Kutafsiri Fasihi

Dhana ya tafsiri si rahisi kama inavyoaminika na jamii. Wataalam wanaijadili, kwa misimamo tofauti. Kuna vitabu na makala nyingi juu ya nadharia za tafsiri na shughuli ya kutafsiri. Kati ya vitabu vyangu, kuna ninachopenda kukipitia, kiitwacho Theories of Translation, ambacho ni mkusanyo wa insha za watu kama Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Roman Jakobson, Michael Riffaterre na Jacques Derrida.

Insha hizi zinafikirisha. Jose Ortega y Gasset, kwa mfano, anasema kuwa kutafsiri ni jambo lisilowezekana. Ni kama ndoto. Ni kujidanganya. Walter Benjamin anauliza masuali mengi magumu. Derrida, katika insha yake juu ya Mnara wa Babel, iliyotafsiriwa na Joseph F. Graham, anaandika:

          The "tower of Babel" does not merely figure the irreducible multiplicity of tongues; it exhibits an incompletion, the impossibility of finishing, of totalizing, of saturating, of completing something on the order of edification, architectural construction, system and architectonics. What the multiplicity of idioms limits is not only a "true" translation, a transparent and adequate inter-expression, it is also a structural order, a coherence of construct. There is often (let us translate) something like an internal limit to formalization, an incompleteness of constructure. It would be easy and up to a certain point justified to see there the translation of a system in deconstruction.
          One should never pass over in silence the question of the tongue in which the question of the tongue is raised and into which a discourse on translation is translated.

Kutokana na uzoefu wangu wa kutafsiri hadithi za jadi za ki-Matengo, nami nimeanza kuelezea suala la kutafsiri hadithi. Ninatafsiri pia mashairi ya ki-Ingereza kwa ki-Swahili na mashairi ya ki-Swahili kwa ki-Ingereza. Ninawazia kujijengea msingi wa kuandika zaidi kuhusu kazi ya kutafsiri, na ndoto yangu hatimaye ni kutafsiri Utenzi wa Ras il Ghuli. Ninaamini kwamba kuutafsiri utenzi huu utakuwa ni mtihani mkubwa kuliko yote ambayo nimejaribu kufanya, na kitakuwa ni kipimo thabiti cha uwezo wangu. Ninahamasika na namna mabingwa kama Richmond Lattimore na Robert Fagles walivyotafsiri tenzi za The Iliad na The Odyssey.