From thoughts into words

A few encounters with people and with books have given me pause for thought lately. In one conversation, two friends were talking about their love for reggae, going back to their childhoods. I was therefore surprised to hear the turn in their conversation. Apparently, both of them had lost their taste for reggae and felt disillusioned when they listened to it. As far as they were concerned, it was the same old lament being voiced in the present that had been voiced twenty or more years previously. Why, they wondered, couldn't reggae tunes incorporate more uplifting messages? Why hadn't the lyrics evolved to reflect major developments in Africa and her diaspora? They felt that listening to reggae actually disempowered them and, as a result, had decided to turn to “more inspiring” musical forms. I found myself ruminating on their words, but I was not ready to agree with them. Reggae does often express the disenchantment of an economically and racially marginalized group with “the...

With a wistful smile on my face, I remember a dear friend who, struck by homesickness, recited some of his favourite poetry to us. It was beautiful... but I had no idea what it meant. Afterwards, he explained the meaning of the words to us, but his English summary wasn't quite the same as the alliterative Somali consonants and rhyming vowels that had rang melodically in my ears minutes earlier. That experience led me to wonder: is it really possible to translate poetry, particularly poetry coming from the long and rich oratory tradition of the Somali peoples? I'm still wrestling with that question, especially since, years on, I still love poetry and yet still don't understand my friend's language. Margaret Laurence's "A Tree for Poverty: Somali Poetry and Prose", only seems to put into stark relief the impossible task that is translation. Her introduction to the later edition is telling. In it she consciously reexamines the assumptions that she had fi...