This comment was made by Duduzile Z Mabaso of Black Letter Media on Nyana Kakomas article on local languages in English text. Do you agree? Join the conversation! People don’t buy books to read proper English. What we need to do is decide how much we’re going to litter words from our languages in English texts (or any other language for that matter), because not every word should be translated into the “main” language of the text. Also italicised text isn’t to make any language inferior. I dig italics because they can serve so many purposes, but speaking to this blog, italicized text indicates to the reader that this is word is a different language so you don’t continue to read it in the same language as the what the entire text it is. this happens to me all the time when reading something on the social media where there’s not formatting. I’ll find myself stumbling over a word because I’m trying to process it in English while it’s rewritten in isiZulu. So newspapers, books, etc. they are right to italicise words. Regarding glossaries – when I started typing this I was undecided but now I think I’m clear. I think we should put glossaries when there are a lot of words or phrases which can’t be figured out from reading. If there are only a few words, maybe leave it out. But a glossary is harmless and all the way at the back so throw it in. The main thing though I think we need to work on the perceptions that say “proper English” requires us to leave words from our languages out. Or even that a good novel has proper English or even that our literature only qualifies when it’s in English.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 12:25:04 +0000
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