Can this be one by 3 tomorrow

"They Stooped to Conquer": Vernacular Translation and the Socio-Cultural Factor Author(s): Lamin Sanneh Source: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 23, No. 1, The Language Question (Spring, 1992), pp. 95-106 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819952 Accessed: 07-04-2019 01:45 UTC

REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819952?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide

range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and

facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

https://about.jstor.org/terms

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Research in African Literatures

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

"They Stooped to Conquer": Vernacular Translation and the Socio- Cultural Factor1

Lamin Sanneh

Expressing a sentiment that might stand as a motto for Renaissance humanism, Erasmus spoke about the social and cultural effects that would result from making Christian scriptures available to ordinary people in their own tongues. He had the vision not so much of farmers, fishermen, and weavers abandoning their humble occupations and flocking to the academy, but of acceding to the humanist ideal through translation. Aware of the revolutionary social implications of his view, Erasmus defended himself by arguing that the religion of Christ is imbued with a populist, republican principle, for whereas, "the mysteries of kings, perhaps, are better concealed," those of Christ are meant to be "published as openly as possible" (96-97).

Extending the authority of scriptural status to vernacular languages does indeed have profound cultural and linguistic consequences; furthermore, the reduction of these languages to writing and the conceptualization of a scientific apparatus for them involves copious amounts of meticulous labor. When we take translation seriously, we find that the rules according to which the enter- prise succeeds or fails are generally determined by indigenous paradigms. This observation does not imply that the receivers of the message will necessarily agree with the message that is being conveyed to them, for people can perfectly well reject what they understand perfectly. What concerns me are the locally based springs of creativity and spontaneity that can be positively or negatively activated by translation. Whether or not it is encouraged by political realities,

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

96 I Research in African Literatures

the translation enterprise thus assumes a central role for mother-tongue speak- ers. In this sense, the methodology implicit in my approach is premised on indigenous primacy.

The awakening of opposition to colonial overlordship among communi- ties and individuals has been one of the most momentous consequences of ver- nacular translation in Africa. Two powerful currents arose from a common source in Europe and swept through Africa by divergent channels. Colonial rule carried the current of foreign legitimacy (with the corollary of local inade- quacy), whereas Christian missions (or at least a large percentage of them) adopted the vernacular, making it the basis for religious work as well as for a wider cultural expression in relation to which specific religious responses could be elicited. The goal of establishing the spiritual kingdom thus led to the adop- tion of local attitudes that fostered worldly opposition as well as spiritual com- mitment. If the spiritual kingdom was more important than the colonial regime, as the missionaries contended, then the act of translation implied that the vernacular medium was destined to outlast its colonial counterpart.

In several cases, missionary translators themselves recognized that ver- nacular cultural esteem could function as an anti-foreign theme even before Africans became aware of this possibility. Whenever such enlightened mission- ary consciousness converged with its native counterpart, it culminated in orga- nized political activity. For this reason, there is a remarkable historical coincidence between vernacular development and the mother-tongue aspira- tions that constituted the earliest forms of nationalist ferment. In all these

instances, one finds parallels with the political and social implications of Eras- mus's observations.

Two general ideas emerged from the ferment of vernacular translation and exercised a powerful impact on Africans. First, Christianity (and therefore religion per se) abandoned the need for specialized professional language with its arcane, elitist forms that are reserved for religious purposes and excluded from the everyday world. Second, ordinary Africans and especially women suf- fered no ritual or cultural stigma that prevented them from participating fully in religious life. From the perspective of those receiving the message, the indige- nous enterprise became coterminous with religious and moral fulfilment; in other words, communities and individuals who saw themselves as standing without stigma before God perceived a similar logic behind the desire to stand before their colonial rulers without prejudice. Their religious insight found political expression.

If some missionaries welcomed the vernacular esteem promoted by the act of translation, others feared and opposed it. In much of francophone and lusophone Africa, for example, vernacular scriptural translation was discour- aged, largely because the authorities suspected it of fomenting the nationalism they were attempting to suppress. The slow painful emergence of vernacular projects in culture, language, and literature as well as the emergence of highly ambivalent attitudes toward them demonstrate the power of the vernacular dimension, for if a government feels the need to prevent vernacular activities, it is acknowledging their efficacity. Such considerations oblige us to recognize

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Lamin Sanneh I 97

indigenous criteria for cultural and artistic creativity rather than depending solely on imported models. If Africans merely protest foreign influences with- out acquiring a sense of their own unique vernacular voice, they will be simply acquiescing in their own alienation; they will not be cultivating their own sources of creativity in any meaningful or lasting sense. Yet Africa has enor- mous reserves of talent and enterprise-resources that not even the current economic gloom has entirely dissipated.

Whether or not they intended to do so, missionary translators endowed the vernacular with a consecrated value by investing it with a scriptural tradi- tion. A few early historical examples show how such linguistic work promotes a wider cultural interest. Coptic Christianity provides a good illustration of this process. From about the middle of the third century, Coptic villages along the Nile began converting to Christianity. At first, Greek was the predominant language of religion and scholarship, for it had enjoyed wide currency in neigh- boring Alexandria, the home of a famous catechetical school. Nevertheless, Greek was viewed as a foreign language. As the new religion gained ground, it spawned the need to move beyond Greek, or the little of it that was employed for religious purposes.

During the late fourth and early fifth centuries, steps were taken to pro- duce material in the vernacular, allowing Egypt to make its own unique contri- bution to Christianity. As Kenneth Scott Latourette explained:

In Egypt it was the successful effort to provide the masses of the population with a literature in the speech of everyday life which halted the exclusive use of the alien Greek for the written page and which stimulated the devel- opment of an alphabet which could be quickly and easily learned by the multitude in place of the ancient hieroglyphics which could be the prop- erty only of the few. Through this medium Coptic Christian literature came into being, largely the work of monks. (I, 250-1)

A similar phenomenon occurred in Ethiopia, where, by the middle of the sev- enth century, the great vernacular work in Amharic and Ge'ez had been accom- plished within the context of the Ethiopian Orthodox church. This corpus of literature gave Ethiopia a powerful sense of its own national and cultural heritage and became an effective barrier against wholesale Islamization (see Tamrat, Ullendorf, Davis, and Haile).

Parallel developments also took place in Europe. During the Carolingian empire, for instance, the mission church provided a significant impetus for the emergence of a vernacular literature, and John Michael Wallace-Hadrill testi- fies to the role played by the vernacular work of the Frankish church in the rise of a German national sensibility:

The impetus to write the vernacular still came from the mission-field and to it the emperor [i.e., Charlemagne] had something to say. There can be no doubt that to him, as to all his contemporaries, the language of Christian- ity in the liturgical sense remained Latin, one of the three sacred languages.... But the Anglo-Saxons and the Goths had shown that the language of religious exposition could be vernacular; and this was to be encouraged.... Most significant... are the very large number of vernacular

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

98 I Research in African Literatures

glosses, sermons, hymns and confessions that survive.... This wide-rang- ing reach of the written vernacular for religious purposes throughout the Carolingian world is of first significance.... That people should under- stand underlies a large part of all surviving vernacular translation of the period. (378 ff.)

One individual who particularly strengthened this vernacular effort was Otfrid von Weissenburg, who was active between 863 and 871. He appealed to the people to remain faithful to the vernacular cause and to adopt measures that would ensure its faithful transmission. Wallace-Hadrill points out how he called on his learned contemporaries "who knew how to think and who can be encouraged through the vernacular to read more for themselves. Moreover, he combined learning with piety and great technical skill; something which no one had hitherto attempted in German on such a scale. Like the Heliand [sic.] poet, Otfrid moved within the Germanic thought-world of warrior ethos, loy- alty and obedience, the lord-man relationship" (386). Such pioneer religious translation work was the force that sparked the great cultural impulse of north- ern European tribes, articulating afresh older cultural themes and examples in the midst of religious change. The translated manuscripts themselves are a unique historical source as well as being literary specimens that helped set the pace for wide-ranging cultural innovations.

One of the most ambitious attempts to adopt the vernacular during this early period was that of two ninth-century Byzantine missionaries in Moravia. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius were both committed champions of the ver- nacular. They invented the Slavonic alphabet which became known as Cyrillic and was later adopted by the entire Eastern Orthodox Church, including that of Russia. Francis Dvomik summarizes the wide-ranging effects of their efforts in the area of veracular translation on Slavonic society and culture:

[Constantine-Cyril's] translation is in many ways an adaptation of the peculiar genius of the Slavic idiom elevated to a literary language and to the needs of the young Moravian church.... Constantine was well acquainted with the translations of the Gospels into other eastern lan- guages.... He stressed his intention of translating the Gospels as accu- rately as possible, respecting, however, the difference in expression and in the meaning of certain words of both languages. In such cases he thought himself entitled to a more independent rendering of some of the passages in order to be able to explain the true meaning of the original.

In his translation Constantine followed the principles expounded in his treatise. Slavic philologists recognize the excellent qualities of his translation, which reveals a very deep knowledge of the Greek and Slavic languages and of their character. The translation is sometimes not verbal, as Constantine tried to make Greek expressions more understandable to the Slavic Christians.... Constantine introduced his translations of the four Gospels in a special poetic composition.... We read there a passionate appeal to the Slavs to cherish their books written in their own language.... [T]his

was the first translation of the Gospels into a veracular langauge to appear in the West. (117 ff., emphasis added)

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Lamin Sanneh 1 99

Modern commentators trace the idea of the unique character of Czech- Slavic culture and national identity to the vernacular translation work that took place during the ninth century. The modern scholar M. Weingart, for example, affirms that "This Czech-Slavic type of culture was of paramount importance for the preservation, or at least, for the strengthening of the national character. If the Czechs did not succumb to germanization as quickly and to such an extent as the Wends [i.e., the Slavs of eastern Germany], this is indeed due to the growth of the Czech Old Church Slavonic letters" (cited in Metropolitan Dorotheos 224-25).

On the occasion of the 1,100th anniversary of the Moravian Mission, Metropolitan Dorotheos proclaimed that the vernacular work of Constantine and Methodius had been responsible for preserving the Slavic national idea. As he explained: "The testament of Orthodox Moravia, left to us by St. Method- ius, has been the keynote throughout the history of our nation; it has become the guide of the Slavic idea.... Methodius and Cyril helped to develop the cul- ture of Great Moravia, especially the language... thus uniting [the] separate Slavic tribes into well-organized states. In so doing, they [awakened] in the nation a sense of national self-awareness" (255, 219).

During the subsequent history of the Eastern Orthodox Church, this ver- nacular emphasis has clearly spread to other cultures. For example, St. Stephen of Perm led a mission to the Zyrian tribes of the northern forest during the four- teenth century, at which time he created a Zyrian alphabet and translated a number of religious works into the language. He strongly encouraged vernacu- lar literacy (Stamoolis 26-27). A long period of regression followed and impe- rial Russia intervened in local politics, but the vernacular policy of the Orthodox church was revived during the nineteenth century, when Macarius Gloukharev produced Russian translations of the Old Testament and a number of other Western European works as well.

In the following century, Nicholas Ilminski carried the vernacular cause to the Russian Tartars, whose language he treated not as a sub-species of Ara- bic, as scholars had previously done, but as a language in its own right. The story is told of an elderly Tartar who had been so struck by the genius of Ilmin- ski's translation that he felt it had affirmed the best in his own culture. Thus, when he heard devotions in Ilminski's translation, he "fell on his knees..., and with tears in his eyes thanked God for having vouchsafed to him at least once in his life to pray as he should" (Stamoolis 32). The devout Tartar had been stirred to the depths of his blood, soul, and tongue, for Ilminski had illuminated "the living tongue of the Tartars" by investing it with scriptural esteem, so that the popular, everyday language of the people became connected directly to "their deepest thought and religious consciousness" (Stamoolis 33).

The same vernacular note sounds like a drum-roll in the rise and spread of social and cultural self-awareness in Africa-not in some ephemeral Pan- African cultural project that overlooks linguistic and social particularities, but in the detailed, singleminded cultivation of vernacular specificity, including the preservation of dialectical distinctions.

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

100 I Research in African Literatures

One missionary linguist who left a permanent mark on the African ver- nacular scene was Johannes Christaller, a Basel missionary who arrived in Ghana during the 1840s and soon embarked on an enormous translation proj- ect that took him deep into the intricacies of Akan life and culture. His work was regarded by modern Ghanaians as a manifesto of cultural nationalism. Even after Christaller left Ghana during the mid- 1870s, he continued his ver- nacular work. One of the most impressive fruits of his labor was a compilation of 3,600 Twi proverbs and idioms that provide an invaluable insight into the Akan worldview. In his preface, Christaller acknowledged the wealth of Akan wisdom, whose source, he felt, was the Creator of the universe. Such a view left the Akan and other Africans unbeholden to Western cultural models for their

religious inspiration. As he himself wrote:

May this collection give a new stimulus to the diligent gathering of folk- lore and to the increasing cultivation of native literature. May those Afri- cans who are enjoying the benefit of a Christian education, make the best of the privilege; but let them not despise the sparks of truth entrusted to and preserved by their own people, and let them not forget that by entering into their way of thinking and by acknowledging what is good and expounding [sic.] what is wrong they will gain the more access to the hearts and minds of their less favoured countrymen. (Cited in Danquah 186)

In 1881 Christaller published his much acclaimed Twi Dictionary, a mon- ument of indigenous scholarship and an impetus to cultural revitalization. The Twi Dictionary systematized and articulated a wealth of linguistic and cultural materials, and it established bonds of relationship and mutual influence among neighboring languages and societies. Combined with the grammar of the Twi language that Christaller also wrote, the Twi Dictionary gave the Akan an important instrument for cultural self-awareness in the context of colonial subjugation.

Christaller also helped found a newspaper, The Christian Messenger, at Basel in 1883. Devoted to the promotion of Akan culture and social life, it pub- lished articles in Twi, Ga, and English, covering local as well as international events, such as the news of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (an event in which there was considerable local interest), Halley's Comet in 1910, and the sinking of the Titanic in 1911. "The use of the vernacular to report on world news and instruct its readers in local affairs was," as I had occasion to write elsewhere, "a

major contribution of the paper, for it suggests that its audience could keep abreast of happenings without literacy in the European languages" (Sanneh, Translating 180). In 1917 The Christian Messenger was transferred to Ghana, where it continued to perform the same function.

David Asante, a native of Akropong, Ghana, was trained between 1857 and 1862 at Basel, and he inherited Christaller's devotion to the vernacular cause. Commenting on Christaller's translation of the Psalms into Twi, Asante, evoking the sentiments of the elderly Tartar, testified:

The Psalms are translated perfectly and brilliantly. Nobody can read this translation without deep feelings of awe. They resemble in many ways the

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

LaminSanneh I 101

songs of mourning [Kwadwom] in our Twi language; the Twi people will be glad to read them. May the Lord give His blessing to your labours. I want to congratulate you personally and in the name of Africa. May the Lord give you strength for more such work. (Cited in Debrunner 144)

Asante himself was no mean expert in the field. He translated many works from German and English into Akan, including John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. His significance for Ghanaian letters and literature is considerable. "But such is the preoccupation of Ghanaian biographers with 'merchant princes' and nationalist firebrands that, outside a small circle of the Presbyterian Church and an entry in the Encyclopaedia Africana, not much is known of such pioneers as Asante. Yet in the translation of the Bible and in his other books he helped to introduce new concepts, new words and phrases into Ghanaian literature" (Amegatcher 1472).

Another local pioneer was Carl Christian Reindorf, who wrote a history of his people, The History of the Gold Coast and Asante (1889), a work that embodies two major innovations: it was written in Ga, and it made extensive use of oral traditions as a source comparable to documentary evidence, thus practicing a historical methodology that later scholars assumed they were pion- eering in the 1960s. All of this immense vernacular work had a predictable effect on national sentiment. Indeed, almost as a response to the vernacular theme in Christaller and David Asante, a local quasi-political organization was founded. Called the Reference Group, it was comprised of educated Akan who urged the retention of the vernacular in church and social life. Once again reli- gious insight had found a political channel through which to express itself. The members of the Reference Group, were, in fact, among the earliest pioneers of African nationalism (Sanneh, West African 150).

In the case of South Africa, a similar vernacular process emerged. Within the context of the historic controversy that is still taking place there, the Erasmian criticism of an elite monopoly upon the truth is likely to assume a particularly explosive form. The turning point in this part of the continent occurred when missionaries adopted the African name (e.g., nKulunkulu in Zulu) for the Christian God of the Scriptures. Nothing in their previous train- ing had prepared the missionaries for such a momentous change, for if the Afri- can names of God were the equivalent of the Christian God, then Africans had known His name before the arrival of the missionaries. Although many mis- sionaries failed to recognize this fact and continued to denounce the very Afri- can cultures they had revitalized with their linguistic investigations, they were eventually forced to reconceptualize Christianity in the fresh idioms of Africa. For those missionaries who succeeded in doing so, the reconceptualization pro- cess was tantamount to conversion, a fact that the Mexican writer Octavio Paz sees as an inevitable consequence of translation properly understood.

Missionary transmitters who "stooped to conquer" the native idiom thus inadvertently mobilized African sentiments and inaugurated a transformation process in the societies and cultures where they were working. What is illumi- nating in this process is how the Christian Scriptures, cast as a vernacular ora- cle, gave the local idiom an historic cause. As a result, African languages were

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

102 I Research in African Literatures

organized and integrated according to the simplest and most eloquent rules, with the terms of an everyday speech that had been stripped of foreign or gnostic conceits and made available to men, women, and children without regard to economic or social status. In several significant cases, such status was even called into question. A similar intellectual revolution in the West produced a belief in the primacy of conscience and, by extension, in the autonomous indi- vidual as the linchpin of redemption and social emancipation. In Africa, how- ever, this intellectual revolution produced a new cultural sensibility embedded in the context of family, tribe, and nation.

Although some missionaries resisted radical indigenization, even the seclusion of mission enclaves failed to secure their immunity from indigenous claims (see Sanneh "The Yogi"). In the long run, they were obliged to plunge into the vernacular crucible, to seek out the cultural and lingusitic materials they needed in order to create alphabets and to produce effective translations. Thus, before the first complete Zulu Bible was produced in 1883, a generation of preparatory work had already been accomplished, including at least three Zulu grammars and three Zulu dictionaries as well as collections of Zulu oral materi- als. As C. L. Sibusiso Nyembezi testifies, "missionaries concerned themselves primarily with grammars, dictionaries and the translation of the Scriptures, [but] some of them [also] recorded folk-lore, proverbs and valuable historical material" (3). As Nyembezi concludes, such efforts contribute significantly to the process of indigenous cultural revitalization.

Did Christian missions open the way for the suppression of African cul- tures? Were Africans simply victims of a dominant culture? When regarded from the perspective provided by the vernacular paradigm, the answers to such questions are not as obvious as some commentators have suggested. In non- technologized societies, language and culture are inextricably intertwined; therefore, missionary efforts to reduce African languages to writing and to pio- neer their development in other spheres ultimately produced indigenous reper- cussions in a variety of creative fields. In a very real sense, then, it is true that "the same missionaries who promoted 'modernization' of African languages through codification in writing, standardization, and diffusion of printed texts also used language to defend traditional culture" (Fabian 78).

David Livingstone, the famous Scottish missionary, reflected on the value of language as a bearer of Christianity, a reflection that alerted him to the distorting effects of Western influence on African culture. Scriptural trans- lation, he thought, would help preserve the culture before (and after) it had come into contact with Europeans and therefore ought to be encouraged. He contended:

It is fortunate that the translation of the Bible has been effected before the

language became adulterated with half-uttered foreign words, and while those who have heard the eloquence of the native assemblies are still living; for the young, who are brought up in our schools, know less of the language than the missionaries; and Europeans bor in the country, while possessed of the idiom perfectly, if not otherwise educated, cannot be referred to for explanation of any uncommon word. (114)

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

LaminSanneh I 103

Livingstone paid close attention to what might be implied by the adop- tion of the vernacular for scriptural translation. He called attention to Robert Moffat's translation of the Setswana Bible, declaring that Moffat had demon- strated the superiority of Setswana, so "that the Pentateuch is fully expressed... in fewer words than in the Greek Septuagint, and in a very considerably smaller number than in our own English versiorl" (114). This fact proved, Livingstone felt, that even though Africans stood outside the Greco-Roman civilization, they, too, participated in the general human heritage. "Language," he con- cluded, "seems to be an attribute of the human mind and thought, and the inflections, various as they are in the most barbarous tongues [thinking here, perhaps, of the clicks], as that of the Bushmen, are probably only proofs of the race being human, and endowed with the power of thinking; the fuller develop- ment of language taking place as the improvement of our other faculties goes on" (114).

The veteran missionary Edwin Smith, a translator of the Ila New Testa- ment in Zambia, remarked that scriptural translation seeks the sources and forms of cultural originality in authentic mother-tongue expressions, eschew- ing artificial or foreign materials that restrict the range of Biblical translations to current or contemporary fads or fashions. He observed that:

Men need two kinds of language, in fact; a language of the home, of emo- tion, of unexpressed associations; and a language of knowledge, exact argu- ment, scientific truth, one in which words are world-current and steadfast in their meanings. Where the mother tongue does not answer both needs, the people must inevitably become bilingual; but however fluent they may succeed in being in the foreign speech, its.words can never feel to them as their native words. To express the dear and intimate things which are the very breath and substance of life a man will fall back on the tongue he learnt not at school, but in the house-how, he remembers not. He may bargain in the other, or pass examinations in it, but he will pray in his home speech. If you wish to reach-his heart you will address him in that language. (8)

Introducing a subject of crucial interest and relevance to creative literary activ- ity throughout the world, Smith's reference to "home speech" as the pulse of a people's imaginative life identifies the heart of the matter. Christaller alluded to it when he spoke about "the sparks of truth entrusted to our people," those flashes of mature insight conveyed to us in the innumerable tiny vessels of cus- tom, usage, sign, symbol, and the myriad other artful expressions that consti- tute our legacy.

The fact that William Tyndale and Roger Coverdale gave us the English of the Scriptures is a relevant reminder of the intellectual roots of a worldwide medium that we have learned to take for granted. In its simple and succinct style, the English Bible became the repository of those sparks and impulses that animated the soul of an entire people. In comparison with the 32,000 lexical items in Shakespeare's plays, there are only about 6,000 in the English Bible. The economy and directness of this style was also characteristic of Sir Philip

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

104 I Research in African Literatures

Sidney, about whom John Ruskin wrote: "[He] will only use any cowboy's or tin-

ker's words, if only they help him to say precisely in English what David said in Hebrew; impressed the while himself so vividly by the majesty of the thought itself, that no tinker's language can lower it or vulgarize it in his mind" (cited in Influence 7). Recalling the words of Erasmus, William Wordsworth wrote:

But to outweigh all harm, the sacred Book, In dusty sequestration wrapt too long, Assumes the accents of our tongue; And he who guides the plow or wields the crook, With understanding spirit now may look Upon her records, listen to her song.

In addition to capturing the spark of a people's wisdom and making the beauties of Scripture accessible to them, the English Bible had an extraordinary impact on the language itself. As the literary critic Henry Bradley pointed out, words such as "beautiful" did not exist in English literature until Tyndale used them (220). A. T. Robinson adds that "the Christian spirit put a new.flavor into this vernacular and lifted it to a new elevation and dignity of style that unify and glorify the language" (cited in Influence 9). And Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch contends that none of the great English writers escaped the influence of the English Bible, which, he says:

has cadences homely and sublime, yet so harmonizes them that the voice is always one. Simple men-holy and humble men of heart like Izaak Walton and Bunyan-have their lips touched and speak to the homelier tongue. Proud men, scholars-Milton, Sir Thomas Browne-practice the rolling Latin sentence; but upon the rhythm of our Bible they, too, fall back.... The precise man Addison cannot excel one parable in brevity or in heav- enly clarity; the two parts ofJohnson's antithesis come to no more than this: "Our Lord has gone up to the sound of a trump; with the sound of a trump our Lord has gone up." The Bible controls its enemy Gibbon as surely as it haunts the music of a light sentence of Thackeray's. It is every- thing we see, hear, feel, because it is in us, in our blood. (155-56)

"It is in us, in our blood" might stand as the motto of the vernacular cause. As Adolf Deissmann once said, the idiom of the New Testament is "the under- ground stream of the people's language," not a shrine for "the mysteries of kings" and the upper classes (80).

There is an important distinction between missionary translations of the modem era and Enlightenment views on translation. Enlightenment scholars defended translation on the grounds that all languages obey the same laws of reason. According to them, the diversity and variety of different idioms merely concealed an inner uniformity of structure, which was made manifest in trans- lation. For this reason, Enlightenment writers sought to compile a universal grammar as a means of liberating themselves from the contingent restrictions entailed in the pursuit of a universal Platonic ideal. The Enlightenment view was that cultural differences conceal and thus distort the truth of one human-

ity-a view akin to the currently prevailing monism.

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

LaminSanneh I 105

In contrast, scriptural translations saw cultural and linguistic distinctions as arguments for recognizing the vernacular paradigm. In their eyes, no single language or culture could promote itself as the exclusive universal norm. In missionary translations even minute dialectical differences were often noted, bringing variety and diversity into creative convergence with pluralism. Such efforts might even be regarded as the origin of modem linguistic science (see Pedersen); they also had momentous consequences for African culture and lit- erature, for the vernacular Scriptures paved the way for the creation of African literatures in the vernacular.

Missionary translations were of course motivated by the desire to secure converts for the church, often defined in terms of Western cultural criteria. Ironically, the critics of the Christian missions thought they could make their case on the basis of cultural relativism; however, missionary linguistic research was characterized precisely by a culturally relativistic empirical practice. The variety and diversity of the languages involved in scriptural translation pro- moted, as nothing else ever has, the notion of cultural specificity and par- ticularity-the notion that the Enlightenment regarded as a stumbling block to its intellectual claims. Those who advanced relativism to attack missionary interference in African societies and to defend the principles of their absolute autonomy were therefore actually arguing that African societies represented a cul-de-sac and remained imprisoned in a state of primordial innocence. In fact, the very idea of primordial innocence is firmly rooted in Enlightenment thought. Cultural relativism, then, hardly constitutes an advance over West- ern cultural ethnocentrism.

The careful development and promotion of vernacular languages in Africa is a primary source of cultural particularity and renewal. By means of it, many parts of Africa have become involved in the general, worldwide human process. The real life and vitality of numerous African languages reside at least partly in their ability to resist absorption into a prevailing lingua franca. One of the reasons for their power in this regard is their capacity to express with the force and immediacy of a solemn but homebred familiarity. If Shakespeare were to come into the room, everyone might well rise, as Charles Lamb suggested, but if the vernacular force of a work proves capable of stirring to the depths of our blood, soul, and tongue, we should, like the venerable Tartar, greet it on our knees.

NOTE

'This paper was originally commissioned by Michael Cooke of Yale University for a conference in April 1990 that he organized on Tradition and Transition in African Let- ters. Michael was killed in a traffic accident soon afterwards, and this paper is dedicated to his memory.

WORKS CITED

Amegatcher, Andrew W. "Akropong: 150 Years Old." West Africa 14 July 1986: 1472. Bradley, Henry. The Making of English. New York and London: Macmillan, 1904.

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

106 I Research in African Literatures

Danquah, J. B. The Akan Doctrine of God. London: Lutterworth P, 1944. Davis, Asa J. "The Orthodoxy of the Ethiopian Church." Tarikh 2.1 (1967): 62-69. Debrunner, Hans. A History of Christianity in Ghana. Accra, Ghana: Waterville, 1967. Deissman, Adolf. The New Testament in the Light of Modern Research: The Haskell

Lectures, 1929. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929. Dorotheos (Metropolitan). "The Influence of the Moravian Mission on the Orthodox

Church in Czechoslovakia. Review of Mission 74.294 (April 1985): 219-29. Dvomik, Francis. Byzantine Missions among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and Metho-

dius. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1970. Erasmus, Desiderius. Christian Humanism and the Reformation; Selected Writings, with the

life of Erasmus by Beatus Thenanus. 3rd ed. (1975, 2nd rev. ed.) Ed. John C. Olin. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1987.

Fabian, Johannes. Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo 1880-1938. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.

Haile, Getatchew. "A Christ for the Gentiles: the Case of the za-Krestos of Ethiopia." Journal of Religion in Africa 15.2 (1985): 86-95.

The Influence of the English Bible upon the English Language and upon English and American Literatures. Ed. Oscar Loos Joseph. New York: American Bible Society, 1947.

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christianity. Rev. ed. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1953.

Livingstone, David. Missionary Researches and Travels in South Africa. London: John Murray, 1857.

Paz, Octavio. "Edith Piaf among the Pygmies." New York Times Book Review 6 Septem- ber 1987: 1, 19-20.

Pedersen, Holger, N.D. The Discovery of Language: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century. Trans. John Webster Spargo. 1959. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1962.

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur. "On Reading the Bible." The Art of Reading: Lectures Deliv- ered in the University of Cambridge, 1916-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1920. 154-171.

Sanneh, Lamin. Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. 1989. Mary- knoll, NY: Orbis, 1990. .West African Christianity: The Religious Impact. 1983. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990.

. "The Yogi and the Commissar: Christian Missions and the African Response." International Bulletin of Missionary Research 15.1 (Jan. 1991): 2-12.

Sibussio Nyembezi, C. L. A Review of Zulu Literature. Pietermaritzburg: U of Natal P, 1961.

Smith, Edwin. In the Mother Tongue. London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1930. Stamoolis, James J. Eastern Orthodox Mission Theology Today. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis,

1986.

Tamrat, Taddesse. Church and State in Ethiopia: 1270-1527. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1972. Ullendorf, E. Ethiopia and the Bible. London: Oxford UP, 1988. Wallace-Hadrill, John Michael. The Frankish Church. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1983.

This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 01:45:28 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms