Modelling English-French-Yoruba Translation for Unifying the History of a People Spread over Linguistic Boundaries; A Socio-Economic Imperative

Abstract

The migrations and settlements of the Yoruba in West Africa are historically connected. However, the European partitioning of Africa at the Berlin conference in the late 19th century resulted in the spread of the Yorubas across the national boundaries of three countries. The majority is found in the British colonized Nigeria, while a significant population is found in the French colonized Benin Republic and Togo. Documentation of the history of the Yorubas on the Nigerian side of the divide is done in the English language, while on the Benin side, it is done in the French Language. Scholars have, however, established in the literature that there are discrepancies and inadequacies in the different versions of the history of the Yorubas. Given that a people's history plays a significant role in land occupancy, traditional economic endeavours and human affiliations, its completeness and coherence are of great value in achieving stability across the region. This paper thus explores the potential of applying tools of Linguistics, Translation and History in improving the coverage of the history of a people separated by language boundaries. Leveraging existing translation model and incorporating the principles of contrastive analysis, a model for the unification of histories is proposed. This could be applied to updating and unifying the histories of the people. The unified histories that this model could generate will serve to bridge the language and politics induced gaps in historical documentation across West Africa to improve the stability of the region and for its socio-economic benefits.