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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'They stooped to conquer': vernacular translation and the sociocultural factor
Author:Sanneh, LaminISNI
Year:1992
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:23
Issue:1
Pages:95-106
Language:English
Geographic terms:Subsaharan Africa
Ghana
Subjects:writing systems
missions
traditional society
translation
Akan languages
Ga language
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819952
Abstract:Extending the authority of scriptural status to vernacular languages has profound cultural and linguistic consequences. Whereas colonial rule in Africa carried the current of foreign legitimacy, Christian missions 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. Whether or not they intended to do so, missionary translators endowed the vernacular with a consecrated value by investing it with a scriptural tradition. This paper deals with the consequences of missionary translations for traditional societies in Africa. The author presents a few early historical examples which show how such linguistic work promoted a wider cultural interest. Then he pays attention to missionary linguists who left a permanent mark on the African vernacular in Ghana: Johannes Christaller, who wrote and published in Twi between the 1840s and the 1870s, and Carl Christian Reindorf, who wrote a history of Asante in Ga (1889). Missionary transmitters who 'stooped to conquer' the native idiom inadvertently mobilized African sentiments and inaugurated a transformation process in the societies and cultures where they were working. The author finally deals with the question of whether Christian missions opened the way for the suppression of African cultures. Bibliogr., note.
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