For Immediate Release
Ituĩka Multilingual Anthology of Stories in Kenyan Languages
NAIROBI, November 10, 2024.
The Ituĩka Literary Platform has today announced the upcoming publication of its highly anticipated multilingual anthology of Stories in Kenyan Languages. This work features 14 Kenyan languages published in two volumes of the platform’s inaugural Issue. Languages featured include Bukusu, Dholuo, Ekegusii, Embu, Gikuyu, Kiduruma, Kimeru, Luhya, Maa, Sheng, Somali, and Wanga, with each piece translated into (or from) Kiswahili and English. They provide a tripartite reading experience of the tripled lifeworlds of each story. First of its kind for the Kenyan reading public, the anthology took 3 years to create and features 23 contributors who worked either as authors and or translators.
The anthology will appear in a limited print edition, with plans to work with Kenyan and international book distribution services to expand availability.
Munyao Kilolo, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Ituĩka Literary Platform, edited the two volumes. Munyao conceptualized the project, curated the 2021 Ituĩka workshop where the work began, and provided editorial direction. The project was made possible by funding from the ERC-funded five-year Project ‘Literary Activism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Commons, Publics, and Networks of Practice,’ which is led by Prof Madhu Krishnan as the Principal Investigator and Dr. Doseline Kiguru as the Research Associate in charge of the Eastern African region.
In his preface to the anthology, Munyao Kilolo acknowledges the unique opportunity to go beyond the established binaries of spoken and written use of African languages to a more multilingual expression and creative production in writing and translation. If multilingualism is a fact of daily life in Kenya, it can also translate into linguistic possibilities in the consumption of stories via translation. “To write and publish only in Kiswahili and English for a Kenyan audience limits the experience of Kenyan readership because the Kenyan experience with language is not limited to these two languages. And yet, to create bridges and allow others to access our stories, we cannot ignore these languages of wider communication and the invaluable place of translation,” Kilolo added.
Madhu Krishnan, the principal investigator in the “Literary Activism in Sub-Saharan Africa,” project, observed that literary translation has become an increasingly valued and visible subdiscipline of translation science, recognized, through the development of training courses, University degree programmes, and a large body of research, as an art and a discipline unto itself. She further observed that associations, networks, and societies geared towards literary translators have developed around the world, emphasising the extent of growth and interest in the field.
“As the publication demonstrates, there was one key difference with the Ituĩka project: the existence – and indeed, the centrality – of African languages as literary languages worthy of visibility and status as both target and source,” Prof Krishnan added.
A first of its kind, this work foregrounds Kenyan languages. Not merely Kiswahili, as has often been the case, but the broader diversity of tongues, spanning fourteen different languages and linguistic contexts and highlighting the multiplicity of creative expression in Kenya.
The work began in 2021 with a workshop in Naivasha, Kenya where the contributors gathered under the tutelage of Professor Kimani Njogu and Jane Obuchi – a renowned writer and translator of the Ekegusii language. Both acknowledge the publication as a landmark effort in highlighting the diversity of literary works in African languages.
To the Editors:
About Ituĩka: Ituĩka is an online and print platform devoted to publishing writers in African languages, facilitating translations, and raising the visibility of African language literary projects. It was founded by Munyao Kilolo in 2021. In addition to the literary workshop and the publication of the inaugural multilingual anthology, the platform also published a database of teachers in African languages.