TELAWAA: Tuesday, July 12, 2016

 In a bid to sound sarcastic on English and perhaps its users, someone posted: "N500 worth of airtime for anybody that can translate this to correct English 'OGBAMUGBAMU OJU ORUN O SE GBAMU." (In Yoruba, that's one of the eulogies for God, the Almighty) Well, I often receive a lot of such posts from people, sending to me directly, perhaps in a bid to ridicule English or so. Well, I usually smile at their ignorance but here is my comment to the latest one: "Jokes apart, there is a difference between translation and transliteration. NB: You don't translate idioms, clichés, indigenous names, technical terms, jargon, and the like. You simply transliterate! Let's leave out the sarcasm that that is meant to have on English, as a language. Mind you, it applies to every language, not just English. Linguistically, you don't translate such linguistic properties; rather, you transliterate. To "transliterate" is to cleverly summarise the idea, message or sense in a structure". Worthy of note is the fact that language is first a cultural property before it is anything else! Simple!