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Guban:Taxanaha tarjumada buugga GUBAN ee CabdiLadiif Cige

Foreword /Hordhaca Qoraha

I would just like to take a moment to revisit the time, and especially the context i.e. my mindset- around the beginnings of my encounter with Boodhari Warsame, the translator.

Abdilatif GUBANI had my own reasons for writing the work in English. Primarily, it was an attempt to critique, present, and to conceptually alter the global mainstream media’s (state) caricature of the Somali being. Those of us, especially those who are out here (West), and throughout the world, are no strangers to the deluge of the hideous figures, otherworldly and rather anachronistically from a wasteland of the past (Warlords, Pirates, etc.). Today’s continuum of barbarism , and mind you, not isolated to Islam, but encompasses the violent “moral ” responses on the other “secular” kind, death, destruction are (what seems to be) the Banner of our times.

The work was also specifically intended for Africans who are hooked up to these systems (media). For example, the closest countries next to the Somali people are as bereft of nuance, when it comes to their neighbors or subjects (Kenya) as anyone else is.

The final group that has a private entitlement through the philosophical symbolism carried throughout Guban is all the wealth of those who understand the meanings of the Somali names etc. In the case of those who have been outside by birth or distance, there is a special panorama to behold in the functions of a state (alive); the people’s evening walks in pastel glory of earth tones; the beautiful landscape of the hinterland; and the colorful characters that peopled this landscape.

I honestly did not think the older folks needed to be told about their living! But I did think of the ones around them, the Anglo (Africans included) speakers were more urgent, hence the conceptual battleground is global. Essentially this was a work of its time and place. Like the Somali poet of yore, whether responding to a clan slight or a colonial one, it was always to the figure of a poet or the colonial representative. In this day, my interlocutors are the Hegemonic apparatus, media etc. Of course-similarly today, I am responding for my clan the Somali people, and more importantly the African personality, ( novels, films about: child soldiers, perpetually hungry people, and harrowing violence) . Somehow, the racist depictions continue in the Pirate, the Warlord, from a long history of such figures in the western media and film (the new Sambo).

This was the mindset when I received, out of the blue, a request from Sweden, of all places to translate Guban! I was more than skeptical, but open, very open to it indeed. I asked to see a preview sample, for I was inclined to focus on the complex entirety of the work. I was not sure Sweden would render it even in spirit. A short while later, I was intrigued by the Somali version. It was stunningly musical and actually better suited to the opening chapters, which have a glorious love affair with the geography. He has done quite a few things in Somali: from either Somali to English or vice versa. Surprisingly, none of his work is commissioned nor funded by anyone (Somalis included), other than a personal commitment by him. This we share in common spirit, because Guban is also a self published work. No machinery of agents, huge publishers of note or the goodwill of the mainstream media. This is quite fair. After all, the work is a response, one could suggest almost an antagonistic one to the mainstream’s essencialized views of Somalis in general.

I am proud to know that my first translation is in Somali and I hope this heralds a new trend for African novels, where bye they are first translated into the author’s mother tongue or any other African language.

Read more: Taxanaha tarjumada buugga GUBAN 

AbdiLatif Ega (Cige)
Harlem, USA, Fall.


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