words, “a language warrior,” fighting for indigenous African languages to find their rightful place in the literary world. Having begun his writing career in English, Ngũgĩ shifted to writing in his native language Gikũyũ in 1977, a stance both creatively and politically significant. For decades now, Ngũgĩ has been translating his Gikũyũ works into English himself, and he has used many platforms to champion the practice and cause of literary translations, which he calls “the language of languages.”