Corrected Bambara poster; thinking about best practices

 Bambara poster on hand-washing from International SOS

In an earlier posting, I highlighted a poster in Bambara on hand-washing, which had evidently been composed in a non-standard 8-bit font making it all but unreadable (see image on top right). I have written International SOS, on whose site the poster is available, and Translators Without Borders (TWB) which is listed on the poster, to signal the problem.

Since the issue has already been a subject on this blog, I would like to follow through with presentation of a corrected version (already shared with TWB), in the spirit of 2Ds+4Rs (reasons to repost African language materials). I'd also like to use this to raise the larger issue of the best licensing for such public education materials in languages that are less-resourced and/or less-widely spoken.

Text from poster with tracked changes

This material is © 2015 AEA International Holdings Pte. Ltd. I am sharing it, as I have other materials in African languages from other sources, with attribution, in my understanding of fair use. However, this is not ideal. It would be much more helpful for the original purposes of creating these materials to use a Creative Commons license to encourage the kind of thing I'm demonstrating here, as well as more substantive re-use of such material. Would it be possible for organizations involved in authoring and/or translating extension and public education materials in African languages - not only for health but also other domains of social and economic importance - to agree on a set of "best practices" for facilitating their review, dissemination, revision, and re-use?

For this particular document, what I did was to copy the text into a Word document and first run 3 search and replaces, since the problem with the document stemmed from it being in an old font that had certain letters substituted with "special characters" needed for Bambara. These were q → ɛ, x → ɲ, \ → ɔ. Then less than a dozen minor copy-edits, mainly changing capital "I" to lower case "i" - the software on which the original was produced was evidently expecting English text, and auto-corrected free-standing i's (i = second person singular pronoun in Bambara, not capitalized ) to capital I's. It was very quick set of corrections, but did not include any review of the translation itself - that would be easier now with the text that follows.

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K’i tɛgɛ ko ni safinɛ ye, o b’a to ko banakisɛ tɛ jɛnsɛn

Safinɛ ta: Ji gansan tɛ bɔgɔ ni tulu bɔ yen, olu minnu bɛ se ka banakisɛw dogo.

I tɛgɛ ko murumuru 15-20 nin cogo la.

A baara mumɛ ye murumuru 40-60.

1 I bolola nɛgɛw bɛɛ bɔ, o kɔ, i tɛgɛ ɲigin ni ji ye

2 Safinɛ k’i tɛgɛ la

3 I bolow jɔsi ɲɔgɔnna

4 Se i bolo ni tɛgɛ yɔrɔ bɛɛ ma

5 I bolo ni bolokɔni n’u tugunda bɛɛ saniya

6 Furancɛ min bɛ i bolokɔnikunba ni dɔ in cɛ saniya

7 I sɔninkɔrɔrɔla saniya n’a jɔsili ye I tɛgɛkɔnɔna na

8 A sɛnɛnko ka ɲa jiɲuman na

9 Fini walima sɛriwɛti jɛlen kɛ ka orobinɛ datugun, o kɔ, i tɛgɛ laja ni kura ye

Nin ja in labɛnna kalan de kɔsɔn ani fana tiɲɛ don a bɔtuma na. Dɔkɔtɔrɔw ka

ladilikanw bilanɔna tɛ.. Nin ɲininkaliw waloima hamiw minnu b’aw la nin

kan, a’ y’aw ka dɔkɔtɔrɔ sɛgɛrɛ.

© 2015 AEA International Holdings Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved.

Unauthorized copy or distribution prohibited.

Handwashing Steps Poster– v2 BAMBARA