Found in Translation

Voice of the Victims
The horrors of any war are difficult to fathom, but perhaps none in recent
memory have left the world as heartbroken as the graphic images of the
horrific slaughter of human beings that took place in Darfur, a region in
western Sudan, from 2003 to 2009. Daoud Hari made sure that you learned
about it. At great personal risk, Hari interpreted for journalists from the BBC,
New York Times, and NBC so that the world would know what was happening to
his people.

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Hari worked as an interpreter between 2003 and his arrest in 2006. During
those three years, he witnessed the murder of his beloved brother, the
eradication of entire villages, the debilitating effects of gang-rape on young
girls, the mutilation of children, and the violent dismantling of an age-old
social structure between the different ethnic groups of Darfur. But instead of
carrying a gun to fight these diabolical injustices, Hari used his proficiency in
Arabic, English, and his native language Zaghawa to help journalists and
nongovernmental organization (NGO) representatives see the atrocities in
Sudan firsthand. Those journalists, in turn, reported the stories in their
countries, raised public awareness, and increased foreign pressure on the
Sudanese government. In the process, he gave a voice to the victims:
The stories came pouring out, and often they were set before us slowly and quietly like tea.
These slow stories were told with understatement that made my eyes and voice fill as I
translated; for when people seem to have no emotion remaining for such stories, your own
heart must supply it.
It’s ironic and simultaneously revealing that his autobiography is called the
Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur.
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Not only does Hari never
translate written words—he interprets spoken ones—but very little is explicitly
said in the book about the actual process of interpreting. But the
appropriateness of the book’s title goes deeper than the straightforward
dictionary definitions of translation and interpretation. Translation comes
from the Latin word translatus, which means “to carry over,” as across a river,
or, in Hari’s case, in the form of building relationships. Hari’s interpreting
skill in orally transferring language between Arabic or Zaghawa and English
enabled his employers to communicate within Darfur, but it was his
relationship-building skills that allowed them to survive. Only during his final
trip, when he was captured by his own Sudanese government and imprisoned
under unspeakable conditions, did it take relationships beyond his own to save
his life. Hari, the journalist, and his driver were imprisoned and tortured over
a period of several months until international pressure made the Sudanese
government release the prisoners.
Hari’s efforts played a significant role in assembling the testimony of
foreign observers that would indict Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir in 2010
in the International Court of Justice and help forge a peace accord in Sudan. At
many points in those three years of horror, Hari was given the choice to give
up or to fight. He chose the latter, with a weapon that resonated louder than
guns: language.
When we think of interpreting, we may tend to picture a UN interpreter

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standing behind a foreign dignitary and whispering in her ear, a conference
interpreter in his booth, or a medical or legal interpreter in a hospital or a
courtroom. But the many anonymous military interpreters in the field today
surely carry a much heavier linguistic and emotional burden than their
colleagues in more peaceful environments will ever know.
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