Bible Translations And Literary Responses: Re-reading Missionary Interventions In Africa Through Local Perspectives

Chinelo Ezenwa, The University of Western Ontario

Abstract

My thesis reflects on the implications of 19^th century missionary interventions for Africans, by drawing attention to how missionary translations and schooling facilitated colonial rule in Africa. Although the acquisition of missionary evangelism and schooling alleviated the conditions of subjugated colonized Africans, particularly females, contradictorily, white missionaries and colonizers used those same institutions to marginalize the missionary educated Africans, who they utilized as agents of mission groups. In turn, the missionary system enabled African males (who were ranked higher than females) to inflict both traditional and missionary patriarchal authorities on females. The idea for the study originated from reading a linguistically distorted Igbo version of Psalm 23 from Union Ibo Bible (1913) which was translated by CMS missionary Archdeacon T. J. Dennis supposedly to amalgamate Igbos. While this colonial Bible has since been superseded by locally translated Igbo Bibles, the linguistically distorted missionary translations and literal approach to Bible translation, which denigrate the Igbo reader, persist. Because of the breadth and complexity of the subject and the African continent, I focus on critiquing Union Ibo Psalm 23, the missionary history of Igbos of Southeastern Nigeria, and the missionary history of Zimbabwe to a lesser degree. I not only examine the Union “Ibo” Psalm 23 against contemporary Igbo versions, I also critique the act of translation, and the authoritative missionary translator, who used the means of translation to deride, marginalize, and colonize local people. The latter part of the thesis examines Chinua Achebe’s and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s fictionalized responses to missionization and colonization through Things Fall Apart and Nervous Conditions and interprets them as acts of re-translation of missionary and colonial histories through local perspectives. Both novels show that the narration or translation of (missionary) history depends on the narrator. The fact that Nervous Conditions is narrated in the autobiographical voice reinforces the importance of narrating one’s own story; that is, it is important to re-translate missionary and colonial histories from indigenous perspectives. This effectively destabilizes the overarching position of the hegemonic translator and storyteller while identifying the position of the formerly subjugated Other as an active participant in translations and in re-translating missionary colonial history.