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
Original
Basi liliteremka kwenye barabara iliyojisokota katika miinamo ya vilima. Nilichungulia dirishani na kuona jinsi jua lilivyodhihirisha dhahiri shahiri vilima hivyo.
“Vilima gani hivi?” nilimwuliza abiria aliyeketi ubavuni pangu, mwanaume mfupi mnene. Kichwa chake kilikuwa kimeegemea bega langu. Hakujibu. Kumbe alikuwa anamenyana na usingizi. Nikamtikisa.
Idza Luhumyo
The bus went down a road that wound around the hills’ gorges. I glanced outside the window and saw how clearly the sun revealed the hills.
“Which hills are these?” I asked the passenger next to me, a short fat man. His head leaned against my bag. He did not answer. Turns out: he was fighting sleep. I shook him awake.
It’s a really short translation but I kept thinking about the arithmetic of translation: How moving from one language to another can often feel like solving a sum. “Dhahiri shahiri” posed a particular difficulty. The two words modify “dhihirisha” which one might translate as “reveal.” But to arrive at “clearly” from “dhahiri shahiri” seems unsatisfactory, imperfect. But maybe translation is inherently unsatisfactory, inherently imperfect? To quote a poem by Michelle Angwenyi, there is a “slowness of arrival” in translation. An “always arriving” of sorts.
Hassan Kassim
The bus went down a road that wound itself with the descent of hills. I peeked from my window and watched how the sun deliniated those hills with a fearful clarity.
“What are these hills?” I asked the passenger beside me, a short stout man—his head rested on my shoulder. He didn’t respond. Turns out he was grappling with sleep. I shook him.
I struggle with beginnings. I know there’s a bus but I begin with overthinking on how to describe its descent, especially because there’s another ‘descent’ I foresee in the same sentence. Does the bus roll, or barrel, or simply go down? There’s an article Walibora wrote, a decade ago,
where he talked about translating his own short story “Maskini Babu”, where he outlined his hatred of translators to English because the translation always came across as a pale shadow of the original. To stay true to his memory, I can only begin with inflated self-confidence, recalling how Marquez called Rabassa’s translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude a superior version of his original. My goal then is usually for the writer to feel that their work has been enhanced by the translation. In a way, I usually think of my translation as the original, and the original a very good translation of my work. Am I ever successful in achieving that?
For some reason, this opening sparks an image, that combusts with a fueled memory of The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road”, and my first instinct is to utilise the whole phrase but that would be treason, and my goal is still to be as faithful as can be. Walibora is so succinct that a simple quick read would have one dismiss him as simplistic, unmindful of the idiosyncracies. That’s something I have in mind translating him. Sorting the words carefully, bargaining only with necessity. For example, kuona which ideally would’ve been ‘saw,’ became ‘watched’ which, though a slight departure, is truer to the spirit of what the author tries to convey. I find myself struggling with basic words mostly because the dynamism in their usage means there’s a plethora of ways that they can be rendered. But in the end, I don’t conflate it, I’m simply a ventriloquist and my job is to keep the spirit of the work untouched, and capture a symmetry in tone with the original. With insistent clauses like dhahiri shahiri, poetic almost and a distinct feature of Kiswahili prose, I struggle. Having moved past ‘highlighted’ and ‘silhouetted,’ do I just leave it at ‘delineate’ which connotes precision? But the decision here also depended on this sentence not ending with the word ‘hills’ to defuse the monotony, since it doesn’t feel monotonous in Kiswahili. Hence ‘the sun delineated those hills with a fearful clarity.’ I might even call my approach mystical, viewing words as fusions of souls and bodies, my success being that ability to put them back together just the same.
Jay Boss Rubin
The bus descended along the highway that twisted and turned its way down a series of slopes. I peered out the window and considered how clearly, how completely the sun gave definition to the rolling landscape.
“What are these hills?” I asked the passenger seated beside me, a short, plump man. His head had slumped down onto my shoulder. He didn’t answer. In his struggle to stay awake, I realized, sleep was winning. I nudged him.
I love thinking about how to translate a novel’s opening sentence. Here, I focused on how both the bus and the road are animated, but how the verb associated with the bus is in the active voice while the verb associated with the road is in the middle voice. My little addition of “its way” connects to the reflexive infix “-ji-” in the Kiswahili and is intended to suggest that the road is at least somewhat of a participant in its own shape-making.
My main task in these paragraphs was searching for ways to channel the rhymes and repeated sounds that permeate Walibora’s prose and contribute to its beautiful combination of musicality and conversationality. “Dirishani” followed by “-dhihirisha dhahiri shahiri” is the most obvious example, but “-egemea bega” and “-menyana na” also play their parts. I didn’t think I could replicate the same concentration of sounds in English without coming off as strained, so I went for something more diffuse: a light peppering of repeated sonic elements throughout.
I took a different approach to the repetition of whole words. “Vilima,” Swahili for “hills,” appears three times here. I folded the first instance into “series of slopes” and transformed the second into “rolling landscape.” That way, when we get to what corresponds to the third instance, in the line of dialogue, the narrator’s question lands with a curious punch. This helps transition the tempo, which starts to feel more staccato, which in turn contrasts nicely (in Walibora’s version, at least) with the more florid beginning.
In a longer section that wasn’t the novel’s opening, I might’ve tried to retain “Kumbe,” that versatile, sonorous expression of surprise. But I didn’t think there was enough context around it here to suggest its meaning. I settled for communicating the narrator’s realization, minus the sense of interjection that “kumbe” carries in Kiswahili.
Albert Mwamburi
The bus went down a road winding in between small hills. I peeped outside the window and saw how the sun shone brightly showcasing those small hills.
“What small hills are these?” I asked the passenger seated by my side, a short and plump man. His head was leaning on my shoulder. He didn’t answer. I had not realised he was grappling with sleep. I shook him.
Challenges: How to translate miinamo ya vilima, how to accurately capture ‘lilivyovidhihirisha dhahiri shahiri‘ and ‘Kumbe’ is a bit difficult to translate…closest I thought of was ‘I had not realised’, and I considered using ‘apparently’ but it didn’t quite come out right. I navigated the same by just opting for a string of words that I feel bring out the same meaning. For instance, I felt ‘down a road winding in between small hills’ would paint the same picture the author intended in the first sentence, rather than finding a literal translation of ‘…miinamo ya vilima‘.
Wambua Muindi is a final year graduate student of literature at the University of Nairobi. A writer and reader with a drift, he has been engaged with various creative and literary spaces like Writers Space Africa-Kenya, Paukwa, Africa in Dialogue, The Fifth Draft and Isele Magazine.
Idza L. is a Kenyan writer.
Hassan Kassim is a Mombasa-based Kenyan writer and translator. A beneficiary of the PenPen residency, later longlisted for the inaugural Toyin Falola Prize for African short fiction, and the 2022 winner of the Mozilla Common-voice essay prize. His other publication credits appear or are forthcoming in Lolwe, Sahifa Journal, Hekaya, Africa in Dialogue, Yabaleft Review, The Standard, and his much lauded translation of Jalada’s Mgeni published in the first of its kind collection of Kiswahili literature in translation, ‘No Edges’ by Two Lines Press, April 2023. Hassan writes about the ill-documented communities of Coastal Kenya, and is working towards increasing access of Swahili writers to the English-speaking world.
Jay Boss Rubin is a writer and translator from Portland, Oregon. His translations from Swahili have been published by Two Lines Press, The Hopkins Review and Northwest Review. He was the recipient of a 2022 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, to enable the completion of his translation of the novel Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi. It will be published in Spring 2025 by Yale University Press, as part of the Margellos World Republic of Letters series. Jay is a proud graduate of the Queens College, City University of New York’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation.
Albert Mwamburi is a graduate Economist from the University of Nairobi currently serving as a Blue Economy consultant for the 6 Coastal counties in Kenya. He also founded and runs an online platform known as Pwani Tribune that documents the history, culture and heritage of the communities from the Coast region. In his capacity as both a Blue Economy consultant and as a digital archivist with Pwani Tribune, he has traversed across all Coastal counties and that has given him a unique understanding of the region and made him an authority on matters affecting its people.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: