With a Phd in African linguistics (UCLA), Dr Zogbo has served as translation consultant with UBS for over 30 years. Now retired she is research associate at Universite de FHBoigny and University of Free State. Former editor of Sycomore and UBS French handbooks, she continues to write translation helps, teach at Jerusalem Center for Bible Translation, and serve in the Pike’s scholar program
The “Cycle” Poem in Ecclesiastes 1: From Sound Effects in Hebrew to African Songs
Abstract
In Ecclesiastes 1.4-13, the author presents a beautiful poem describing recurring cycles in nature: generations come and go, as do the wind, the sea, and the rivers. The Hebrew poet uses binary rhythm, rhyme, word repetition as well as remarkable cases of alliteration and assonance (repetitive fricative consonants, full round vowels, etc.) to portray these unending cycles, showing “there is nothing new under the sun”.
It is clear this poem must have been and is meant to be performed! Performance criticism (Rhoads, 2009, 2012) provides a framework not only for understanding the meaning behind such a literary work (Maxey, 2012), but a methodology for studying the rhetorical devices which render the text unforgettably poetic.
In this paper, after presenting a line-by-line analysis of the Hebrew poem, we ask: how can mother tongue translators utilize these facts in translating such texts? In answer, we present and analyze translations and oral song renderings of this poem from five different African languages, showing that while Hebrew sound effects cannot be replicated exactly, aesthetically pleasing songs (to target audience ears) can be produced, conveying, at least partially, the same message and impact as the original. This study underlines the fact that knowing the source Hebrew text is key to enabling mother tongue translators to utilize the poetic tools at their disposal in their own mother tongue to arrive at renderings which are truly “performance-worthy”.