Photo sourced from Jalada Africa’s Twitter page.

Jalada Africa recently released an exciting call for submissions geared toward all professional translators and language enthusiasts. Those who sign up will get a chance to translate prominent Nigerian author Wole Soyinka’s poem into a proposed language of their choice and have their translation published in Jalada’s Issue 02!

Jalada Africa is a pan-African writers’ collective and digital publisher with the aim of publishing literature by African writers.

In 2015, former Jalada managing editor Munyao Kilolo came up with the idea of the Translation series, where an African work of literature would be translated into 100+ languages and inspire artistic responses through theatre, visual art, music and other literature. Issue 01 featured a Gikuyu fable “Ituika Ria Murungaru: Kana Kiria Gitumaga Andu Mathii Marungii” by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o and was a huge success.

In 2021, Jalada announced Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka as the new Featured Author for the ongoing Translation series. Soyinka contributed a 100-word poem “Mandela Comes to Leah” which deals with the humanity and dissidences of Leah Sharibu, Malala Yousefzai, and Nelson Mandela. This second edition will be curated by former managing editor Wanjeri Gakuru.

Jalada is looking to reach 200 translations with Soyinka’s poem for Issue 02. The deadline to sign up to be considered is February 28, 2023!

Register here.