LITERESI BILENG AVANSE - boukie banane

BORDER CROSSING SHAKESPEARE
In the old colonial days, knowledge and some experience of the works of the great old bard were considered
vital for social promotion. As a secondary school pupil, I studied Macbeth, King Lear and The tempest. After
secondary schooling, I had my first stage experience as Sir Andrew at the then famous Youth Drama Festival. At
university, I studied many of Shakespeare's plays. After university, I must have taught more than a dozen of his
plays.
After my first degree, I followed a course in Applied Linguistics planning to write a dissertation on Mauritian
Creole (MC). Great was my surprise to discover that Julius Caesar had been translated into Krio, a Creole
language. Moreover, I learnt that Julius Nyerere, who was at Edinburgh a few years before me, had translated
the same play into Swahili. I remember saying to my wife that as soon as I had some free time I would translate
the play and call it 'Zil Sezar' which I did some twenty years later.
SHAKESPEARE AND LANGUAGE PLANNING
My school and university days have simply established links between Shakespeare and what would later
become the task of a lifetime. It all started with an intuition: Mauritian Creole (MC) has the potential of
unifying the different segments of the Mauritian population. Consequently it would eventually be known as
'Morisien' (Mauritian). University studies had helped me with the basic knowledge needed but the most
difficult part lay ahead: convincing people; struggling against prejudices; laying of building blocks etc.
The intelligentsia of the sixties and seventies were dead against any form of promotion of MC which for them
was a dialect, a pidgin, a patois, some form of broken French but not a language. They would argue that the
profound thoughts found in Shakespeare could never be said in MC. I had to prove them wrong. So I started to
translate Shakespeare: Enn Ta Senn Dan Vid (Much Ado About Nothing), Zil Sezar (Julius Caesar), Trazedi
Makbes (Macbeth), Prens Hamlet (Hamlet), Lerwa Lir (King Lear). Later came Enn Afro Dan Veniz (Othello),
Lerwa Bwar (Twelfth Night), Ramdeo Ek Ziliet (Romeo and Juliet). If initially the main preoccupation was to
support my claim that MC was fit to become the National Language of the Republic, my translation work
started to develop new orientations. How could I use the prestige of Shakespeare to favour nation building?
Could the theatre do to Mauritius what it did to the English or Irish Renaissance?
SHAKESPEARE AND NATION BUILDING
Before the advent of theatre in MC, plays in the prestigious Plaza Theatre or Port Louis Theatre were almost
exclusively in French with very few productions in English. Zeneral Makbef, Li and Zozef Ek So Palto Larkansiel
(Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat) were to change all this. People from different walks of life
could experience the magic of dramatic works in their own language. Through Zeneral Makbef, Shakespeare
was helping Mauritians to chart a new course for their country. In MC there is the saying “donn enn dizef, pran
enn bef” (give an egg, take an ox) which is, in a nutshell, the main message of Shakespeare's tragedy as
highlighted by Banquo:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.
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