Translating the value of women’s ‘help’

Award-winning writer, poet and translator Professor Makhosazana Xaba used the second annual AC Jordan commemoration lecture to take a stand for women translators, spotlighting the lack of value afforded to their intellectual labours, especially in respect of African languages.

The annual lecture, instituted in 2023 by the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) School of Languages and Literatures and the AC Jordan Chair in Africa Studies, provides a platform for critical reflections and engaging dialogues, highlighting African intellectual histories, scholars and scholarship across the continent, as part of efforts to advance decolonisation efforts at UCT.

The AC Jordan Chair was established at UCT in 1993, named for Professor Archibald Campbell Jordan, an academic pioneer of African scholarship, literature and linguistics, and renowned for his novel Ingqumbo yeminyanya (The Wrath of the Ancestors).

Taking to the stage to deliver her lecture at the end of October, Professor Xaba quickly dispensed with the original title of her speech, “On Translating The Wretched of the Earth into isiZulu: From Challenges and Pleasures to Epiphanies” – reflections on her recent translation into isiZulu of Frantz Fanon’s landmark text, Izimpabanga Zomhlaba (The Wretched of the Earth).

‘Sidelining’ women translators

She told the audience she would leave it up to them to decide on an appropriate new title, taking them instead on a deep dive into how women translators have been routinely sidelined, despite their key role in broadening access to the work of African-language authors.

“Anyone who has a copy of The Wrath of the Ancestors by AC Jordan will have noticed that Phyllis Priscilla Nongqaza Ntantala is acknowledged this way: ‘Translated from the original isiXhosa by the author with the help of Priscilla P. Jordan’.

“What does help mean exactly? If one were to measure the help, how would one do it? Indeed, what is the value of help? Why did they choose not to clarify what [Dr] Ntantala did exactly?” Xaba questioned.

Dr Ntantala married Professor AC Jordan in 1939, becoming well-known in her own right as Dr Ntantala-Jordan. They remained married until his death in 1968.

The case of political activist and journalist Marie-Josephe Doublè-Fanon, wife of the author of The Wretched of the Earth, the translation of which formed the original topic of the lecture, was yet another example of the lack of value ascribed to the labour of translation, Xaba argued.

“In 2004, there is this glaring absence in [literary translator] Richard Philcox’s writing, where he chooses not to mention Fanon’s wife by her name, not even to mention her as Josie (as she was popularly known). This is a 2004 translation published by Kwela Books, in South Africa, and even the publishers did not see anything wrong with that,” Xaba pointed out.

Influencing translations

“How many of what we consider to be Fanon’s ideas in The Wretched of the Earth, or any other writings of his, were in fact influenced by the daughter of a left-wing trade unionist who was a political analyst and journalist?

“Who will ever know the answer to this question?”

Xaba went on to pose questions about what she referred to as the “porosity” that inevitably exists between the typist and the apparent originator of ideas.

“And how exactly does this porosity work if the ideas person and the typist/subscriber are married, supposedly sharing a bed at night,” she asked.

Women’s intellectual labour, Xaba charged, has long been “ignored, minimised, trivialised, misrepresented and more”.

“Women’s physical labour as translators is also not valued as it should be, because they are often doing this at the service of the men with the ideas. Women with identities of their own are often seen only in relation to the men they are working with or married to.”

She added that the status of translators within universities, working in translation and multilingualism studies for example, likely also warranted further formal study in the future.

Xaba closed with a reading of the last paragraph of the conclusion of The Wretched of the Earth: “Maqabane, ngenxa ye Europe, ngenxa yethu, ngenxa yesintu; kufanele siqale konke kabusha, kufanele siqambe amasu amasha, sizame ukubumba umuntu omusha.” (Good people, because of Europe, because of us, because of culture; let us reimagine life as we know it and make ourselves anew).

“I would like to think that both AC Jordan and Phyllis Ntantala would agree with Fanon’s call,” she concluded.