A mother of a task that's crucial to protecting languages

February 21 is International Mother Language Day. Let’s reflect. The UN reported in 2018 that conservative estimates suggest that by the year 2100 more than half of the world’s languages will be extinct. Less conservative estimates suggest that by the end of the century more than 90% will be lost forever.

These sobering projections motivated Monde Twala, senior vice-president and general manager of Paramount Africa, to spearhead the dubbing of popular animated series SpongeBob SquarePants into isiZulu for Nicktoons (DStv Channel 308). This move was preceded by the SABC’s dubbing of another beloved kiddies' animation series, Doc McStuffins, into Sesotho in 2018. So there's hope for home-language promotion and the representation of black children in local children's' television.

What’s urgent is the critically endangered N|uu language. Ouma Katrina Esau, who is 90, is the last fluent speaker of the oldest, at approximately 25,000 years, San language. Nadine Angel Cloete’s short film, The Last Speaker: South Africa’s Dying Language, produced for Al Jazeera English, reveals the creation of a N|uu dictionary by Esau and her granddaughter, N|uu language researcher Claudia Snyman. The dictionary follows Esau’s first N|uu children’s book, !Qhoi n|a Tjhoi.

The dictionary carries messages and teachings for the language's preservation with a recording of about 5,000 words. But there are threats to its growth. Esau doesn't have new words for modern concepts. Snyman isn’t a fluent speaker and she's aware of the pressure and time constraints due to Esau's age. But Snyman forges ahead anyway, teaching local children N|uu. Her determination to not have the language killed by oppression and other factors ensures its survival.

Translation sustains language and its evolution. The literary heritage of Sol Plaatje’s translations, the existence of an online Setswana feminist dictionary by journalist Pontsho Pilane and social psychologist Lorato Palesa Modongo and the Repatriation of Letters project are notable examples.

The latter was born from talks about the growth and preservation of Setswana between profs Shole Shole and Recius Melato Malope, Dr Elinor Sisulu and author and Plaatje scholar Sabata-mpho Mokae.

"Repatriation of Letters brings South African books written in English by Setswana-speaking authors about Batswana-related matters in Setswana settings 'back home' and retells stories in the language they should have been written in in the first place,” says author Tuelo Gabonewe. His book Sarcophagus, translated into Tshika fa e ya Baneng, is the first completed repatriation and winner of the Literary Translators Award at the 2022 South African Literary Awards.

Other titles slated for translation include the iconic Mhudi by Plaatje, Maru by Bessie Head, Call Me Woman by Ellen Kuzwayo and the forthcoming This Book Betrays My Brother (translated into Masaikategang a Morwarre by Lorato Trok) by Kagiso Lesego Molope, among others.

The project is supported by Geko Publishing, the Northern Cape department of sport, arts & culture and Sol Plaatje University.

Plaatje’s translation of Shakespearean texts is at the heart of the pilot stage of another exciting project, Speak Me A Speech, a collaboration between filmmaker Victor van Aswegen and Prof Chris Thurman of Wits University’s Tsikinya-Chaka Centre (TCC) in Johannesburg.

TCC works to translate Shakespeare's plays into African languages to help promote scholarship and performance that engages with the playwright as a multilingual phenomenon. Speak Me A Speech is set to be a filmic series of Shakespearean monologues in all South African languages, using new and existing translations, with a few screenings and festival events in the works. 

Actor, writer and theatre maker Buhle Ngaba engages with the Setswana translation of Julius Caesar, which she encountered as her maternal grandmother’s well-worn copy of Dintshontsho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara (first published in 1937, five years after Plaatje’s death). Working with director Nikki Pilkington and Sabata-mpho Mokae as translator, she takes on Portia’s impassioned speech to Brutus from Act 2, scene 1.

“What struck me about encountering this work was that it existed. To discover it was life-changing. I’ve finished writing a play on Mme Charlotte Maxeke, whose adaptation recently ran in Cape Town. It was through writing that production and being in the archive, observing what South Africa was 100 years ago during the times of Mme Maxeke and Sol Plaatje, that I could recognise the ways in which we were also culturally robbed by apartheid. To be able to see ourselves within Sol Plaatjie’s translated text now has been special. It's our job as artists, performers and creators to excavate that history to have it told, and for us to respond to it,” Ngaba says.

Unesco’s 2023 message for International Mother Language Day is a focus on multilingual education. Award-winning South African EdTech start-up Ambani Africa, which focuses on interactive mother-tongue education, responds directly to this.

The company recently collaborated with Sho Majozi on the debut of her children’s book, Shoma and the Stars. The excitement around this has to do with the augmented-reality app that accompanies the book. It enhances the story and the learning process with a voice glossary of Xitsonga words voiced by Madjozi that guides children through pronunciations.

Ambani Africa founder Mukundi Lambani says: “One of the biggest revelations working in EdTech, particularly language learning, is the scarcity of digital learning resources in African languages. Our existence is timely. We've risen to the challenge of creating relevant, educational, accessible language-learning products. Our eight-book box set is our flagship product. When paired with our augmented-reality app, the learner has the opportunity of learning 14 languages, most of which are spoken widely on the continent.”

These are Tshivenda, Shona, Setswana, Sepedi, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Xitsonga, Yoruba, Kiswahili, English, French, Afrikaans, Mandarin and German.