SOAS Hausa Day – Celebrating Hausa literature and translation

Hausa is one of the largest languages spoken in Africa with over 150 million speakers across West Africa and surrounding regions and with a literary tradition that goes back at least 500 years. Over the past century, there have been thousands of novels written in Hausa, the majority of which have been written by women, yet, fewer than ten published English translations of Hausa novels exist, and there is only one internationally available translation of a novel written in the last 40 years. On this day, we will celebrate Hausa literature with Hausa novelist and poet Sa'adatu Baba Ahmad and examine how Nigeria's universities are building translation infrastructure with Professor Yakubu Magaji Azare, Director of the Centre for Research in Nigerian Languages, Translation, and Folklore, at Bayero University and Coordinator of the online Hausa language learning collaborative between Bayero University and SOAS, University of London.

The event will begin at SOAS Main Building RG01 at 2pm with a conversation on Hausa literature between Sa'adatu Baba Ahmad and Carmen McCain.

At 3:30pm, Professor Yakubu Magaji Azare will speak on “A decade of refocusing the Centre for Research in Nigerian Languages, Translation, and Folklore: Promoting Translation as a new mandate"

The event will be followed by refreshments.

You can read a few of Professor Yakubu Magaji Azare's publications on translation on Research Gate, a 2008 interview with Sa'adatu Baba Ahmad and a translation by poet Ismail Bala of one of her poems for Sentinel Magazine, and a 2006 article on Hausa literary translation by Carmen McCain.

This event is brought to you by SOAS Centre of African Studies, CAS in collaboration with the SLCL Tafsiri Research Culture Group co-led by Dr Ida Hadjivayanis and Dr Carmen McCain, and the ISPF institutional support grant (ODA). It will run both on campus and online (register on Eventbrite to attend in person or on Zoom to attend online webinar).

It is part of several planned events this year which aim to promote Hausa language and culture and draw attention to the online Hausa language classes being offered at SOAS in collaboration with the Centre for Research in Nigerian Languages, Translation, and Folklore, at Bayero University, Kano. Previous events include Zaynab Ango's talk "Anonymity and Agency: Transformative Sexuality Discourse in Hausa Prose Fiction" and Sada Malumfashi’s talk “Indigenous Knowledge Production: Promoting Hausa cultural Production through festivals and translation.”

The event is free, but please register on Eventbrite so we can plan refreshments. Registering on Zoom will enable you to attend the webinar.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

SOAS University of London, 10 Thornhaugh Street, London, United Kingdom

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