By Atma Tattva Das
Govinda Charan Das, a South African-African Hare Krishna devotee, has recently completed the translation of Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita As It Is into the isiZulu language for BBT Africa. Zulu, or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in Southern Africa. Before this vital service, Govinda Charan Das’s journey as a devotee in the South African Yatra had been challenging. He was involved in the early African preaching initiatives in South Africa and helped to distribute Krishna consciousness in the African communities during the apartheid era. However, despite encountering many difficulties, he has endured as a devotee and has taken up this latest service of translating the Bhagavad Gita.
In a recent interview, Govinda Charan shared that he was initially frustrated with his local temple management. “I couldn’t work within their system, you know? So I had to distance myself a little bit, but still served people trying to preach to Africans,” he explained. This frustration led him to start helping the late Akanda Kirtan Prabhu, who was working on a translation project at the time.
There was an earlier small book of Srila Prabhupada translated into Zulu that Govinda Charan did not want to distribute because it was, in his opinion, not a good translation. He recalls meeting the person who had translated the book and telling him it needed to be more suitable for the people. So he shared the book with some people he was preaching to and asked for their feedback. The response was not positive, and others felt the book needed to better represent Krishna consciousness.
The initial efforts to translate smaller books into Zulu inspired Govinda Charan to translate the Bhagavad Gita As It Is himself. It was challenging, but Govinda Charan was determined to do it well. “It took me close to a year,” he said, “It was not easy, but I persevered…the use of the Zulu language mustn’t be clinical or classroom-based; a word-for-word translation approach to the work could lead to a loss of meaning altogether. Whereas, a precise expression of the philosophy and realizations as given is better.”
Read more: https://iskconnews.org/a-translation-of-the-bhagavad-gita-as-it-is-into-the-isizulu-language-is-being-prepared-for-publication/
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