[Coolitude: worker bees of the colonies], and: [You'd heard the true tale], and : [Language has coolied me]

Translator's Note

Khal torabully's work transforms the unimaginable suffering of indentured workers, carried from India and China, in former slave ships, to Mauritian sugarcane fields and elsewhere, into a strong and resilient cultural identity through language. Similar to the way in which Aimé Césaire coined the term négritude, Torabully revisioned, reimagined, and redefined the derogatory term coolie to coin the term coolitude, a concept which encompasses the diversity of transcultural exchanges (geographical, biological, and ethnic) that enrich the world.

Torabully's language is filled with assonance and alliteration. In addition to this music, his language is playful and inventive, which makes it especially challenging to translate, but serves as a contrast to underscore the violence found in these poems.

Before translating any of Torabully's poems, I use a sound-mapping technique to determine the sound patterns of the original texts as well as any wordplay, ranging from a simple pairing of words to more complicated combinations. My simplified sound map for "[Language has coolied me]" appears below:

Le langage m'a cooliepour conception, mot de ma salivecoulé pur coulé sale cou lié

L'eau pure ignore les sangsCoulé calé calqué :deviner mes prochains itinérairesest ma vraie moisson d'images de mer.

I noted the stressed i sound of lines one and two ("coolie"/"salive"), as well as the rhyme of the last words of the two last lines ("itinéraires"/"mer"). What was more striking was the way Torabully played with the word coolie, from line one, later in lines three and five. In line three, he divides the word coulé into two words that are almost pronounced the same as the single word (cou lié, literally meaning "yoked neck"). In line five, he riffs on the word coulé by varying the middle part of each word. Coulé calé calqué literally means, among other definitions, "cast" (as in metal), "clamped," and "traced" (as in a drawing).

I rolled up my sleeves and began the labor-intensive work of addressing the sound challenges, trying not to stray too far from the original meaning. I was able to replicate the pattern of rhyme for the last two lines, though the assonance I used was not the same as the French ("be"/"dreams"). It is extremely difficult to replicate exact French sounds, as many do not even exist in English. I was unable to slant rhyme the first two lines, but tipped my hat to the sound pattern by using the same assonance of the last two lines for the first line ("me"). This strategy seemed to honor the music of the French text while also remaining loosely connected to the original meaning.

[Coolitude : petites mains des colonies]

à L. S. Senghor

Coolitude : petites mains des colonies ; vous avez été marchandise et, nous, marchandage, ou inversement.Coolitude : parce que mes pays foisonnent de nouvelles traces de mémoire. Et si des gestes nègres sont venus à nos mains en tranchant les cannes, il nous reste encore des craquements et des danses de doigts habitués au tabla que la ravanne a souvent harmonisé d'un grand cri des cœurs à la dérive. Coolitude : parce que je suis créole de mon cordage, je suis indien de mon mât, je suis européen de la vergue, je suis mauricien de ma quête et français de mon exil.Je ne serai toujours ailleurs qu'en moi-même parce que je ne peux qu'imaginer ma terre natale. Mes terres natales ?

Dans nos langues, nous sommes à la frontière féconde des codes, pour ouïr une parole entre nos vocables d'esclaves et de maître. Est-ce pour cela que ma vraie langue maternelle est la poésie ? Que ma seule terre natale est la Terre ?

Aussi, je suis prêt à faire taire toute querelle de frontière pour faire voir notre étoile, pour partager notre...