Vuvuzela,
an Afrikaans youth novel by South African author Engela van Rooyen, was
published as a bilingual edition (in English and Polish). It was aimed
at the Polish tourist market in the run-up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup,
which was hosted in South Africa. I translated the story into English,
while a team of co-translators took care of the Polish section of the
book. You may well ask why this is showcased in the writing section,
then.
It was only after I started translating
that I realised this story was intrinsically bound to the South African
context. For a Polish person who hadn’t lived in South Africa, the
milieu would be about as foreign as snow to the inhabitants of the
Kalahari Desert.
In order to keep the South
African flavour while introducing it to the reader in such a manner
that he or she could get a feel for the dynamics of our country, I
wrote an introductory chapter and a glossary. I tried to keep as many
original indigenous language terms and phrases as possible while
attempting not to change the story into a choppy and fragmented piece
of confusion. The glossary thus had to do more than just explain the
meaning of foreign words. Instead, it provided the reader with small
windows through which to look at the diversity of our rainbow nation. [Example...] |