Mawena: Sometimes when Mami is saying something, she says “please” beforehand. For example she might say, “please, have you finished doing your chores” or “please, for dinner we’re having fish.” In Twi, it’s almost a requirement to say please before sentences. It’s a sign of respect, and a way of being polite. So when Mami is speaking English, she also says please before every sentence. It’s just instinctive. Do you think that culture and ones native language impact the way they speak English and can you think of examples where this happens when translating Twi into English?  

 

Tafa: I think the linguistic structure of your mother tongue affects the way you speak another language. For example, in Twi, the way your mother says, please, d’you want some food- in English you don’t say that- but in Twi, please comes before everything if you’re being polite. I think another way that it affects the way I speak English is that in Twi there’s no he or she pronoun. It’s always neutral. You can’t say “he” or “she”. You cannot say ”he was coming” in Twi. The pronoun we use is similar to it or they. So sometimes, when a Twi speaking person is speaking English. We mix up pronouns. 

 

M: Yeah, sometimes you’re like, “How’s Brianna, how’s he doing? Haha”

 

T: Haha yeah, so thats why.

 

M: Can you think of any other examples? 

 

T: Sorry is another example. In Twi when you say sorry it doesn’t mean you did something wrong. It just means you’re expressing your sympathies for something. So somebody might be walking up the stairs and they fall, and a Twi speaking person will say “sorry”. And the native english speaker will say, “oh it’s not your fault.” In Twi, sorry means, I feel bad about that happening to you. 

 

M: Yeah, mami says sorry to express sympathy all the time. Does Twi influence the way you speak English in any way?

 

T: Well, when speaking English, a lot of Ghanaians mentally translate Twi into English. An example is… I’ll be right back. In twi you say “I’m leaving now and I’ll be right back.” You have to say all of it. You can’t leave out the fact that you’re leaving right now because that’s not implied. A lot of Twi speakers say, “I’m going to come,” and that might be a bit strange to native English speakers. 

 

M: Is there anything you want to say about culture and language, or any lingering thoughts that you have?

 

T: When people have to translate books from English to Twi, there are times when they have to translate phrases. For example, once, they had to translate the phrase “as white as snow.” Since the Twi speakers haven’t seen snow, there was some error with the translation. That translation became “as white as coconut meat.” But there’s a dilemma- somebody can look at “as white as snow” and “as white as coconut meat” and think that “snow” is coconut meat. But it’s not. So as a figure of speech it’s right, but as a literal translation it’s not. Sometimes that’s the best you can do.

 

M: Yeah, I was reading this article about Harry Potter being translated into different languages, and the author was talking about how hard it was to make certain translations that people could understand, while preserving their meaning. And another layer to it was that sometimes they were puns, or played around with words. For example the name Tom Marvelo Riddle, was an anagram for “I am Lord Voldemort,” so when the name was translated into different languages it was difficult to preserve that anagram. Some languages succeeded in preserving the anagram, but for some other languages it was more difficult. 

 

T: Yeah, in some languages it’s almost impossible to translate. 

 

M: Ok that’s all! Thank you!

 

T: It was my pleasure! Thanks for the interview.