J. Tsitsi Mutiti about the translation of Mapenzi to The Mad

 J. Tsitsi Mutiti's speech at the Harare launch of Ignatius Mabasa's The Mad

My sincere thanks to all who are gathered here to help us celebrate the completion and publishing of this English translation of Mapenzi to The Mad. I very much appreciate it.

I will begin by answering a question that I’ve been asked many times: why translation and why Mapenzi? The simple answer is that I fell in love with Hamundigone’s personality described by Memory Chirere as uncensored and sometimes utterly warm and likeable. I loved Bunny’s and Magi’s introspection. I loved all the characters because they are so relatable. These are not people to be pitied but strong people living their lives the best they can. They are people making the most of whatever resources are available to them to live their lives. 

The second reason is that I wanted to improve my halting Shona literacy. I could read Shona but not comfortably because I only had a few years of formal Shona education. What better way to improve on my Shona language than reading books in Shona? When I finished reading Mapenzi for the first time it stayed in my head. I think we need a word for books that stay with you for a long time. The way we have the word earworm in reference to songs that, when you hear them, continue playing in your head. While this book earworm was playing in my head I started wondering how Hamundigone would sound in English. Or Mai Jazz - how would her degree in popotology sound in English? 

Years ago, while at the University of Zimbabwe, I met Nhamo Mhiripiri and he introduced me to Russian literature. I became an enthusiastic fan of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy and others. Every week would find me haunting the library in search of my next Russian novel. At some point Nhamo and I had a conversation about the beauty of translation and how all these great books would have remained inaccessible to most of the world if they had remained in Russian. I asked, why our great novels, like Mungoshi’s Kunyarara Hakuzi Kutaura, haven’t been translated into English and he responded 'You could translate your favourite books'. I laughed and forgot about it because I thought he was teasing me – but here we are. The seed planted so long ago germinated when I started asking myself whether I could really do it? Could I really translate a book in Shona into English and produce something reasonably resembling the original?  And just like that I decided to try it. This translation basically started life as a private exercise aimed at improving my Shona and to see if I could do it – and here we are; so many years later the exercise has borne fruit.

What a journey it was! It has been a learning experience all the way. The very first paragraph in the first line “ndinoparadza zvisina mutsindo sehwai”, which I translated as “I am a lethal and silent destroyer, like a ram”. When I first read hwai I was thinking of sheep. The word sheep is not normally associated with anything menacing. I had a conversation with my colleagues who set me right by explaining how dangerous the male of the species could be. Hence the choice of ram in the translation.

The other thing I learned is how much we take our mother language for granted. Its words are so deeply imbedded in our minds that we usually don’t really think about the concepts these words represent. When translating this analysis becomes necessary so that a fitting word or phrase can be found. Sometimes this is a simple process, other times it’s a wrestling match.

Language is a patchwork made with words, culture and other beliefs peculiar to the speakers of language. Patchwork was my grandmother’s favourite pastime. She was one of those people who could never be idle, and patchwork was what she did when there was no work for her to do. She was able to do so much patchwork because my mother’s side hustle of sewing and selling clothes produced a lot of fabric scraps for Gogo’s work. It was my job to sort through the scraps left over from sewing and pack all the suitable pieces into “Box raGogo”. Gogo made her patchwork into pillows, quilts and sometimes tote-bags for us her grandchildren. Sometimes one of her grandchildren would say I want a quilt just like the one you made for Mukoma Hope. She tried but it was not always possible to replicate Mukoma Hope’s quilt because the contents of Box raGogo depended on what my mother was sewing at the time. I would dig into Box raGogo under her instructions looking for the bits she wanted. Sometimes we’d find fabrics in the right colours but with wrong textures. Or the right fabric but the wrong colours. Ultimately the second quilt would be its own thing but with a greater or lesser resemblance to Mukoma Hope’s quilt depending on the time that had passed.

In some ways translation is very much like Gogo trying to use scraps from box B to replicate a quilt made with scraps from box A. Take a simple concept like walking. Box A will have words like famba, fora, kanyaira, pesvaira, bhidhaira, dhanaira, digaira, chakwaira. Maybe even pesu-pesu or tutya-tutya.  Box B will have walk, march, stroll, tread, waddle, toddle, prance, sashay, power walk and so on. Sometimes the correspondence is immediately obvious but other times the choice from Box B takes a bit of thought and improvising. Sometimes Box B might not have a corresponding word at all and one has to make do with a phrase or even a sentence. Take the word Munhu. That’s simple enough to translate into English. But what of chimunhu? Or Zimunhu? Or a concept like ngozi that is intrinsic to Shona beliefs. Would karma be good enough to convey the idea? Avenging spirit? Or does it need a paragraph to convey the full meaning of what ngozi is? 

This means that the final product bears some resemblance to the original (hopefully a lot) but is in a way its own thing. Ultimately translation is an approximation and, as a translator, one has to accept that some things will be lost in translation: nuances, some emotional content, cultural aspects. The idea is to minimise these losses as much as possible. And also to avoid new things creeping into the story because of cultural differences or differences in beliefs and values between the original audience the book was written for and the target audience of the translation.

Dealing with cultural differences between original audience and target audience

Language and culture are so closely intertwined that any work in a particular language is also a reflection of that culture.  A culture likely to be foreign to the targeted reader. This presents a problem of how to handle these cultural differences. I think writers of sci-fi and fantasy who create worlds that have their peculiar cultures and rules also experience the same problems of how to convey these worlds to their readers in a way that the readers will understand. Writers like Frank Herbert in his Dune series or Isaac Asimov in his Foundation series do this by using quotations from various documents and commentaries said to exist in those worlds. The quotations bring the reader to the author by explaining and educating the reader about the world they enter when they read these books. Likewise the translators can do a similar thing through footnotes and glossaries. Other authors like Anne Leckie in her Ancillary Series and Ursula Le Guin in her EarthSea series simply get on with their story assuming the reader will be able to infer what kind of world it is and how things work in that world from the story. There is little detouring to explain the culture and values of these worlds. This is similar to how translators can bring the author to the reader in the same way. This second approach puts greater emphasis on entertaining the reader, while the first approach looks to educate the reader. The Mad underwent a transition from the first approach to the second approach at the suggestion of the editors. I think they made a good call. As I say this has been a learning experience for me. My original purpose in doing this translation for myself was superseded by a new purpose to translate for an actual audience. 

Finally our cultures determine our values and this is an area where a translator has to make decisions about whether to take the values of the target audience into consideration. I did not do this but translated everything as is because sexist attitudes, homophobia and violence are intrinsic to who we are. Happily, the editors remembered to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the book concerning these issues.

 I’d like to thank Ignatius Mabasa for trusting me with the work of translating his creation and I hope I have not mutilated it too badly. I would like to thank Jane Morris and Samantha Vhazure for the superb work they did in polishing my rough work. And thanks to amaBooks and Carnelian Heart Publishing for believing in this translation enough to publish it.

Celebrating the Launch of Ignatius Mabasa' s ‘The Mad’

Reproduced from https://munyori.org/2025/10/mad-about-mabasa-a-celebration-of-the-mad/

by Beaven Tapureta

In the cool evening of October 10 a gathering of ‘the mad’ writers, publishers, artists, arts journalists, academics, friends and family enjoyed the memorable official launch of The Mad, a newly co-published English translation of Ignatius T Mabasa’s 1999 Shona novel Mapenzi, a classic.

A charming mood prevailed at the National Art Gallery of Zimbabwe as mbira songbird Hope Masike livened up the event with her spiritually powered music.

Although the waiting for the new baby is now over, the story behind it is of a devoted team of ‘doctors’ that withstood the hiccups yet cherished some positive experiences in its process of birth.

Guest speaker Aaron Chiundura Moyo, who is a renowned writer, playwright and actor, left everyone in stitches as he congratulated The Mad author Mabasa for drawing a crowd of ‘the mad’ in the room.

Speaking after Mabasa’s wife, Conelia, had told of how the Mapenzi draft manuscript became Ignatius’  ‘bait’ to win her love, Chiundura Moyo said artists in their budding years generally do that. One can imagine the young Mabasa walking up to the girl with that special ‘I am-a-writer-babe’ pride, flashing the manuscript in front of her like a sweetener, giving his all for love.

But Mrs. Mabasa’s story reminded Chiundura Moyo of a time he also once lured and excitedly shared one of his manuscripts with a girl who never returned it. Nobody knows if she read it and worse still, she never mentioned she loved him too! 

Chiundura Moyo went on to touch on very serious issues pertinent to the business of translation, warning that in the absence of a clear cultural understanding of the original language, translators may kill our literature instead of promoting it globally.

Though the needs of non-Shona speakers must be considered, the translated version must have oneness of the original aura, the intrinsic value of the original language, he said.

He applauded Mabasa for his commitment to the preservation of African culture through language and Joyce Tsitsi Mutiti, The Mad translator for demonstrating that translation is not completely an academic exercise but also an activity done out of passion.

The major challenge generally faced by translators is how best a translated book, targeting a new audience, can balance with the inspiration that produced the original. Writers or artists are known to have personal habits in their work of creating. These habits are inseparable to their creations, they are a part of the unwritten context.

Indeed, a translator is not a re-writer, yet, without certain knowledge, some contextual meanings are lost when word-by-word translation is unnecessarily stuck to.

For instance, said Chiundura Moyo, an owl (zizi in Shona) could have considerable symbolical meaning when viewed from an African viewpoint whereas for a foreign audience, it’s simply a bird.

Culture, however, he said, should not be a limitation for translators, only that a certain alertness of the original purpose is demanded of those involved in the translation.  

For writer and publisher Samantha Vazhure (Carnelian Heart Publishing Ltd), it was a great honour to be asked by the long-established amaBooks to co-publish The Mad with them.  

Ignatius Mabasa could not help introducing himself to the gathering through a gripping story from his next novel which he said is titled Death of a Storyteller.

He re-traced the path Mapenzi has walked since the days he authored it when he was a student growing among ‘the radicals’ at the University of Zimbabwe.

His reflection of Mapenzi’s ups and downs, before and after it was published, was enough to justify the decision to avail it internationally.

At one time writer, Tendai Huchu was engaged to do the translation while publisher Irene Staunton and celebrated literary critic and researcher Flora Veit-Wild helped with ideas and suggestions. Although Huchu completed the translation, it was Tsitsi Mutiti’s translation completed a few years before Huchu’s that spoke to Mabasa’s heart.

Speaking at the launch, the translator Mutiti said she was intrigued by Mabasa’s style of characterization which very well captures the social milieu.

“I fell in love with Hamundigone’s personality who (Memory) Chirere describes as uncensored and sometimes utterly warm and likeable. I loved Bunny’s and Magi’s introspection. I loved all the characters because they are so relatable. These are not people to be pitied but strong people living their lives the best they can. They are people making the most of whatever resources are available to them to live their lives,” said Mutiti.

As reiterated by Chiundura Moyo in his presentation, that language is the backbone of a culture, likewise Mutiti discovered the inherent power of mother languages. 

“The other thing I learned is how much we take our mother language for granted. Its words are so deeply imbedded in our minds that we usually don’t really think about the concepts these words represent. When translating, this analysis becomes necessary so that a fitting word or phrase can be found. Sometimes this is a simple process, other times it’s a wrestling match. Language is a patchwork made with words, culture and other beliefs peculiar to the speakers of language,” she said.

Mutiti’s engagement with The Mad was enlightening especially in matters to do with ‘cultural differences between original audience and target audience’.

“Language and culture are so closely intertwined that any work in a particular language is also a reflection of that culture.  A culture likely to be foreign to the targeted reader. This presents a problem of how to handle these cultural differences. I think writers of sci-fi and fantasy who create worlds that have their peculiar cultures and rules also experience the same problems of how to convey these worlds to their readers in a way that the readers will understand,” said Mutiti. 

Later, an open discussion led by writer Memory Chirere was held to give those present a chance to ask Mabasa and Mutiti some questions. Wisrod, a registered microfinance company, sponsored the book launch.

The first review of Ignatius T. Mabasa's The Mad

 Review by Rutendo Chichaya

Reproduced from negwande.com/post/the mad-by-ignatius-t-mabasa-translated-by-j-tsitsi-mutiti

'I tried to pick up my jacket and missed it as I stumbled. I tried to laugh at myself but what I was feeling led to self-pity. The hunger was now a real pain, like a hot brick in my belly. I decided to go to the bins, where I had often seen people in search of food. Shyness is a luxury for the well-fed, not for those who feel the way I was feeling.'  page 27

The Mad is a novel by Ignatius T. Mabasa, translated by J. Tsitsi Mutiti. It was first published in 1999 in ChiShona as Mapenzi. I have read translated books that lose the essence of the original text by using a direct translation approach. While effective in its own way, as a reader I am captivated by translations that capture the moments and mood in a manner almost as similar to the original text. A heated conversation arose at the 2nd Edition of the Harare Open Book Festival, where I was moderating a discussion with Tsitsi Nomsa Ngwenya about translating works written in our mother tongues, the extent to which meaning is lost in translation, and the very act of translation: what purpose does it serve? (a conversation for another day). I commend Mutiti for boldly translating this Zimbabwean classic. Her admirable work begins with the title, ‘the mad’, because 'mapenzi' can be translated in different ways; this title applies to the city, its things, and its people, making it all-encompassing.  From the University of Zimbabwe to Seke Unit D, these characters will have you wondering if it is true that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The novel tackles themes like the liberation struggle, postwar trauma, culture, identity, family dynamics, HIV/AIDS, sexual violence, and substance abuse in a web of chaos. The novel begins with the winding rant by Hamundigoni, the main character. It’s easy to dislike Hamundigoni, a war veteran and former teacher who refuses to accept the assertion that he has lost his mind. 'No one likes a profound thinker who speaks his mind. That's me, wide awake and always on the ball. I'm a genius but they call me mad. Do they even recognise madness when they see it? Amai, do you know madness?’- page 5. He is crude and annoying to a great extent, yet I found some empathy for him. This is the case with most of the characters linked to Hamundigoni, whose actions evoke frustration.  Closely connected to the post-independence disappointment is the trauma of war, which Hamundigoni marries in his periodic rants. Mabasa's humour is as strong as the sarcasm, which makes the blow of reality manageable to swallow. Mabasa’s comedic relief is clever, sneaking up on the reader in the fashion of a crow attentively preying on oblivious chicks and catching them at a perfectly calculated time.

The Mad is a commentary on Zimbabwean society, where racism, homophobia, and sexism are rife at the time of the novel. The book comes with a warning that alerts the reader to expect characters who reflect the society of the time. One of the things that this book asks the reader to interrogate is whether it's possible for us to be alright in a society filled with so much decay, disappointment and pain. One connects with these characters as they navigate life in an evolving society and realise that we are all on the brink of losing it somehow. Repression was the order of the day at the time this book was written. People who often speak their minds are seldom applauded unless their voices conform to the established norms, but is this the case for Hamundigoni as he alleges?

There are many strong characters in this novel, but alongside Hamundigoni, in the fashion of African folklore, Harare, the dog, is an indispensable character (Mabasa is a notable sarungano). This dog (formerly known as Salisbury before being renamed to ‘go with the times’) is given to Mai Jazz by her white employer, who, upon having to leave Zimbabwe to return to her home in Britain, can't travel with it. The employer gives this dog to Mai Jazz out of constraints. Harare is a key site in the novel, and as I read this, I couldn't help but draw parallels between Harare the dog and Harare the city. The allegory is sharp and impossible to miss. The characters curse Harare for what it has done to them, the city where people go to take on new characters (or their most authentic selves?) and shift their culture. Yet their intersections reveal that Harare is what it is because of its people, which leads us back to the title.

The novel beautifully intertwines the music produced by the singers, who have come to be regarded as legends in Zimbabwe, with the art of storytelling. Music and books meet at the well of storytelling, where people can draw what they require. In this text, Mabasa fuses the two; you can tell a great deal about people from their music over the years, as it also captures the language of the day. Mabasa effectively mirrors the tone of the time. I enjoyed reading this story once again, and the translation was well done. I highly recommend!

 

Book Details

Title: The Mad   

Genre: Fiction

Author: Ignatius T. Mabasa, J. Tsitsi Mutiti

Publisher: Carnelian Heart Publishing, amaBooks Publishers (2025)

Pages: 244

Ignatius Mabasa in conversation with Philani Nyoni about the translation of Mapenzi and its publication in English as The Mad

 Reproduced from South Africa's Litnet  (https://www.litnet.co.za/from-mapenzi-to-madmen-a-conversation-with-ignatius-mabasa/)

From Mapenzi to The Mad: 

A conversation with Ignatius Mabasa

Philani A Nyoni, Ignatius Tirivangani Mabasa

Ignatius Mabasa (Photo: supplied)

In 1999, a 28-year-old, Ignatius Mabasa, wrote a novel that would not only stake its claim in the Zimbabwean literary canon, but go on to receive international recognition in the form of the Times Literary Supplement calling it “one of the most significant books to have come out of Africa”. It was rumoured that Tanaka Chidora would translate it into English, but sadly that did not come to pass. It is not all gloom, however. In 2025, amaBooks Publishers will publish Tsitsi Mutiti’s translation of Mapenzi into English under the title The Mad, while the University of Georgia Press is set to release the translation in North America. Philani A Nyoni talks to Ignatius Mabasa about this new lease of life on his iconic multi-award-winning book, and what it means to him and the zeitgeist after a quarter century in circulation.

You recently translated Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions into Shona, and have been a strong advocate for the preservation of native tongues, especially your indigenous language, Shona. You must admit there’s a certain irony to your book being translated into English. What gives, milord?

Irony, because Mapenzi has been translated from its original language into English, and not vice versa – I actually see the translation into English as a gain against Western hegemony, because the mountain has come to Muhammad to acknowledge his existence. Instead of an African story being forced by the capitalist world system and globalisation into English, the translation is a sign of respect to Shona people in wanting to understand their worldview and the issues that trouble them. The Mapenzi story is important for my people’s pedagogy and emancipation, because it encapsulates the historical, cultural and social identity of a nation. It is a kind of extension of Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger and a version of Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. Getting Mapenzi translated into English is a coup, because our efforts and works in our own languages are a way of refusing to let the world dominate and silence us ideologically. The Mapenzi translation is giving a bird a branch to perch on, but the bird truly belongs and finds meaning, rest and peace in the nest of its mother tongue.

In 2001, the Times Literary Supplement named Mapenzi “one of the most significant books to have come out of Africa”. In your opinion, why has it taken so long to have it brought to a wider audience in the form of translation?

Personally, I think it has taken this long to have Mapenzi brought to a wider audience in the form of translation because it is not a light read. It reeks with the experiences of marginalised people dealing with issues of poverty, violence, disintegration, fear, coloniality and dejection. It paints huge murals of the brutal nature of African life in the postcolonial era. Such socially realistic issues are like Third Cinema – they don’t sell and are uncomfortable for Western readers, because they are indicators of the long-term impact of colonisation.

Are you worried something might be lost in the process of translation? Something particular and nuanced that may be part of the book’s immortal soul? I mean this in the context of your having said that the lines always come to you in your mother tongue, and that you have found difficulty in translating the words when they come.

Certainly I am. There is something deeply ingrained in the language of the people who are telling their story in Mapenzi. There are issues which don’t need translation, because they are at home in the nest of the language that is telling the story. However, there were cases where the beauty and richness of the Shona idiom, metaphor and way of expressing issues presented a real struggle. It was like trying to get a stubborn donkey to move – you can pull and pull, but it simply will not move, digging its hooves into the ground. Under such circumstances I felt for the translator, because the message that was coming across was, as somebody clever once said, that “each language has its own language”. Mapenzi is a story of ordinary folk in the ghetto who may understand English, but English doesn’t quite define, explain or get tickled by the witty and clever use as the original language.

How involved were you in the process of translation? Did Tsitsi Mutiti and Jane Morris engage you during the process, or did you leave the process to their professional discretion?

I got heavily involved only in the end when I had to work with the editor, who did a fantastic job in pointing out ambiguities and things she felt had the potential to confuse foreign audiences. I also had the task of reading the translated story three times, as we kept discovering things and had to make difficult decisions.

It has been about a quarter of a century since Mapenzi was published. With the time that has passed in your personal and professional life, what does this text mean to you today, now that you are a different man in a different epoch?

I tell you that this was the biggest challenge for me. Literature is shaped by the conditions of the time in which it is created, but it is also influenced by the level of development that the author is at. Mapenzi is my first novel, written when I was aged 28, and I feel that, if I had proper guidance, I would have paid more attention to developing my characters and story. Actually, if I were to be given the opportunity, I would love to rewrite the story, paying more attention to what I now consider amateur ways of handling the story. This is something Tendai Huchu observed and struggled with when he at one time helped me. However, major improvements would have had implications for the original story. I consulted widely, and the sentiment was that if I were to rewrite or embellish the story as the mature writer that I am now, I would be destroying the popular Mapenzi, which was well received and loved with the “flaws” that I was now noticing. Although the TLS called it one of the most significant books to have come out of Africa, Mapenzi also shows how much indigenous literature has potential but requires support. As a budding writer at the time, I benefited immensely from studying the Shona novel as a course for my BA general degree. It was through that course that I understood that for most indigenous books, a sincerely told story matters more than the style. There is a lot of work that still has to go into the aestheticisation of Shona writing. Anyway, I am glad that while Mapenzi may be from a different epoch, it still remains relevant in terms of the themes and issues it deals with.