Translating Knowledge into African Languages
Abstract
Knowledge becomes socially powerful only when people can question, reformulate and transmit it in the languages through which they live and think.
Languages and knowledge · Reading edition
Language is part of knowledge
Translation is not the mechanical replacement of one word by another. Every language organises experience, relationships and categories of thought in its own way.
When knowledge circulates only in a colonial language, a large part of society remains a recipient rather than a participant in its production.
From access to intellectual sovereignty
Translating science, philosophy and public debate into African languages expands access, but its ambition goes further: it enables speakers to test concepts against their own realities and to create new terminology.
A living language grows by taking responsibility for new fields of knowledge.
An editorial responsibility
Publishers can build bridges between languages by maintaining lexicons, documenting choices and submitting difficult terms to informed human review.
The presence of Lingala on Merisphere is part of this work: not a decorative translation, but the gradual construction of a language of reading, thought and publication.
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