Post-traumatic growth at the international level: The obstructive role played by translators and editors of Rwandan Genocide testimonies

Abstract

Between the months of April and July 1994, around 800,000 people were murdered in what has become known as the Rwanda Genocide. In an attempt to record people's experiences and preserve the memory of this period of violence, the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, managed by the Aegis Trust, began collecting oral testimonies from those who survived. Many of these testimonies have subsequently been translated by the archive from Kinyarwanda into English and/or French and some have also been published in book format. This article analyzes processes of post-traumatic growth at an international level in the testimonies of female survivors. It reveals that although these women actively pursue agency (by holding the international community to account) and communion (by seeking to gain the international community's acknowledgement), their voices are being distorted by translators and editors who instead perpetuate the dominant Western understanding of survivors as passive, voiceless victims of an unavoidable period of violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Rwanda
• genocide
• translation
• testimony
• post-traumatic growth

Note on contributor

Caroline Williamson is lecturer in world languages at University College Cork, Ireland. Since completing her PhD in French and francophone studies at the University of Nottingham (in collaboration with the Aegis Trust), she has published numerous articles on the lives and experiences of Rwandan Genocide survivors, notably on the topic of post-traumatic growth. Williamson is currently working on a book project entitled Gender, Identity and Posttraumatic Growth in Rwanda: A New Reading of Trauma.

Notes

1. These are: rationalization, clarifying, lengthening, ennoblement, qualitative impoverishment, quantitative impoverishment, homogenization, destruction of rhythms, destruction of the underlying networks of signification, destruction of systematicities, destruction or “exoticization” of vernacular linguistic networks, destruction of expressions, erasing of overlaying languages (Berman 1985, 69–75).

2. https://sfi.usc.edu/_OLD_SITE_2013/witnessesforhumanity/.

3. http://www.genocidearchiverwanda.org.rw.

4. This article stems from my PhD research which was an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council)-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award project involving the Aegis Trust. The research was conducted independently from the charity but I spent one year working as an archivist at the Genocide Archive of Rwanda as part of my doctoral studies. I am grateful for the support of my colleagues at the archive during my time in Rwanda, notably Freddy Mutanguha, Yves Kamuronsi, Claver Irakoze, Paul Rukesha, Fabrice Musafiri, Diogene Mwizerwa, Martin Niwenshuti and Aline Umugwaneza. Many of them helped with my analysis and are aware of the problems and challenges associated with the translation process discussed in this article.

5. The quality of the French translations is superior to the English; however, the ideologically charged mistranslations occur in the same places in both languages. This might suggest that the English and French translations were carried out by the same translator.

6. Names are abbreviated to preserve anonymity.

7. In the expression niyo (“here's one”), the connective particle -yo corresponds to the Kinyarwanda class 9 (“in-”) suggesting an agreement with the word inyenzi (“cockroach”) rather than umututsi (which would be “-wo”) as in the translated version (“It's a Tutsi!”). Racial propaganda in the pre-genocide period frequently characterized Tutsi as “cockroaches” (Melvern 2004).

8. Throughout this operation, the French provided President Habyarimana's government with moral backing, a contingent of soldiers as well as a supply of arms (Melvern 2004).

9. The verb kunyaga meaning “to take by force” is used in the passive form (kunyagwa). This expression originates from the idea of the pre-colonial king dispossessing or depriving an individual from their cattle, leaving them damned. It is now used as a form of cursing someone.

10. On three occasions LK speaks of a “competition among foreigners to ensure that the genocide was carried out”. She does not clarify this point but is presumably referring to a competition/conflict among nations and other powers for regional control. For example, according to Prunier (1995), the civil war between the English-speaking Tutsi refugees living in Uganda (Rwandan Patriotic Front) and the Rwandan government was perceived in France as a threat to francophone Africa from “les Anglo-saxons”. Prunier (ibid.) suggests that one of the reasons why France continued to back the Rwandan government, despite being aware of the plans for genocide, was the belief that this was a conflict between France and the reincarnation of “les anglais”.

11. It is possible that the additional content in OM's testimony (and the distortions observed in other testimonies in We Survived) came from subsequent interviews, but there is no acknowledgement that this is the case.

12. I met the newly hired translator during my last research trip to the Genocide Archive Rwanda in July 2015.

13. I contacted Whitworth to discuss the editing process but received no reply.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/I010505/1].