ISSN: 1570-0178 Volume 10, Issue 2 (8 April 2008) Language and Labor Conversations about work, language, and life transcribed, translated, and commented by Johannes Fabian University of Amsterdam e-mail: fabian@pscw.uva.nl address: Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology University of Amsterdam Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185 1012 DK Amsterdam The Netherlands   Introduction Text One   Text Two Text Three Text Four Text Five

Text One

Recorded June 20, 1973 at the home of Ngoie Kakweke, a foreman, in the workers' settlement of Métalkat.

Swahili text and English translation

Notes

¹ I have been using the gloss "[laughs]" ever since I transcribed my first text (I sometimes altered between [laughs], [laughter], and [chuckle(s)]). I never stopped to discuss what has been obvious in my mind but may not be so for other readers: [laughs] covers many different vocalizations or timbres of voice; it may be anything between loud and barely audible; it can express anything between hilarity and irony, even embarrassment or contempt; it may be extremely brief or sustained; it may be one speaker's reaction or one that is shared, and so on -- the list of possibilities is not complete (and probably cannot be). What do the sounds that correspond to [laughs] have in common (apart from being what phoneticians would probably call explosive)? They all are means of communication and they may impart information. Beyond that there is an intriguing commonality of a visual rather than aural nature that can be re-cognized in the sense of remembered: [laughs] goes together with a change of expression, a different and distinctive set of facial musculature.
² In the original the preceding is somewhat confusing, probably because by mugini I meant his native village whereas in his response it possibly refers to an urban center.
³ I had heard sawa, just about, as saba, seven.
⁴ My guess at the meaning of a cryptic phrase in the original; the locative kule could also refer the Luena coal mine. The Luena mine produced bituminous coal for use in the smelters of the Union Minière.
⁵ The original literally says "muntu did not know," which may simply mean "one did not know" but could also: be marked by the opposition of muntu to: muzungu, African vs. European (see also note 19 below).
⁶ We are using the (anachronistic) name of the nationalized successor of the Union Minière.
⁷ Trabeka = Société d'entreprise de travaux de béton du Katanga, the Union Minière subsidiary cement and construction enterprise.
⁸ In the conversation I often used oui, oui, which I eventually decided to translate with a simple non-emphatic "yes" (much like "mm").
⁹ The mining complex at Ruwe included, apart from an open-pit mine, a smelter and processing plant.
¹⁰ I use "ore" as a cover-all term for the solids (bulongo) that go into, or produced during, the electrolytic production of zinc. In fact the process was roughly as follows. From a concentrator at Kipushi, near Lubumbashi, a so-called calcined concentrate was sent to Sogechim at Jadotville/Likasi where it was roasted to produce sulfuric acid before it arrived at Metalkat.
¹¹ The foregoing is an extreme example of a common conversational device: seemingly meaningless repetition serves to maintain the exchange while I think of the next question.
¹² Société Métalurgique du Katanga. For a slide show of the plant see http://www.inchi-yetu.be/index_uzk.html on the Inchi Yetu website.
¹³ I take "other" to mean European personnel directing construction, different from those who later oversaw production.
¹⁴ Assuming the transcription is correct, the French dictionary did not help with a translation. The same goes for bonpom in the following. All that is clear is that terms refer to work in the construction phase of the plant.
¹⁵ "Water," mayi, as opposed to bulongo, lit. soil, the untreated ore (the technical term is calcine).
¹⁶ In the Swahili text I made a mistake: I should have said balikuweka.
¹⁷ "Pachuca tank (pə'chükə 'taŋk),(chemical engineering) Air-agitated, solid-liquid mixing vessel in which the air is injected into the bottom of a center draft tube; air and solids rise through the tube, with solids exiting the top of the tube and falling through the bulk of the liquid." From: (n.d.). McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms. Retrieved February 01, 2008, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/pachuca-tank
¹⁸ Notice the change from definite to indefinite article and back (the camp, a camp). Here a problem of translation (there are no articles in Swahili) brings out a difference in perspective between the ethnographer and his interlocutor. I have in mind life in a workers' settlement in general. Baba Ngoie thinks of the place where he has been living for many years. Hence it is not the difference between inside and outside the camp that seems important to him but the difference between now and then, not a social-structural but an individual-historical difference. I may actually have encouraged the latter when I asked him to tell my how he sees this matter with "his own eyes."
¹⁹ I did not understand mwikalio, a local form of ECS ukao, from -kaa, way of living, hence the repeated question (which Ngoie does not answer here).
²⁰ Here and in many other places I translate bantu as people and the singular muntu as "a person." These are simplifications. Depending on context (the present one may or may not be such a case), bantu are opposed to wazungu: Africans vs. Europeans. Similarly muntu may have to be translated as African or black man. This may look much like the use of "Bantu" as a racial term in South Africa under apartheid, except that in local Swahili wazungu was a social-political, not a color term and muntu/bantu had retained its basic signification, "human being(s)."
²¹ At this point, I feel, that my translation needs a longer comment: To call a translation "free" is never very meaningful except as a hedge against anticipated objections. Although the technical facilities I have on my PC, which allow me to return at any time from transcript to recording (I am using Express Scribe), the only claim I can make is that my translation presents my understanding of the text. That understanding I cannot simply "read" from the text. What I offer is based on my general competence in Katanga Swahili, on a sense for the particular speech habits of my interlocutor, as well on "experience" - an ability acquired during field research in the past that is now made present (represented) by reconstructing meaning that remains implicit, is connoted rather than denoted, with the help of memories that are mobilized, above all, by the sound recording. I imagine, but cannot back this up with any expert knowledge, that the problems this kind of text poses are similar to those of translating poetry - where there is no translation except through recreation. Which, incidentally, puts yet another twist on debates about the role of "poetry" in ethnographic representation.
²² The term goes back to the beginnings of mining early in the last century. Literally it means something like "the one who always mixes" workers recruited from different ethnic groups and places.
²³ The present tense of the question reflects the fact that I had gotten to know Willy Houyet and his wife when we were house-sitting for them in Lubumbashi. He was no longer with Metalkat but full of stories and information about his time as a camp manager there.
²⁴ The Swahili verb here is -lala, to sleep but is clear that Ngoie means this in a wider sense. "With other people" is an allusion to one of the tasks of a camp manager: maintaining peace among different ethnic groups in a camp.
²⁵ This remark was not really truthful. By that time I was rather fluent in French. It is explained by a later similar statement where I recall how hard it was to learn French. I just felt the need to deflect a potentially embarrassing admission of his.
²⁶ Baba Ngoie's idiomatic response to my negative question was ndiyo, yes, which, for some reason, I failed to register as no; hence I continue to press him on the issue.
²⁷ He means the European foramen and others without degrees in engineering. During colonial and early postcolonial times that distinction would often reflect the social and linguistic situation in Belgium. Most upper level technical and administrative personnel were French-speaking. Supervisors "at work," that is, on the production side, were mostly Flemings.
²⁸ I put this in the past because Picquet was no longer at Metalkat.
²⁹ The sound I make is not a rueful chuckle, nor an expression of amusement.
³⁰ A proposition de… , a proposal for a penalty, was written by a foreman and sent to the camp manager who then called in the worker to discuss the matter and decide on a penalty.
³¹ Moyi, or moyo, is the traditional greeting in Tshiluba. An interesting little detail because baba Ngoie is not a speaker of Tshiluba (see above). Relations between Luba-Kasai and Luba-Katanga were often relaxed in those days.
³² The visitor uses the plural form baNgoie, lit. the Ngoies, something that is common in Katanga Swahili.
³³ The woman says sapula. I consulted A. Mutombo about this expression. Sabula or sapula is Sanga (the local language around Kolwezi), the equivalent of sema, speak!
³⁴ Baba Ngoie did not finish what he was going to tell me. Probably he hinted at a conflict with the church (as my immediate reaction suggests).
³⁵ This is a convenient translation of mali, which in actual usage can also have specific significations, such as bridewealth. Here it should be understood as prosperity or just "enough money to live on."
³⁶ The recording stopped here because we had come to the end of the tape without my noticing it. The fragment of my answer brings up memories of similar situations. I was not trying to deny the purpose of my questioning (see the beginning of this conversation) just to assure my interlocutors that ethnographic research was a long process unlike the (company-sponsored) surveys they may have undergone or heard of.
Still, even leaving aside ultimate questions about political or economic context of social science research, I have no illusions about having gained the complete trust of the workers with whom I talked.

[Introduction]

[Text One]

[Text Two]

[Text Three]

[Text Four]

[Text Five]

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