International year of indigenous languages
JOBURG– The South African Book Fair, taking place from 6 to 8 September, wants to highlight ways that educators and parents can read to their children in their home languages.
It’s National Book Week from 2 September to 6 September and the South African Book Fair will be focusing on various topics, but the top of the mind come 6 September will be the Indigenous Languages Text Editing Indaba.
Reabetswe Kekana-Mathaba from South African Book Fair said that the indaba of indigenous text is one of a kind in South Africa, it will feature 30 delegates whose editing work centres on original works published in indigenous languages.
Hosted by the South African Book Development Council (SABDC) who has taken reading in a home language seriously, their sectorial priority Indigenous Languages Publishing Programme (ILPP) aims to support the ongoing production of South African authored books in local languages.
Kekana–Mathba said the SABDC programme is key, as a recent report by Publishers’ Association of South Africa (PASA) Annual Book Publishing Industry Survey between 2016–17 and 2017–18 noted, “There is very little publishing in the African languages for the general reader, although notable improvements can be seen in children’s fiction and non-fiction.”
Some of the findings showed that English-written adult fiction dominates with 59.4 per cent and non-fiction at 84.4 per cent. IsiZulu leads the indigenous language sales at a very low 0.017 per cent in adult fiction and non-fiction at 0.04 per cent. In the children’s fiction book sales, Afrikaans made 86.7 per cent, English 10.30 per cent, isiXhosa at 0.64 per cent, Sepedi 0.30 per cent and Sesotho 0.70 per cent. However, isiZulu made huge strides at the beginning of this year, with over 53.3 per cent for scholarly sales.
SA Book Fair has high hopes for their school’s programme workshop offered from 6–8 Septemeber at Constitutional Hill which is aimed at teachers and parents on the importance of reading in home languages. The workshop will be lead by award-winning author Sifiso Mzobe, who translated the fantasy adventure Shadow Chasersseries into isiZulu; and Halala Winner!, an interactive reading for Grades 1–4 by multilingual champion Xolisa Guzula from a comic story about a boy who is bullied at school, but ends up a hero.
The two-day event will be offering more local authors inspiring a reading revolution for all.
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