- Sarah Kabir on the launch of her book ‘Voices of Peace’ in Sinhala and Tamil
It is this objective that peacebuilding and reconciliation researcher and activist Sarah Kabir’s 2018 book Voices of Peace attempts to fulfil, and now, three years on, Kabir is ready to launch Voices of Peace in Sinhala and Tamil to take this message of peace and understanding to a wider audience.
Published in September 2018, Voices of Peace weaves together the stories of 10 former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres, and 10 ex-Sri Lanka military personnel to capture their journeys, from childhood to the war and being on the frontlines of the battlefield, to post war and trying to integrate back into life, to their hopes for the future. Voices of Peace highlights the need to listen and gives its the opportunity to understand both sides of the conflict through the individual lens of each of its characters.
With the Tamil translation of Voices of Peace having been launched last week, and the Sinhala version being launched today, 5 October, Brunch chatted with Kabir on the significance of making Voices of Peace available in all three of Sri Lanka’s national languages. Kabir explained that the key motivation behind translating Voices of Peace is that, in a Sri Lankan context, the English language captures a very small audience, a lot of whom already understand the message behind Voices of Peace. “It can be like preaching to the choir sometimes,” Kabir said, adding: “With Sinhala and Tamil, Voices of Peace can go to all parts of the island and to all demographics, so more people will be able to listen to these experiences.”
Expanding on the power of language in being able to communicate a message, Kabir said that, even today, language stands as a barrier when it comes to people understanding and empathising with one another. Sometimes we can pass through these barriers with actions like sport or sharing food, and of course, there are situations where sometimes language is not necessary to interact and truly empathise with someone, but it can still be a barrier nonetheless, and this is the case in Sri Lanka when it comes to the three national languages. On a national level, Kabir feels it is very important for Sri Lankans to know all three languages, but unfortunately, schools do not teach all three languages together, which perpetuates the barriers caused by language.
This is what led to translating Voices of Peace, Kabir explained; the need to make it more accessible to the wider Sri Lankan audience. The translation of Voices of Peace was led by Historical Dialogue.lk, an initiative of the programme Strengthening Reconciliation Processes in Sri Lanka (SRP). SRP is co-financed by the European Union (EU) and the German Federal Foreign Office, and is implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the British Council, in partnership with the Government of Sri Lanka.
Kabir shared that the biggest challenge of translating Voices of Peace was maintaining its sensitivity across language. With the English versions of Voices of Peace having taken place in 2018, Kabir shared that the initial plan was to launch the book in all three languages at the same time, but because of the nature of the Voices of Peace, and the need for the translations to accurately and sensitively capture the different stories and perspectives within, the English version was published first while the team worked on the translations.
“One of the biggest challenges was sensitivity, especially as they’re personal experiences told by actual human beings, and so, it needs to be translated as carefully as possible,” Kabir said. “Lots of words were hard to translate in a way to get the sensitivity (of the stories) out and send the message across in the same way. With the word reconciliation, for example, it was hard to find an accurate word that captured reconciliation in Tamil,” she added.
Doing justice to the translation process was what made the process take as long as it did, with Kabir explaining that multiple teams of translators, as well as independent consultants, worked on the books, which were translated more than once into each language and then revised to remain as authentic as possible to the English version. That said, the result does still have some room for improvement. “We’ve got some feedback from linguistic scholars on some problems with the translated book,” Kabir shared: “But the key message comes through strongly. We were focusing more on maintaining the sensitivity of the book and certain scholars have noted some editing errors.”
Commenting on the reception to Voices of Peace, Kabir explained that when the English version was released, one of the main responses she got from people was the book changed their perception of both the Sri Lanka military and the LTTE as just organisations and showed them that both these organisations were made up of individuals, of human beings, and she hopes that people who read the translated version of the book will also be able to respond the Voices of Peace and its message in the same way.
“When they’re reading these stories, I hope people open up not just their minds but their hearts,” Kabir said, adding: “Because it’s truly about empathising with these people, rethinking your own biases, and opening up your heart.”
Kabir also said that plans are underway to publish a German translation of Voices of Peace, spearheaded by a Sri Lankan-German member of GIZ in Germany, Leon Muthunayake, with the intention of reaching the German market and the Sri Lankan community in Germany and giving them a greater understanding of Sri Lanka’s struggle.
Locally, it is Kabir’s hope that Voices of Peace will be included in school reading lists across the country, sharing that the English version of Voices of Peace was added to local schools Additional Reading List in 2019, but with the change of governments in 2019 followed so closely by the pandemic, she’s not sure how well this move has been followed through.
The launch of the Sinhala translation of Voices of Peace takes place today, 5 October at 6 p.m. via Zoom and Facebook Live:
Zoom: https://bit.ly/3ACXUwk
Facebook: historicaldialogue.lk
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