HOLLYWOOD MADE IN KENYA: DOMESTICATING OR APPROPRIATING?
Jason Isoe Maageria
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
August 2018
Committee:
Kristen Rudisill, Advisor
Jeremy Wallach
Kefa Otiso
Esther Clinton ii
© 2018
Jason Maageria
All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT
Kristen Rudisill, Advisor
The question of audience reception has been widely debated in popular culture, with scholars such as De Certeau and Stuart Hall arguing that more focus should be paid to everyday cultural elements and the “common” person. However, these works have not adequately addressed the issue of localization especially with film commentators who act as an intermediary between foreign films and local audiences. My thesis addresses the issue of localization specifically, in my project, I look at DJ Afro, to show how he uses Kiswahili, Sheng, and Gikuyu to translate Hollywood films. I discuss cultural differences between Kenyans and Americans and
Dj Afro’s choice of words while translating these differences. I argue that DJ Afro provides local access to Hollywood films among people who do not understand English and describe the language and cultural aspects that make Hollywood movies available and popular amongst the poor in Kenya. In conclusion, this thesis, by closely examining Dj Afro’s “films” and through interviewing him, sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of film interpretation thus localization of global cultural products, especially in the context of Africa (specifically Kenya). iv
To my dad, mum, brothers, and sister. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my thesis chair, Dr. Kristen Rudisill for working hand in hand with me to make sure that my thesis became a success. Dr. Rudisill dedicated a lot of time to edit and make suggestions that helped shape the overall project. I would also like to thank my thesis committee members, Dr. Jeremy Wallach, Dr. Kefa Otiso, and Dr. Esther Clinton who, even with a very full schedule agreed to see this project through to its completion.
I would also like to thank all the Faculty and staff that I worked with in Popular Culture and Media and Communication. Dr. Wallach’s class is solely “to blame” for all the theory and methods in my head-information that helped inform my thesis; Dr. Thomas Mascaro’s class that
I used to bounce ideas about my thesis; and most importantly Rebecca Patterson, “the glue that brings ACS and Popular Culture departments in East Hall together.” Thank you for the timely reminders, information sessions, and good food! You are the best!
I am grateful for my cohort members who always had suggestions and questions about my research which made me view the world differently. I would specifically like to thank
Wonseok Lee, my study partner, who pushed me (and I him) to meet deadlines, study, and write.
I will always remember your quote, “Life is war!” I would also like to thank my friends in
Bowling that supported me through my journey. I am grateful for Diana Kitiabi’s help with editing and uploading the final document to Ohiolink. I would like to thank, Fred, Ishmael,
Kimathi, James, Kirui, and Joyce for always being there for me.
I would like to thank my family in Kenya; my mother for always believing in me, my dad for always checking on and praying for me, my brothers and sister may God always bless you!
Lastly, I would like to thank Party B. Thank you for your prayers, support and constant concern about my academic life. You are the best! vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………..... 1
Statement of Problem………………………………………………………………. 2
Significance of Study………………………………………………………………. 3
Methodology……………………………………………………………………….. 5
Limitations ...... 6
CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL DISCOURSES ON LOCALIZATION AND LANGUAGE 8
Cultural Imperialism and the Global Media Debate ...... 8
Media and Globalization ...... 11
New Patterns of Television Flow and the Kenyan Context ...... 13
Audience Reception Theory ...... 14
Recent Perspectives on Audience Reception ...... 15
Reception Studies and Classical Film Theory ...... 17
Audiovisual Translation Theory ...... 18
Skopos Theory of Audio Visual Translation ...... 20
Film Translation ...... 21
The Kenyan Context of Audio Visual Translation ...... 22
Voice-over Translations of Hollywood Movies in Kenya ...... 23
Conclusion ...... 24
CHAPTER II. THE HOLLYWOOD SCENE AND DJ AFRO ...... 26
Introduction and Development of Film Interpretation in Kenya ...... 26
Avenues through which Kenyans Access Translated Hollywood Films ...... 28 vii
Movie Halls ...... 28
YouTube ...... 30
DVDs ...... 31
Cultural Appropriation in the Film Industry ...... 33
Translation of Hollywood Movies in Kenya as a Form of Cultural Appropriation ... 35
Translation of Hollywood Movies in Kenya as Form of Domestication ...... 36
Translation of Hollywood Movies in Kenya as a Form Film Piracy ...... 37
Conclusion ...... 38
CHAPTER III. DJ AFRO’S LANGUAGE CHOICE AND ITS INFLUENCE ...... 39
DJ Afro and Accent ...... 42
DJ Afro and Repetition ...... 47
DJ Afro and the Use of Humor ...... 50
DJ Afro and Code-switching ...... 54
DJ Afro and Word Creation ...... 56
DJ Afro and Authorial Intent ...... 58
Conclusion ...... 59
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………… 60
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………… 68 1
INTRODUCTION
The Hollywood movie industry produces motion pictures that are consumed across the
globe. Sargut (2015) has observed that Hollywood’s cinematic illusions have gained popularity
and dominance with contemporary productions being distributed to over 100 countries. An
oligopoly of studios based in Hollywood that encompass Walt Disney, R.K.O, Warner Brothers,
Columbia, Fox, United Artists, Paramount and Universal have consolidated the largest market
share for movies and motion picture entertainment (Belodubrovskaya, 2014). Contemporarily,
these studios have helped the Hollywood movie industry to dominate the world given the fact that
its movies have been shown in foreign markets such as Asia, Europe, Africa and South America.
Its popularity in entertainment has developed to transcend limiting factors such as ethnicity, sex,
race and age over time. This formidable position as a market leader in the entertainment industry
has led to the production of a myriad of entertainment programs. One of the critical success factors of the Hollywood entertainment industry is its ability to make entertainment products (especially films) convenient and non-redundant even though characters, plots and characteristics can be repeated (Cutting, 2015). Fundamentally, this situation has arisen due to the fact that global audiences have the freedom to interpret the movies with subjectivity influenced by personal perceptions, cultural views and thoughts.
Silver (2007) has identified several factors that have led to growth of Hollywood movies across the globe: the advent of technology such as acetate film; television, video and digital capabilities; popular culture associated with the USA; mass migration of people to the US leading to growth of the market share; political interventions such as removal of trade barriers; economics of the USA and the world; and social factors such as relaxed censorship. On the other hand, Foster et al. (2015) posit that Hollywood has risen to dominance through robust marketing strategies, 2 mergers with major stakeholders, extensive market research, new product development, cost control, media relations, studio publicity and pricing capabilities. However, Esser et al. (2016) show that the Hollywood film industry has consolidated its market dominance by reaching foreign audiences through intercultural transfer of films via audio visual translation. Fundamentally, domestically produced Hollywood movies have had to contend with differences in culture and language as a major barrier to entry in many international markets. Gong & Tung (2017) assert that in globalized world, linguistic differences have been significant barriers to entry. This has given the impetus to Hollywood movies productions and stakeholders globally to engage in significant translation of films through dubbing, voice-overs and subtitling.
Statement of Problem
It is important to study the concept of voice-over translations because DJ Afro has been at the forefront of bridging the cultural and linguistic rift that most Kenyans experience watching
Hollywood movies. Voice-over translations in Kenya have not previously received academic attention despite DJ Afro’s popularity and role in global film consumption. Fundamentally, voice- over translations have acted a tool for offsetting the language barriers inherent in Kenyan viewing of Hollywood movies which are predominantly produced in English; these movies are consumed by Kenyans in rural and low-cost urban areas. Characteristically, most of these viewers lack sufficient proficiency in the English language to catch all the nuances of the films and rely on voice overs from translators such as DJ Afro in order to grasp the plot and storyline of a movie
(Michael, 2016). Apart from giving much needed clarity on the film’s story and plot, video translators such as DJ Afro have been significant in the mediascapes involved in the creation and dissemination of film and images internationally. DJ Afro has been essential in disseminating movies that can be classified as “his (DJ Afro movies)” due to the fact that they carry a localized 3 narrative. Since this phenomenon has taken place for over 12 years, most video shows1 no longer show the original films, but have instead opted to show “DJ Afro” films because of their popularity among their customers. Lastly, DJ Afro’s work carries undertones of piracy because some of his works may narrate the motion pictures differently without consent from the studios procuring the films.
This study endeavors to decipher how digital media has enabled local access to Hollywood movies among people who are not able to understand spoken English and describes the language and cultural practices that make Hollywood movies accessible and popular amongst the poor in
Kenya. It is also important to understand how digital media has changed the film industry in Kenya by enabling the production of voice-over interpretive commentaries of Hollywood movies in
Kiswahili and Sheng. Further, I analyze the mediascapes involved in transcending cultural and linguistic barriers in the dissemination of Hollywood movies in Kenya. Lastly, I evaluate the role of DJ Afro as a major voice-over translator as well as a cultural and linguistic mediator providing
Kenyans access to Hollywood films.
Significance of Study
A range of studies have been conducted in East Africa to explain the concept of voice over translations and the impact of translators. In Uganda, Achen and Openjuru (2012, 2014) and
Marshfield and van Oosterhout (2007) have conducted studies on the subject while Englert (2010) and Krings (2010) have conducted similar studies in Tanzania. However, there is a literature gap concerning the phenomenon in Kenya; this study will seek to address this literature gap.
1 Temporary structures that people pay to watch films. This is discussed further in the second chapter. 4
Essentially, even though film translators/commentators2 such as DJ Afro have been active for more than ten years in Kenya, there is yet to be scholarly literature on this critical part of film culture and popular culture in general. DJ Afro is a household name in Kenya. This study will be significant in studying this aspect of Kenyan culture and contributing towards literature on this subject.
The demand for Hollywood movies has been growing over the years across different regions in Kenya. However, the receptiveness to these movies has been significantly curtailed by language barriers, especially the lack of proficiency in English language which is rife in the rural areas and low income urban areas. Thus, audiovisual translation has been a significant enabling factor for viewing of these Hollywood films. However, knowledge on the impact of audiovisual translations especially voice over translations is limited. Thus, the study will provide a platform for the exploration of the impact of voice over translations to viewership of movies and the cinema business at large in Kenya. Additionally, the study will evaluate different forms with which audiovisual translations have been vessels of appropriation or domestication of Hollywood films in Kenya.
The study will also investigate the impact of DJ Afro on the Hollywood scene in Kenya.
This will help to outline different ways in which Hollywood movies are accessed by locals and present how film interpretation has developed in Kenya. Given that the research will focus on DJ
Afro, a pioneer in the field of film interpretation, the research will help to gather data on the skills and motivations of DJ Afro, thus accruing insights that have previously been unavailable. Apart from his skill sets, the study will focus on DJ Afro’s language choice and its influence. As an
2 In this thesis, I use the terms translator, commentator, and interpreter interchangeably to mean the action of providing voice-overs in Hollywood films. 5
interpreter, he uses different accents, repetition, and humor even when giving commentary on
tragic scenes. He has also created words that he uses to cover obscenities, which are frowned upon
by Kenyan languages. Thus, the study will help in identifying this influence especially on Sheng
and youth communications in Kenya.
Methodology
Research for my thesis involved a literature review of key articles addressing the
localization of Hollywood films. I also interviewed DJ Afro on his work as a movie translator to
inquire about the demographics of his audience and his use of humor in the translations. Reaching
him was not easy because I did not have any direct form of contacting him. For instance, there are
so many parodies for his social media that it is almost impossible to identify the real one. I sent
messages to his Facebook and Instagram pages, but I didn’t get any response. A friend who works
for the media helped me to get his phone number. I spoke to him about my research and he said
that he would be available for an interview. I prepared consent a form in English since he said that
he can read and write in English and sent it via email and he signed and sent back the same way.
In January 2018, I conducted the interview via phone call because that was the “cheapest” way to
do it- since he is in Kenya and the researcher is in Bowling Green, Ohio. The interview was mostly
in English but occasionally he gave examples in Kiswahili. I transcribed the and translated (the
Kiswahili3 parts). Analysis of the interview was done using a thematic approach, which involved the identification of patterns in the collected data and evaluating how they address the research objectives.
3 Kiswahili refers to the language mostly spoken in East Africa. Swahili are the people found at the East Africa coast and are believed to be original speakers of the language. 6
I did a textual analysis of DJ Afro’s translated version of Mercenary Fighters (1988). There are so
many “DJ Afro movies” on YouTube uploaded in multiple channels, most of which don’t belong
to him. This film was specifically uploaded by a YouTube user that goes by the name “FLASH
LENS TV” who has 7,600 subscribers. I selected this film particularly for two reasons: First, it
had the most views--at the time of writing this the film had 665,147 views. The second reason is it had the highest number of comments (over three hundred). I was interested to study why this film produced in 1988 and translated in 2016, had this kind of attention out of all “DJ Afro movies” on YouTube. I also analyzed the comments under the video to get the perspectives of the audience.
Limitations
Most scholars that have written about movie translation/interpretation in East Africa used the ethnographic method. Achen and Openjuru, through an ethnographic study, identified three types of response from the audience. “The first was the response that produced the Vee-jay intervention. The second type was the response to the Vee-jay intervention and finally, the third was the response to the actual movie action itself.” (Achen and Openjuru 2012). I was not able to conduct an ethnographic study due to time and economic constraints. I relied on YouTube comments under Mercenary Fighters (2016). I also know, and DJ Afro confirmed, that some of his audience members do not access “his” films through YouTube.
In my analysis, I was specifically looking at the language aspect. I did not do a comparison of the original and the translated films in terms of themes or word choice and how they are translated because that was not the scope of my study. My main interest was to find out why this film as a representative of “DJ Afro films” is popular in Kenya. 7
Chapter one of the thesis provides an extensive theoretical framework and discussion of scholarly studies regarding localization of Hollywood films in Kenya through voice-over translations and globalization of western films. The theories discussed in this chapter include audience reception theory and Skopos theory to offer a scholarly background to the thesis. Chapter two explores diverse avenues through which Kenyans access and understand Hollywood films. In this chapter, the researcher will highlight the introduction and establishment of Hollywood film translation in Kenya. It will focus in the case study of DJ Afro who is one of the renowned film commentators who translates the Hollywood films and sells the films in form of DVDs. Chapter three presents an analysis of the choice of words used by DJ Afro and how it has affected the way youths communicate. In this chapter, the film Mercenary Fighters, that was translated by DJ Afro is analyzed. 8
CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL DISCOURSES ON LOCALIZATION AND LANGUAGE
Cultural Imperialism and the Global Media Debate
The influence of mass media in the globalization of culture is a heavily contested topic
(McMillin, 2007). Early studies on media influence, commonly referred to as “hypodermic needle” or “magic bullet” theories, suggested that mass media had strong impacts on individuals (Bineham,
1988). Ever since, the debate about influence of media has eluded any agreement or resolution among scholars as to the degree, implications, and scope of media influence. Nonetheless, various theoretical formulations in international communication held on to the conviction that media has powerful effects on communities and cultures (Hartley, 2012). In recent times, there has been an increasing body of literature that questions the level and scope of influence of transnational media.
Some researchers questioned the concept cultural imperialism without offering alternate concepts, while others have drawn from interdisciplinary literature in the humanities and social sciences to come up with theoretical alternatives to cultural imperialism.
Cultural imperialism theory posits that audiences all over the world are profoundly affected by messages in the media especially those from Western industrialized nations. According to
Mirrless (2013), there is a slight difference between media imperialism and cultural imperialism but most studies in the field of international communication consider media imperialism as part of cultural imperialism.
In the initial phase of studies on cultural imperialism, scholars such as Johan Galtung focused mainly on nation-states as the major actors in international relations trough the center periphery theory. The theory posits that the center (western nations) is free and has a lot to export 9
to the periphery nations (non-western nations) while the periphery nations “have only one or very few primary products to export” (Galtung, 1971). This theory attributed wealthy, technologically advanced, and Western nation-states with actions and intentions by which they spread their socio- cultural values and beliefs to weaker and poorer countries in the developing world. Many studies supported this supposition by showing that flow of entertainment and news was biased with many of these coming from industrialized nations (Hartley, 2012). This bias is evident both in terms of quantity and quality. The studies showed that most media flows were produced and exported by
Western nations and imported by developing countries.
Because of these concerns a debate titled the New World Information Order ensued
(NWIO). This was later renamed the New World Information and Communication Order
(NWICO). The debate initially focused on news flows between the global south and the north, but later advanced to embrace all international media flows (Manyozo, 2012). The reason for this was the fact that there was inequality in news as well as entertainment programmes. The advent of new media technologies, like communication satellites, also made the international media landscape more complicated resulting in the widening of scope of the debate regarding international flows.
The global media debate started in the year 1973 in the general conference of UNESCO
(United National Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), which was held in Nairobi,
Kenya. UNESCO is a specialized agency of the United Nations whose mission covers aspects such as culture and communication. In the general conference, strong differences emerged between developing nations and Western industrialized countries. The Western countries (led by the United
States) advocated for the “free flow of information” doctrine where media would be left without restrictions (Chakravartty & Sarikakis, 2006). On the other hand, developing nations were concerned with lack of balance in international media flow and blamed Western nations for 10
petitioning the free flow of information to validate their cultural and economic domination
(Chakravartty & Sarikakis, 2006). The developing countries insisted on a free and balanced flow
of information. The difference between these two groups was too wide to be resolved and
ultimately the United States and the United Kingdom decided to withdraw from UNESCO. This
led to the de facto collapse of the global media debate.
The second phase of research on cultural imperialism was associated with calls to
resuscitate the NWICO debate. The difference between this phase of research with the previous
cultural imperialism formulations is that it emphasized on the commercialization aspect of culture.
Studies in this area had been a trademark of cultural imperialism research, but now there was
deliberate focus on transnational corporations as actors, instead of nation-states. There was also an
emphasis on transnational capital flows instead of image flows (Harvey, 2003). It became clear
that it is difficult to distinguish between the power of transnational corporations and that of nation-
states. It is also hard to separate capital flows and media flows. As such, the evolution of the debate
is specifically in the change of emphasis and not change of paradigm.
For some international communication circles, it is increasingly acceptable to dismiss
cultural imperialism as a monolithic theory that lacks subtleness and is questioned by empirical research (Mirrlees, 2013). However, cultural imperialism as a theory continues to be useful even if it has some weaknesses. The most important contribution of cultural imperialism is the
supposition that international communication processes, flows, and impacts are pervaded by
power. Nonetheless, it is likely that the concept of globalization has in various ways substituted
cultural imperialism as the main conceptual umbrella under which most studies and hypothesizing
in international communication have been carried out (Beyeler & Kriesi, 2005). 11
Media and Globalization
There are a number of reasons that explain the analytical change that has seen the theory of cultural imperialism replaced by that of globalization. The first reason is the termination of the
Cold War in 1991, which was a global framework for economic, geopolitical, and ideological competition. This necessitated a rethinking of the analytical classifications as well as paradigms
of thought. At the end of the Cold war, the United States rose as the only superpower and the world
became more fragmented, resulting in an age of intricacy between worldwide forces of cohesion
and local responses of dispersal. In this complicated age, the nation-state was no longer the
dominant actor because transnational transactions occur on supranational, national, and
subnational levels (Kraidy, 2012). As such, globalization seems to capture this intricacy better than
cultural imperialism. Secondly, globalization superseded cultural imperialism because it expresses
a process with less direction and coherence, which weakens the cultural unison of all nation-states,
not just that of the developing nations. Finally, globalization has emerged as a crucial perspective
across the fields of social sciences and humanities which, in turn, affected the field of
communication.
Globalization of culture has become a conceptual magnet that attracts research and
theorizing efforts from various interdisciplinary formations and disciplines including comparative
literature, anthropology, communication and media studies, cultural studies, sociology, and
geography (Peterson, 2003). International communication has been a major converser in this
debate because media and information technologies are actively involved in globalization. Media
is undeniably one of the propellers of cultural globalization. However, the intensity and size of the
impact of media on the globalization of culture is an issue that elicits debate. There are two
questions that arise in the contest of this issue. The first question is: did mass media initiate and 12 produce globalization of culture? The second is: is the globalization of culture an old phenomenon that has been increased with the development of transnational media technologies? This is like the famous question of which came first between the egg and the chicken.
One perspective on the globalization of culture, that is somehow evocative of cultural imperialism when considering the nature of the impact of media on culture, but still dissimilar in its conceptualization of the issue, is the opinion that the media helps in the homogenization of cultural dissimilarities across the globe (Stokes, 2012). One proponent of this view is political scientist Benjamin Barber, who developed his theory regarding globalization of culture in the book titled Jihad vs. McWorld (1996). Barber’s explanation betrays his reliance on a binary opposition between the forces of liberal democracy and modernity and those of autocracy and tradition.
Even though Barber correctly cites transnational capitalism as the driving force that brings
Jihad and McWorld together and inspires their action, his model has two weaknesses. The first limitation is that it is based on binary opposition between Jihad (religious and ethnic tribalism) and
McWorld (the capital-driven West). Later in the book Barber tries to move beyond this binary opposition by arguing that Jihad stands in less of a blatant opposition than a delicate counterpoint.
However, proof from most sections of the book supports an oppositional and not a contrapuntal view on globalization of culture. The second weakness of Barber’s book is that he privileges the universal over the local and he explains that globalization rules through transnational capitalism.
This is seen as an underestimation of new planetary marketplaces as it is not correct to think that indigenization and globalization are coequal forces that put Jihad and McWorld on an equal footing. Of course, it is not true that local surpasses the global, but still Barber’s argument does not consider the resilient and dynamic nature of cultures and their capability of negotiating imports. 13
New Patterns of Television Flow and the Kenyan Context
Public discourse about television and the studies on media literature both cover the issue of anxiety about the supposed cultural impacts of the global spread of certain programmes (Bell,
1994). The foundation of this anxiety is seen in the orthodox critical paradigm for analyzing the link between the media and international power relations, cultural imperialism or media imperialism. Based on this perspective, it is correct to say that world patterns of communication flow, both in direction and density, reflect the system of domination in the political and economic order. Therefore, world centers such as London, Tokyo, and New York are key nodes for traffic for international telecommunications and also other types of flows including television programmes (Sinclair et al., 1996). The view of media imperialism is that major world sources of program exports are located in the United States followed by Europe, particularly the United
Kingdom. These locations act as nodes via which flows of cultural products have to pass, and this includes those from one peripheral area of the world to another.
As was explained by Antola & Rogers (1984), the study for UNESCO carried out by
Nordenstreng and Varis in 1974 determined that the United States was the dominant exporter of television programmes at that time. As has already been discussed, television program flows became a central issue for the New World Information Order crusade and its debate in the
UNESCO. This persisted until the 1980s and at that time the cultural imperialism perspective of international domination was opposed only by nations seen as supporters of the U.S. and its advocacy for a free flow international system for cultural products (Miyoshi, 1993).
The discourse of cultural imperialism remained plausible as long as television program exports continued in the one-way flow from the Western industrialized nations to the rest of the world (Stephan, 2005). Cultural imperialism was a plausible theoretical response alongside its
14 subtler variations namely media imperialism and cultural dependence. The cultural imperialism view was used in the analysis of the capitalist culture that was projected onto an international scale.
The theory has an all-embracing feature of an inclusive theory, and also offered a high moral platform that international activities of the U.S. networks and philosophical content of their television programmes could be analyzed and then criticized.
By the 1980s it became more apparent that cultural imperialism had serious limitations, both as a theory and in terms of the reality which the concept alleged to elucidate. Transformations in the television industry made it less justifiable on the empirical level, and shifting theoretical paradigms, including post-colonialism, postmodernism, and theories of the active audience, made its abstract grounds less secure.
Audience Reception Theory
Scholars such as Stuart Hall and Henry Jenkins view audiences as active participants in the consumption process therefore allowing for an increased level of independence and agency for audiences. Possibly inspired by Michel De Certeau’s argument in his book The Practice of
Everyday Life (1984) which argues that scholars need to look beyond just the text and its producer, but also to look at how audiences received and used culture, scholars began to study other aspects of culture. De Certeau extended his research into commonplace areas, looked at how people used everyday things, and how they produced meaning from them.
Stuart Hall in his essay, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973) explored how audiences decoded the messages that the producers of cultural products had encoded within them. Hall argued that audiences had more independence and agency than previously believed. Hall’s audiences were not passive recipients, blindly accepting the messages
15 incorporated into the media they were exposed to. Instead, Hall saw audiences manifesting a wide range of methods when decoding the messages in what they experienced. While some people did in fact decode the messages in media as anticipated by the producers, others interpreted and internalized the intended messages very differently. Some people negotiated with the provided messages, accepting some while rejecting others. Others directly opposed or challenged the messages, choosing to reject the values and ideas in the cultural texts.
Jenkins, in his book Textual poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (2012) argues that audiences do not simply passively consume culture but engage with it on various levels.
He studied fan subcultures and found that fans have a deep relationship with their favorite texts.
Some fans were actively participating by creating new texts based on existing cultural settings, characters, and situations. These new texts reflected not the values proposed by the initial creators, but the values of the fans who created the new material. Unlike the purely receptive audiences envisioned by the Frankfurt School, Jenkins argues that audiences actively consumed culture, interpreted it in their own fashion, and frequently used the settings to establish and promote their own values: Jenkins’ use of the term “poaching” implies that this process exists in a grey area, not technically legal. The texts that fans create are not technically “canon,” but stretch the bounds of what the initial creators intended – hardly the acts of “passive, submissive” audience.
Recent Perspectives on Audience Reception
Audience reception theory offers a means of understanding media texts or scripts by understanding how these texts or scripts are interpreted by audiences. The theorists who conduct analysis of media using reception studies are increasingly concerned about the experience of television and cinema viewing for spectators and how meaning is established through the experience (Holub, 2013). A significant notion of audience reception theory is that the media text
16 or individual film does not have intrinsic meaning in itself. Rather, meaning is established in the interaction between the audience and the text. IN this conception meaning is only established when the audience watches, hears and processes the film. Scholars debate how circumstantial factors affect the manner in which the audience perceives the television program or film rather than focusing on the textual factors (Goldstein, 2012). The contextual factors comprise of such features as the setting of the exhibition, the identity of the audience and the preconceived ideas of the audience regarding the production and genre of the film. Wider political, historical and social issues also form part of the contextual factors (Zaid, 2014). The audience reception theory therefore places the audience in context, considering all the different factors that may affect how the audience will read of develop meaning from the text. This therefore informs my thesis in arguing how Hollywood when put in the Kenyan context is interpreted.
It is not possible to learn the reaction of each audience member to a particular film. Rather, the aim of the audience reception theory is to determine a range of probable interpretations and reactions at a certain historic moment (Welch, 2013). Hence, the application of audience reception theory in audio visual translation may yield information regarding the reaction of viewers to films that are translated to their native languages. In order for an audience reception theorist to identify an array of probable interpretations and reactions to a film, he or she should recognize the wide array of subject positions and social identities that each member of the audience brings to the event of watching the film (Livingstone, 2013). All individuals have multiple subject identities, unconsciously and consciously developed and maintained including class, religious beliefs, sexual orientation ethnicity, nationality, gender, race and age. How an audience member defines himself or herself as an individual and as part of the larger society will influence the manner in which perceives the film. Hence an audience member will watch films from several subject positions at
17 the same time as they are for example, Kenyan, male, christian, all at the same time (Livingstone
& Das, 2013). Since the translation of Hollywood films to Kiswahili and Sheng involves the culture of different nations, such as the United States or the United Kingdom and Kenya, I will attempt to link the reaction and interpretation of the film to the subject identities and positions of the audience.
Reception Studies and Classical Film Theory
Audience reception theory is grounded in history, instead of philosophy, and as a consequence, it is fundamentally focused on identifying how actual audience members interact with individual films. This characteristic is not typical of most film theories which postulate an idealized historical audience who passively absorb the messages and meanings that are embedded in the filmic text (Simons, 2014). Many of the classical film ideologies introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, including psychoanalytic, Marxist, formalist, auteurist and structuralist consider the text to be the site of meaning. The concern of these theories is how the audience members are influenced by films, but the audience members they define are composed of homogenous, idealized addressees who react to films and interpret them a similar manner in spite of variations in gender, race, or other identifying factors. The classical film theories assume that the members of the audience will passively get the ideological messages of a film (Holub, 2013). Individual subject positions and social identities are not taken into account. Additionally, the social context, historical moment and surroundings of the exhibition are not considered. One of the main criticisms of these theories is that the audience is idealized and ahistorical and also does not play any role in the development of the meaning of the film (Goldstein, 2012). Audience reception theory discards this classical viewpoint of the audience in order to concentrate on the audience members in the material world, and how they have actually interpreted the text.
18
The unwillingness of some film theorists to use studies based on audience reception theory is a result of the historical utilization of audience analysis. Starting in the early 20th century, research studies on how films were previously understood and interpreted by spectators was used to advocate censorship (Zaid, 2014). Reformers were concerned that audiences, particularly children would be negatively affected by what they saw in the films and sought to ensure that the messages contained in the films would be suitable for their viewing. Later, the film companies used audience research in the form of demographic data to learn how to effectively market their films (Livingstone & Das, 2013). Even though the use of the audience reception theory for censorship purposes has led to the distrust of the theory, this theory has of recent gained huge acceptance and it is currently perceived as a significant method of assessing how audience experience and interpret films (Welch, 2013). I use reception theory to add to the understanding of how Kenyan viewers of translated films react and interpret Hollywood movies that have been translated in to Kiswahili or Sheng by such commentators as DJ Afro. I also seek to explore how texts are interpreted by audiences when the texts have already been interpreted by mediators such as DJ Afro.
Audiovisual Translation Theory
Audiovisual translation refers to a specialized branch of translation that addresses the transfer of multimedia and multimodal texts into another culture or language. This concept also implies the utilization of a multimedia electronic systems in the transmission or the translation process (Munday, 2016). Audiovisual translation is applicable to the field of mobile device communication, audiovisual communication, advertisement, theatre, television and cinema. When generated and interpreted by invoking different semiotic modes, audiovisual text is termed as multimodal (Pardo, 2013). However, when perspective, color, music, image and language are
19 amalgamated in varying forms of media, audiovisual text is termed as multimedial. Audiovisual translation is an interdisciplinary field that draws from an array of theories including post- globalization theories, deaf studies, social psychology, cultural studies, relevance theory and reception studies (Bassnett, 2013). Basnett argues that the type of translation is largely affected by the type of device used and process of translation used. “Unique limits are enforced by mode of use, timing and digital graphics” (Bassnett, 2013).
The contemporary sophistication of video, cinema and television has led to an increased demand for movies and films. This has provided the stimulus for the emergence of multimedia translation through different techniques such as subtitling, voice over and dubbing. Mostly, western films which also encompass Hollywood made films, have been translated to suit different target audience across the world (Díaz-Cintas &Remael, 2014). Audiovisual translations have become essential in advancing Hollywood movies in order to enhance its penetration in different regions. This enables viewers from different regions to absorb the meaning of the films as well as transferring the contexts to their own settings. However, originality of the film may be lost due to the high brevity of most conversations; to offset this, translator comprehension and ingenuity are essential factors in conveying such messages (Pérez-González, 2014). The use of translators helps in accommodating viewers whose proficiency in the English language is low; this helps in understanding the plot of different films. However, Chiaro, (2017) advances that audiovisual translations predispose the film to low equivalence level of the context with the original language if the movie.
There are three predominant techniques used for audiovisual translations; dubbing or lip- sync which entails replacement of the original voice to voice-speech of the targeted audience; subtitling which involves adding written text at the bottom of the screen; and voice-over which is
20 technique in which a narrator speaks to the target audience. The latter technique is regarded as costly, time consuming and intricate (Taylor, 2015). Essentially, narrators executing voice overs are tasked with providing quick expositions, provide the plot, narrate the story and give an expansive look in the actions of the character. Smuts, (2016) observes that voice overs have been predominant in African countries such as Kenya and other Eastern European countries like Poland and Russia.
Skopos Theory of Audio Visual Translation
The Skopos theory is a notion in the field of translation studies that offers a perception into the nature of translation as a focused action that is directly pertinent to all translation projects. It was developed by Katharina Reiß and Hans Vermeer, who were German linguists (Munday, 2016).
The linguists propose that the interpreting and translating should essentially consider the role played by the translated text written in the desired target language. Skopos theory places more emphasis on translation as an activity that has a goal and an envisioned audience of the translation.
According to this theory, the act of translation means to create a target text in a target context for a target goal and target audience in target surroundings (Pardo, 2013). In this theory, the eminence of the original text is lower than it is in the equivalence-based schemes in translation. The original source acts as an offer of information that the translator transforms into an offer of information for the target addressee. The Skopos theory proposes that the function of a translation relies on the values, norms, expectations and knowledge of the target readers, who are also affected by their cultures and the circumstances in which they live. The factors of the target readers influence the decision of whether the function of the original text can be maintained, or they will have to be altered or adjusted (Bassnett, 2013). In the context of film translation, Skopos theory can be used
21 to describe the nature of film translations in terms of whether it preserves or changes the meaning of the original film.
Film Translation
As a form of art, film has existed for more than one century since its inception in the 1890s.
Film has advanced into an industry in a short time and has become a popular form of entertainment for audiences in different regions of the world. As a medium, film is used for entertainment, propaganda and also education (Díaz-Cintas & Remael, 2014). Presently, audio visual media takes much of people’s time and there is a significant shift from written media to visual media. Films are a form of entertainment and the rise in living standards is allowing people to allocate more time to watching films for entertainment purposes. As a result of the notion of audiovisual translation, cultures are coming closer and getting to know each other. Films are often exported to nations across the globe and they are translated into the language of the nation to which they are exported (Chaume et al., 2011). Nevertheless, every nation has adopted a method of translating films based on their needs such as traditions, cost, audience expectations and past experiences. The common methods that are used in film translations are subtitling and dubbing.
Nevertheless, film translation may pose a danger for the target culture if the target culture is politically and economically less powerful that the origin culture (Gambier, 2012). According to Ryan, Ingram, & Musiol (2010), less powerful target countries are prone to being injected with the lifestyle and culture of the more powerful source. The concepts of film industry and film translation cannot be separated on a global perspective. Currently, films are produced to be shown at a country level and also at the global level (Bogucki, 2013). Film firms consider the fact that their audience is in the entire world. The firms have knowledge that the global success of their films relies on the good translation of the films, hence they attach great significance to it (Pérez-
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González, 2014). Furthermore, film firms listen to the recording of the dubbing actors or actresses to determine if it is suitable for that specific film actor or actress. Interest in film translation has increased in the past few years as a result of advancements in technology and augmenting globalization.
The Kenyan Context of Audio Visual Translation
Kenyan youth in rural and slum areas are represented in the media as affected by gender discrimination, civil unrest, exploitation, limited job opportunities, inadequate skills, inadequate education and poverty. Many young individuals are seen as being influenced by western culture through media such as songs and films. Kenya is a multilingual nation with more than 42 local languages. English and Kiswahili are the general dominant languages of communication although, only a few of the young individuals living in Kenya’s rural and slum regions who have been to school are able to speak and understand English fluently. Rather, these people commonly use
Kiswahili and Sheng languages (Achen & Openjuru, 2014). Despite their limited English, the local citizens do not fail to enjoy western movies that are mainly in English. These movies are based on
European or American culture and they also utilize English subtitles which cannot be read and understood by the local people. In spite of these limitations, local people in Kenya are still attracted to these movies. To facilitate the access and understanding of these movies by the local Kenyan audience, video hall owners as well as and commentators or interpreters provide voice overs of the western movies which are also known as Hollywood movies like in other East African nations
(Achen & Openjuru, 2012). The voice overs are offered in Kiswahili or Sheng languages which are easily understood by the local people. The commentators and interpreters do the voice-overs in the form of simultaneous recorded and live interpretations of the Hollywood films, drawing on the linguistic and cultural background of the local audience consumption in Kenya. 23
Voice-over Translations of Hollywood Movies in Kenya
Voice over translations have been adopted as the technique of choice in the contemporary
Kenyan cinema since the mid 2000’s (Ogone, 2015). This trend has been heighted given that
Kenya is an Anglo-phone nation and receptive to American culture due to sharing of the English language. Fundamentally, the translation technique used extensively depends on the attitude of the target culture vis-à-vis the source culture. In the multi-lingual Kenyan landscape, voice overs have been adopted across the nation to translate movies to various of the than 42 languages spoken there. Most of the viewers of Hollywood movies are the young and a majority of youths in urban places speak Sheng, a language that combines Kiswahili, English, and different local Kenyan languages (Kaviti, 2015). Kenya’s official languages are both English and Kiswahili. In schools, the language of instruction is English. Despite the popularity of English, only a few highly educated Kenyans speak it fluently and understand it well. Thus, voice-over translations have gained popularity because they compensate for these linguistic limitations.
To breach this barrier to local access to Hollywood movies among people who are not able to understand spoken English fluently translators employ various language and cultural practices to make Hollywood movies accessible and popular amongst the poor in Kenya. This has given the momentum for voice over translations which have become dominant owing to the advent of digital media in Kenya that have facilitated interpretive commentaries of Hollywood movies in Kiswahili and Sheng, the most common languages spoken in big urban centers like Nairobi. Sheng and
Kiswahili speaking interpreters/commentators and video hall owners have taken advantage of advances in digital recording technology to provide voice-overs in the form of simultaneous live and recorded interpretations of the films, drawing on the cultural and linguistic background of the local audience, to make sense of the films for the audience, and to make them available for local 24 audience consumption in Kenya. The interpreters, known as Vee-jays (video-jockeys) in Uganda
(Achen and Openjuru, 2014) and ‘watafsiri’ in Tanzania (which translates to translators) and DJ’s in Kenya, “are cultural and linguistic mediators: they bridge the global context of Hollywood film production and distribution, on the one hand, and local knowledge and tastes, on the other” (Achen and Openjuru, 2012).
In Kenya, DJ Afro was the innovator and the leading commentator/translator who localizes
Hollywood films by translating them into Kiswahili with a touch of Kikuyu and Sheng (Michael,
2016). DJ Afro says that he started doing translating films in 2006 and “later on other people started doing the same thing” (DJ Afro, 2018). He uses his witty sense of humor and (sometimes) vulgar language to give the characters and the places local names. His works can be evaluated from different perspectives and typically lead to talking points such as piracy, domestication of
Hollywood films or formation of a sub-genre of Hollywood and cultural and linguistic mediation.
Apart from Dj Afro, there are a range of movie translators such as Dj Fish who are moderately significant to this niche. Thus, this study will aim at evaluating the dynamics of voice-over translations owing to the contemporary receptiveness to these works.
Conclusion
The rudimentary assumption of Western domination through television warrants further exploration. Ironically, even though cultural imperialism theory has been enunciated with the aim of protecting the developing nations against domination by audiovisual products from the United
States, it is more apt to support Western cultural influence by regarding it as being given, instead of challenging it. A more post-colonial view in theory has necessitated the realization that the domination of United States was limited by political or cultural screens. The cultural imperialism theory has weakness the major being its overemphasis on the significance of imported vis-a-vis 25 local television (Morley, 2003). Television has always been more of a local than a worldwide medium and remains so. However, the television industry has become increasingly globalized and multichannel in nature which may alter the balance between local and global aspects in the long run. Looking at figures from 1989, the volume of purely local material in national markets is twenty-nine times greater than that which is imported. Even though U.S. programmes might dominate the world in their transferability across cultural boundaries, and even manage to dominate schedules on some channels in specific countries, they are seldom the most popular programmes where audiences have a reasonable list of options of locally produced material to select from (Pingel, 2010). And even where there is imported content, it is not acceptable to read off from this fact alone any supposed impacts of a political or cultural kind.
The idea that audiences are manipulated by popular culture texts has also been challenged through audience reception studies. Scholars such as Stuart Hall and Jenkins argue that audiences are not passive but active in the consumption process. These studies give the audience some agency and argue that texts can be interpreted in multiple ways. Scholars such as Livingstone (1998) argue that context is important when analyzing how audiences interpret popular culture texts. 26
CHAPTER II. THE HOLLYWOOD SCENE AND DJ AFRO
This chapter first looks at the introduction and development of film interpretation in Kenya.
It then discusses the avenues through which translated Hollywood movies are distributed which include movie halls, DVDs and YouTube. Concepts such as poaching, cultural appropriation and domestication are examined, with a view of whether the translation of Hollywood movies in Kenya is: cultural appropriation, piracy or domestication.
Introduction and Development of Film Interpretation in Kenya
Many of the youth in Kenya’s urban areas use the language of Sheng for communication.
Sheng combines different languages including English, Kiswahili and some Kenyan native languages. The language of instructions in schools is English. Despite of the popularity of English in the education sector, “English spoken by the ‘refined’ or the intellectuals” (Mavia, 2005).
Consequently, a considerable number of Kenyans prefer watching Hollywood movies translated into languages which they can more easily understand unlike the original Hollywood movies. Also, the majority of youth from rural areas of Kenya are affected by poverty, inadequate education, and limited work opportunities. As a result, these youths do not understand English well, have inadequate funds for entertainment and have a lot of time on their hands which makes them huge fans of Hollywood translated films (DJ Afro, 2018). Such characteristics make them the most suitable audience for the Kenyan Hollywood movie commentators.
Additionally, it is considerably cheaper for the youth to visit video halls and watch translated Hollywood movies thanks to DJ Afro. The movie halls charge only Ksh.10 (about 10 cents when converted to dollars) to view one translated movie as compared to watching in movie theatres where they would pay about Ksh.700 ($7). “Kenyan people love Hollywood movies just 27 like in most African nations” (DJ Afro, 2018). DJ afro says that the feedback that he gets from his audience is that youth who are fans of the translated Hollywood movies mention that they do not understand and enjoy the original versions of the movie in the English language as much as they do the translated version of the same movie. He says that some of them have watched both versions and prefer his version, the translated one. To the Kenyan audience, the Hollywood films form the standard for films that they like to see. Even though films from other parts of the globe are continuously influencing Hollywood filmmakers, their effect diminishes in comparison with that of Hollywood’s output on the rest of the globe (Achen & Openjuru, 2012).
Since many Kenyans love Hollywood movies but do not understand all English words, there was need to translate these movies to a language that they would understand. This need led to the emergence of voice-over interpretive commentaries of the movies in Sheng and Kiswahili by video jockeys (DJ Afro, 2018). This is not a new phenomenon is not new to Kenya, or Africa, or any receivers of globalized media texts. Other countries employ dubbing and others use sub- titles to make these texts accessible to their people. According to DJ Afro, the two are either expensive or take too much time to make. On the other hand, “the common phrase in Nairobi goes
‘Kenyans are not readers’: it is debatable but truly the issue is that Kenyans place no value on their own local writers and artists” (Mavia, 2005). Just as Mavia is saying, this is very highly debatable and is subject to a different study.
DJ Afro is the most famous commentator/translator in Kenya. He localizes Hollywood films by translating them into a blend of Sheng, Kiswahili and Kikuyu is DJ Afro. Hollywood translated movies are continuing to gain popularity while the practice of Hollywood film commentary and translation is continuing to take root in various parts of the country (DJ Afro,
2018). The Kiswahili and Sheng-speaking commentators and video hall owners have taken 28 advantage of advancements in digital recording technology to offer voice-overs. The voice-overs are offered in form of simultaneous live and recorded interpretations of the Hollywood films, making sense of the films for the audience and making the interpretations available for consumption in Kenya. The voice-overs draw on the linguistic and cultural background of the
Kenyan local audience-this will be discussed in detail chapter three. DJ Afro started translating
Hollywood movies ten years ago and has continued to become more and more famous over the years because of his movie translation tactics-which will be analyzed in chapter three. He currently holds live shows in movie halls where he commentates motion pictures of Hollywood movies as well as recording voice-overs and selling his work on DVDs and also making it available through
YouTube.
Avenues through which Kenyans Access Translated Hollywood Films
Translated Hollywood movies are disseminated by the translators through three major channels: movie halls, YouTube, and DVDs.
Movie Halls
Modes accessing Hollywood films have changed a great deal from the time that I was young. When I was young, in the late 90’s, only few people had television sets, and a very small number of this group had video cassette players. Most of the television sets were black and white and only the “rich” could afford one. My father bought a television set but said that the video cassette player was an expensive luxury that we couldn’t, afford-or it wasn’t a need. The television set was purely to be used to keep the family informed about the goings on in the country as well as for educational purposes- there were a few programs for students. Our neighbor, who according 29 to us was so rich, had a television set that showed in color as well as a VCR (Video Cassette
Recorder).
Since we didn’t have a VCR and our parents were strict about using our television set, our neighbor’s kids introduced us to watching Hollywood films. We watched films such as Rocky,
Terminator, Double-impact and others that I don’t recall. For children our age this was very fascinating because we had also been introduced to WWF (World Wrestling Federation) which is now WWE (World Wresting Entertainment). As young kids we used to debate whether these films were real or fake- most of my peers argued for them being real. We also used mimic characters from the films that we would watch. The term aktaa (localized version of the English word, actor) was born from these interactions. Actaa was not just any actor but the main protagonist of the film.
The opposite of aktaa was kila (Killer) and no one wanted to mimic them in our plays and mimicry.
Since no one wanted to take the kila role, we came up with ways through which we could democratically decide who would play aktaa, killer, and where the rest would fall- the good guy side (aktaa’s side) or the bad guy side (kila’s side).
The mimicry led to creation of a game that my friends and I used to play. We used to call the game polis and robaa (police and robber) where a “policeman” would run after a “robber” and try to arrest them. The “police(wo)man” had their “jail cell” and the robbers had their “house” all of which were imaginary. When a robber was arrested he would now because the police and try to arrest someone else to take that position.
After being introduced to Hollywood film and film culture in general, I gained an appetite of these films and it wasn’t being satisfied by the restrictions at home as well as the few times that
I would watch them in our neighbor’s houses. Another friend introduced me to “Video show”, halls through which I could access an unlimited number of films over the weekend when I was
30 free from school. These video halls were/are found in the town center and (at that time) charged attendees Ksh 5 to watch a film that lasted for about one and a half hour to two hours. Those films were in their original format, without any form of translation.
At the moment, video commentators disseminate their content through video halls where youth pay to go and see movies. These video halls are informal video-viewing halls mainly found in rural and slum areas (Achen& Openjuru, 2012). The video halls are temporary structures with
TV sets and sound amplification instruments for showing movies to the public at a small fee of about Ksh 10 per movies. The attendants have a small board outside the hall where they provisionally stick posters of films that they plan to show that day. They then write the time that the films will show beside the posters to give attendees some sort of calendar.
The halls’ walls are usually made of iron sheets or wood. The video hall attendants seat at the entrance of the hall to collect money from customers as they enter to see the movies. These halls are open every day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and are busy throughout this time as customers come and go while others stay in to watch more than one movie. The success of the halls has led to the owners procuring generators to act as alternate sources of power in case of power blackouts.
The main crowd attraction in the video halls are Sheng and Kiswahili translated movies of Asian and western films.
YouTube
The video commentators also disseminate their content on YouTube. With increased access to the internet, in Kenya, these commentators have a huge market and their videos are getting more and more views on YouTube. As of June 2017, Kenya had 43,329,434 internet users who make up about 89.4% of the entire population (Oyelaran-Oyeyinka & Adeya, 2017). The huge number
31 of internet users in the nation provides a larger customer base for Hollywood video commentators.
DJ Afro movies on YouTube generate an average of 40,000 views on YouTube. Although DJ Afro has an official YouTube channel, popularity of his movies has led to emergence of copied accounts with his name which also post his translated movies. “People either create accounts with my name or just post my movies in their channels” (DJ Afro, 2018). The comments on these movies mostly show appreciation for the movies, with people praising them for improving their understanding of
Hollywood movies. Such comments demonstrate the popularity of DJ Afro’s translated movies- these comments will be analyzed in chapter three.
DJ Afro says that he doesn’t earn any revenue from this medium- maybe because YouTube won’t let him monetize the videos because of copyright infringement (which will be discussed later in this chapter). He says that he just posts a few of the videos to create an appetite for his translated films. He uses YouTube and other networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram to market himself which has made him very popular in the country. As a result, he has been able to do tours in different parts of the country to do live shows.
Another reason that he uses for not posting so much of his work on YouTube, especially recent translations, is that most of his core audience does not access the films through the channel.
DJ Afro says that most of his audience watch his films in video halls, live shows and by buying physical copies of DVD’s.
DVDs
DVDs are digital versatile discs that are designed to store data. DVDs provide higher storage capacity than compact discs while maintaining the same dimensions. The commentators record their translations of Hollywood movies with the motion pictures on DVDs and then sell
32 them to customers through movies shops. Movie vending has become an extremely lucrative business in Kenya because people in the modern centers finding going to the cinemas to watch movies expensive (Nyutho, 2015). The movie shops in various parts of Nairobi city, and other towns, sell hundreds of DVDs at an average of Ksh. 50 ($ 0.50) per DVD especially on weekends when people are not going to work and want to relax at home watching movies.
The sellers of DVDs in movie shops download movies from online sites that offer downloadable Hollywood movies and then make multiple copies of the movies which is then sold to customers. The customers may be normal Kenyan citizens who take the DVDs home and watch the original movies on their TV sets or may be commentators who interpret the movies by doing voice overs in Sheng and Kiswahili and then sell copies of the translated movies to a clientele that prefers such movies (Kabura, 2014). The transactional connections between the video hall owners,
DVD shops, the commentating DJs and everyday consumers form an informal ecosystem that does not give room for the actual developers of the content which are in this case Hollywood movie producing companies. This can best be understood through the Popular Culture term, poaching.
The phrase “textual poaching” was originally coined by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of
Everyday Life (1984) which was later advanced by Henry Jenkins in Textual poachers: Television
Fans and Participatory Culture (2012). De Certeau posits that we (the audience) is not just passively consuming texts but that audiences are indeed actively interpreting these texts. Stuart
Hall’s encoding/decoding model of communication (1980) follows and argues that people create their own meanings even if they consume the same text. Stuart Hall argues that this depends on their situation and different backgrounds. The Practice of Everyday Life looks at how people personalize mass culture by interpreting texts differently from the hegemonic meaning which is decided by the elite (academics, authors etc) who control how these texts should be read. De
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Certeau associates members of the audience to poachers by showing how they both, “move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it for themselves.” (1984)
This ‘poaching’ is a form of resistance technique for the individual, nevertheless, it is innately feeble in relation to the dominant culture and will commonly be an act just like poaching which takes place “underground”. Jenkins’ book, Textual poachers: Television Fans and
Participatory Culture (2012) furthers the active audience theory and uses it in fan cultures and activities which ‘poach’ from their favorite text to (re)create new texts. Jenkins' stretch of the term
“poaching” deliberates how a fan can synchronously interpret a text through the dominant and oppositional reading, permitting readers to stick close to the ‘canon’ – the official guidelines and principles set forth in the original text- as they require. Poaching distorts the line between producers of the text and the consumer by offering the reader an opportunity to create their own work based on their interpretation of the text. Poaching also provides a form of escapism from reality through fan created communities.
Cultural Appropriation in the Film Industry
Cultural appropriation, often framed as cultural misappropriation, is a notion in sociology regarding the adoption of the features of a minority culture. This notion differentiated from equal cultural exchange as a result of the existence of an imbalance of power (Huck & Bauernschmidt,
2012). It is portrayed as being harmful in modern cultures and is associated with the violation of collective intellectual property rights of indigenous cultures, minority cultures and the originating culture. Cultural appropriation is often inevitable when cultures with different statuses come together, and it may include the use of songs, language, symbols, fashion and tradition (Sanders,
2015). In the arts, cultural appropriation is a universal and diverse phenomenon. It is thought to
34 encompass such incidences as wide ranging as the procurement of cultural objects by members of a dissimilar culture, the utilization of artistic styles unique to a cultural group by non-members and the representation of cultural experiences or practices by people considered to be outsiders by the originating cultural group (Romero-Fresco, 2013). Often, cultural appropriation can be morally problematic.
Cultural appropriation in the context of the film industry refers to taking the intellectual property, artifacts, cultural expressions and traditional knowledge from the culture of another group without involving members of that culture (Desmet & Iyengar, 2015). Forms of cultural appropriation can comprise of unauthorized utilization of the religious symbols, traditional medicine, cuisine, folklore, language, music, dress and dance of another culture. Cultural appropriation is possibly harmful when the source culture is a minority group which has been exploited and oppressed in other ways or when the object of the cultural appropriation is increasingly sensitive (Matthes, 2016).
Most of the literature on this topic comes out of the United States where common targets are African Americans. The early forms of cultural appropriation in the film industry started in the
1950s when white musicians utilized songs and beats that were developed by African Americans
(Nicklas& Lindner, 2012). During this time, the African Americans were neither respected nor accepted in the United States which made it acceptable for the while musician to replicate the beats and sounds made by African Americans artists with no repercussion.
Over the years, cultural appropriation has expanded beyond the borrowing of sounds and songs. Currently, forms of cultural appropriation are common in advertisements, movies, sports and logos (Matthes, 2016). The New York Times and Washington Post have been among the top magazines in reporting about cultural appropriation, particularly with regards to films. In
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Hollywood, casting directors and writers have comprehensive freedom in the characters they come up with and who they choose to depict these roles. Screenwriters have evidently been making more diverse films but the actors that they cast do not actually portray the diversity (Tunca, Nicklas &
Lindner, 2012). Also, there have been some instances of whitewashing, where a film has features of minority culture the roles are not played by a person who is of that culture. One example is
Avatar: The Last Air Bender, a film “based on a cartoon, where the characters were clearly not white and were based on Asian culture…the film-makers cast Nicola Peltz as Katara, Jackson
Rathbone as Sokka, and tried to cast Jesse McCartney as Zuko. The failure on the part of the studio was so large that the phrase “racebending” no longer refers to just this movie but has become a synonym for whitewashing in general” (Trendacosta, 2016).
Translation of Hollywood Movies in Kenya as a Form of Cultural Appropriation
The translation of Hollywood movies by commentators in Kenya can be perceived as cultural appropriation for several reasons. One is that the translation of the movies into the
Kiswahili and Sheng language involves the loss and distortion of the meaning of some elements of the original culture. For instance, DJ Afro mentions that when he interprets a Hollywood movie with scenes between homosexuals, he condemns the practice “because in Kenya, the audience does not support same-sex relationships” (DJ Afro, 2018). However, in America, same-sex relationships are accepted on a wider scale. Another reason is that some elements of the movies are used outside their original cultural context. For example, the interpretations can be seen as cultural appropriation because they promote the adoption of cultural elements found in the Hollywood movies by the Kenyan audience members (DJ Afro, 2018). In this sense, the translation of
Hollywood movies into Kiswahili and Sheng is seen as a facilitator of the process of cultural appropriation. From watching the translated Hollywood movies, the Kenyan audience adopts and
36 starts using the songs, languages, symbols, fashions and religious traditions of the American people. However, in their use of the cultural elements of the American actors, the Kenyan audience may misappropriate these elements by using them out of context. According to Lindtner, Anderson
& Dourish’s (2012) definition of the concept of cultural appropriation, appropriation takes place when one speaks for, represents, recruits, uses, describes, defines or tells the dreams, experiences, stories and images of others. In this line of thought the interpretation of Hollywood movies by
Kenyan commentators can be seen as cultural appropriation since the movies are not the original products of the commentators themselves but of Hollywood companies.
Translation of Hollywood Movies in Kenya as Form of Domestication
The theory of domestication is a technique in media studies that designates the processes by which innovations, particularly new technology and content are arrogated by current users
(Ulrych, 2000). The first step in domestication involves the users first integrating the content or technology into their everyday lives and then adapting them accordingly to their culture.
According to this then, the translation of Hollywood movies by video commentators into Sheng and Kiswahili can be considered as domestication.
According to Szarkowska (2005) each nation cultivates a unique tradition of translating films through one of the three main modes: voice-overs, subtitling, and dubbing. The Kenyan video commentators have subscribed to the voice-over mode of translation. The decision as to which mode of film translation to subscribe to is determined by several factors including the position of the source and target cultures in the global context, the cost of translation, the approach to which the audience is accustomed, traditions, and historical circumstances (Paloposki, 2011). As stated in the beginning of this chapter, dubbing is expensive and requires lots of resources. Sub-titling is also taxing in terms of time spent doing it as well as expenses incurred to pay transcribers and
37 video-editors. This does not mean that these techniques are never employed. Films such as the
Jesus Film among others have been dubbed to Kiswahili. However, “it is cheaper to do voice- overs and put comments in these films” (DJ Afro, 2018). The Kenyan video commentators have been able to domesticate Hollywood films by translating them to Sheng and Kiswahili thus facilitating the comprehension of the movies as well as offering entertainment and escapism to the audience members most of whom live in slums and are heavily affected by poverty and unemployment.
Translation of Hollywood Movies in Kenya as a Form Film Piracy
The translation of the Hollywood movies can also be seen as film piracy to some extent.
Film piracy is unauthorized copying and distribution of films in DVDs, videos, electronic or print files. Although many laws have been developed to prevent film piracy in many nations and also on an international scale, continual advances in technology make it hard to track and control
(Bialik, 2013). Film piracy is wide spread in Kenya. Pirated films are usually found in musical stalls, movie shops, and open markets and also on television sets in public transport. The pirated movies include Nollywood films (from Nigeria) and Kenyan films as well as Hollywood films.
Most of the pirated films are from foreign nations and they find their way into Kenya without meeting the set legal requirements like examination and classification (Nyutho, 2015). Although such practices are against Kenyan laws, the government and other bodies have not developed measures that are successful in eliminating the problem of film piracy in the nation (Kanyora,
2015). The definition of the term film piracy suggests the translation and distribution of Hollywood movies by Kenyan commentators can be a form of piracy. The suggestion arises from the fact that the Kenyan video commentators often get the Hollywood movies from electronic sources or even from movie stalls in form of DVDs and the movie shops have already committed piracy by copying
38 the movies online without the permission of the companies producing the movies. The video commentators then translate the movies and then distribute the translated copies to the Kenyan audience, creating a chain of film piracy.
Conclusion
In Kenya, the combination of a healthy informal structure for movie translation and media distribution including DVD shops, video halls and commentating DJs as well as the volatile growth of access to internet demonstrates the globalization of media (Kabura, 2015). The well-established content producers in the Western regions such as Hollywood depend on time-delayed and nationally bounded channels to distribute their media content. Such an approach to distribution is not considered reliable in the current times as it does not consider how the content is inextricably connected to the worldwide media culture. The global media culture is highly characterized by informal unauthorized players who provide media content that is up-to-date, at affordable prices and in local languages which can easily be understood by audience (Kabura, 2015).This informal sector is booming, particularly in most developing nations like Kenya because most of the citizens cannot afford to watch a movie at the cinemas, purchase an original Blu-Ray disc or pay for unlimited internet needed to use Netflix. All these means of getting access to Hollywood movies are unaffordable to a huge proportion of Kenya’s audience even though they love watching
Hollywood movies.
39
CHAPTER III. DJ AFRO’S LANGUAGE CHOICE AND ITS INFLUENCE
In this chapter, I look at American popular film in Kenya to understand what happens when a popular text is removed from its target cultural background. Another aspect that I explore in this chapter is how DJ Afro, as part of the Kenyan audience interprets these films and (re)distributes meaning to the larger Kenyan audience. As I explained in the introduction, in this chapter I analyze the film Mercenary Fighters (1988). The scope of my research does not allow me to compare the original and translated films but occasionally I will refer to difference in translation to highlight the localization of certain aspects of the film. This chapter examines the language that DJ Afro uses in translations, how it is interpreted, and how it affects Language in Kenya. I use capital L
Language in the chapter to refer to languages like Kiswahili, Gikuyu, Dholuo, English and many more. More generally small l language is used to refer to the language that DJ Afro has created and that his audience understands and has adopted in their daily conversations.
DJ Afro refers to himself as “a self-taught performer who saw a gap between global popular film and (some) Kenyans (including himself)” (DJ Afro, 2018). Like most Kenyans, DJ Afro comes from a society that is big on oral narratives. Storytelling is an essential part of the Kenyan society. When I was young, my friends used to boast about how good their grandmothers were.
They used to say that they were treated like “kings” and “queens”. I obviously could not relate, not because I didn’t have grandparents but because my grandparents lived in Kisii- about 500 kilometers (310 miles) away so we visited them very rarely. Food and storytelling are associated with grandparents in Kenya. This doesn’t mean that children do not eat in their homes. Because most people live in cities and only visit the village during holidays (mostly in December), grandparents get to prepare the whole year for these visits. Wealthy grandparents slaughter a goat 40 on the day that their grandchildren arrive; those that are not so wealthy slaughter a chicken, and those who can’t afford that buy eggs to eat ugali with.
In the evening, after taking a shower and eating “shosho’s special food” the children sit in a circle around a fire to listen to stories before going to sleep. Different communities have different stories or sometimes the same storyline and we learnt this because we would narrate stories and realize that they were (kind of) the same. As a student of Popular Culture, I came to find out that this referred as heroic mono-myth. Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist who came up with the concept of the heroic mono-myth, a theory that sees all mythic narratives as variations of a single great story. Most stories in Kenya had animal characters, for example stories about the hare tricking/cheating bigger animals like the elephant. Most communities had a variation of such a story.
Modernity and rural urban migration in Kenya has impacted oral literature and performance negatively. This, prompted the Ministry of Education to take measures to preserve and ensure its continuity. Rose Opondo, a literary theory professor at Moi University in Kenya, says the following about the introduction of Oral narrative performances in schools and colleges:
Oral storytelling was introduced to the Kenya Schools and Colleges Drama
Festivals (KSCDF) in the mid-nineteen nineties. The intention, at this time, was the
preservation and the continuity of an indigenous oral tradition that seemed to be threatened
by literacy. Further, there was the recognition of the use of the oral narrative in the creative
reconstruction of self and society. Storytelling as a general pass-time is still common
among most indigenous communities across Kenya 41
According to Opondo, Oral storytelling was introduced to the Kenya Schools and Colleges
Drama Festivals in mid-nineteen nineties. This seems late when considers that Kenya gained its independence from Great Britain in 1963. In the nineties, Kenya was trying to articulate a national identity as Opondo indicates. She seems optimistic that storytelling is still flourishing as a past- time in indigenous communities across Kenya, but this is quickly becoming a thing of the past. I would argue that the school system has tried to maintain oral traditions to some extent. The curriculum dictates that teachers need to incorporate oral literature in language classes.
When I was in the early levels of school in the late 1990’s, my teacher, Mr. Adoli, told as that before telling a story there were certain things that needed to be said. He taught us the opening formula to any Swahili oral narrative. Performers say the word “paukwa” which is the performer announcing that a story is on the way and the audience replies “pakawa” basically telling the performer to tell the story. This is general knowledge that every time someone hears the words
“Paukwa,” they know that a story is on the way.
Just like these oral performers in Kenya, Dj Afro has an opening formula that his audience knows. Instead of using paukwa, Dj Afro says “Ooooooright! Ni wakati wa ma antroduction!” or
“oooooooright! Asanta sana!” at the beginning of every film that he has interpreted. Dj Afro says that this is for two reasons: first, to alert his audience to stop anything that they are doing because the film/show has started. Second, these words alert the video operator to finish collecting money quickly because the audience is ready to watch (DJ Afro, 2018).
Unlike in oral narrative performance the audience does not reply or say anything. I inquired from DJ Afro why his audience does not offer a response to his famous opening formula and he said that it is because most of the time he does recordings of his interpretations in the studio where there is no audience. He also says that he uses his opening formula in live shows for two reasons: 42
one because his audience expects him to use it for them to get in the mood and, two, to alert those
who are talking to be quiet and those that are using their phones to put them away because the
show is starting (DJ Afro, 2018).
DJ Afro and Accent
In his article “The Rise of Sheng: A Sociolinguistic Revolution from Below” Michael
Wairungu argues that accent can be used to shame individuals. Kenya’s history with colonialism has made Kenyans very sensitive to different ethnicities. A friend of mine from Tanzania told me that, “Kenyans are very funny!” When I asked what he meant, he told me that when he tells them that he met a Kenyan they ask what is his/her name? Then they end up saying, “oh that guy/woman is from a specific tribe!” Most Kenyans try to identify what tribe the other person belongs to when they meet someone- a thing that has been fueled by Kenyan politics. As stated above, Kenyans can identify someone’s tribe by their last name and by their accent. Most people that grow up in villages or speaking their mother tongue have a distinct accent that identifies them as a member of that tribe. Certain accents are very common owing to the number of people that speak that
Language. Gikuyu, Dholuo, Ekegusii, Abaluhya, and, Kalenjin are but a few languages that influence how these speaker’s articulate words from other Languages such as Kiswahili, English and Sheng. It is not always easy to identify that someone comes from a certain tribe just by looking at their last name or by listening to their accents. For example, most Kenyans find it hard to classify me. Most of them say that I look like a Luo man, but my last name sounds Gikuyu and they find it hard to place my accent because I was born in a town where most people speak Kiswahili.
Accent and tribal identifications are important in a discussion of popular culture in Kenya because it possible to commodify these accents. Certain accents have been commodified more than others in film, television, radio, and even stage plays. TV shows such as Vioja Mahakamani and 43
Vitimbi ran for over thirty years before getting different cast members (Samora,2016), and they have over time successfully commodified Maasai, Dholuo, and, Gikuyu accents to Kenyans.
This demonstrates that Dj Afro’s use of the Gikuyu accent in his translation is not a new phenomenon in Kenyan popular culture. One reason that Dj Afro gives for his use of mostly
Gikuyu accent is that he was born in Nakuru to Gikuyu parents. He says that his parents spoke
Gikuyu to him and most of the people that lived around him spoke the same language (DJ AFro,
2018). There are very several instances where he (un)intentionally uses his Gikuyu accent. James
Ontieri in his article “Phonological Influences of First Language on Kiswahili: A Case Study of
Kenyan Bantu Languages” argues that “when Bantu speakers learn Kiswahili, there is a tendency of importing their first language patterns erroneously. The errors have been found to follow three phonological processes: deletion, insertion and phoneme substitution” (2523). DJ Afro’s translations are mostly influenced by phoneme substitution. “Errors arising from this process involve the replacement of a phoneme erroneously due to a speakers first language influence on a new language usage. Gikuyu speakers for example while writing Kiswahili compositions normally substituted the /l/ with /r/” (Ontieri, 2013). In DJ Afro’s translations this phenomenon was observed in the following:
serikari – serikali (government)
Bira-Bila (without)
Kumwagiria -Kumwagilia (to pour a liquid on something)
Whor- whole
For the most part, his accent while translating the films is therefore authentic-using the
Gikuyu accent because it is part of him. He also uses his accent for aesthetic and artistic purposes. 44
At some point, DJ Afro goes “beyond” the Gikuyu accent. He uses words such as ashanta instead
of asanta(e), shana instead of sana, kabisha instead of kabisa which translated means ‘thank you’,
‘much’, and ‘completely’ respectively. I call this excess or excesses (when it’s more than one
word) – which I define as an artistic mimicry of accent that is overstretched therefore creating a variation of that accent. This definition borrows from Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum theory.
Baudrillard says that:
"Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is
the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a
question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the
signs of the real for the real”
Postmodernism and specifically Baudrillard’s theory argue that nothing is real. The reason why I do not refer to DJ Afro’s excesses as simulacrum is there is no publication or research to indicate that people are using these words in their daily lives or even in other film translations.
Therefore, there is no “copy of a copy”. One could also question this by arguing that DJ Afro has a problem with his /s/ and /sh/. This countered by the fact that in other instances DJ Afro does not say these words the same way. In other instances, he says them perfectly, almost as if he forgets to follow his “artistic script”. Another counter-argument is he does not speak like that in real life.
DJ Afro says, “that is my artistic language. I have to be very creative!” He uses these excesses purposefully for him to “stand out” as he says.
DJ Afro also imitates accents from different Kenyan languages to provide humor. Some of the accents that he does are Luhya, Gusii, and Kalenjin. While he does these accents, DJ Afro feeds into stereotypes of people from these ethnic groups that speak these languages. As stated previously, different language speakers in Kenya have certain accents when they speak Kiswahili, 45
English, or Sheng. Through popular culture, Kenyans have learnt to identify certain accents with
different ethnic groups and their stereotypes.
When translating a scene between a corrupt policeman and Ruth, one of the main characters
in the movie Mercenary Fighters, DJ Afro uses a very common and recognizable accent- the
Kalenjin accent. The Kalenjin accent is very popular in Kenya because most athletes are Kalenjins.
After competing in both local and international athletic championships, these athletes are
interviewed and tend to speak with this accent. Certain interviews go viral because of the heavy
accent and lack of sufficient vocabulary in spoken English. Another reason why the Kalenjin
accent is very popular is that comedians such as Dave the Student and Jemutai often make fun of
interviews done by these athletes or about everyday things that happen in Kalenjin households.
Since these stand-up comedians perform in Churchill Show, a very popular show in Kenya.
According to Geo Pol, a data collecting firm, “In October, Churchill Show had an average of 1.95 million viewers each Sunday, and the highest rated episode aired on October 12th. The October
12th episode, Season 4 Episode 32, featured several Miss World contestants and had an audience of over 2.25 million viewers.” These figures are for the year 2014. According to these figures, approximately 2 million people tune in to Churchill Show every week.
A common stereotype for Kenyan police officers is that most of them come from the
Kalenjin ethnic group. This stereotype has been spread through popular culture mostly through
Jemedari’s stand-up comedy. In most of his performances on stage, he says, “jana nilibambwa na makarau!” which is a mix of Kiswahili and Sheng to mean “Yesterday I was arrested by the cops!”
This single statement informs the audience that Jemedari is about to tell a wild story about how the police arrested him. When narrating his encounters with law enforcers, Jemedari gives the police a Kalenjin accent. Another reason why the Kalenjin accent is associated with the police is 46
through the animated series known as makarau, which ridicules the corruption and police-citizen
everyday interaction. In this animated series, the policeman has a very heavy Kalenjin accent and
mostly solicits bribes from road users.
The above examples are not the only ones that have crowned the Kalenjin accent as “the
official Kenyan police accent”. As stated above, DJ Afro uses the Kalenjin accent when translating
dialogue between a policeman and another character, Ruth is a nurse who volunteers to work with
the local tribe in Shinkasa- a fictional name whose letters when rearranged becomes Kinshasa which is a city in The Democratic Republic of Congo. When Ruth goes to pick up drugs from a center for her patients, a policeman says that she must pay, but according to her they have already been paid for. When DJ Afro translates this interaction, he uses the Kalenjin accent, which serves two purposes: it implies corruption among the police and it is funny.
Another accent that DJ Afro uses is the Luhya accent. Luhya people are originally from
Western Kenya. According to the Kenyan census of 2009, Luhyas are Kenya's second largest ethnic tribe following the Kikuyu, and they account for 14 percent of the Kenyan population. Just like the Kalenjin accent the Luhya accent is represented in popular culture. Most of the comedians who use the accent find a way to bring food into the joke. This has created the stereotype that
Luhya’s love food. DJ Afro also uses the Luhya accent in the movie, Mercenary Fighters. In a scene where the American mercenaries get into Shinkasa and must use the bus, one character tries to share an apple with a kid in the bus, but the father doesn’t allow it. DJ Afro’s translation of this scene is both comical and counter-hegemonic. Since the stereotype is that Luhya’s love food and would do anything for it, it is interesting that DJ Afro would choose the Luhya accent when the character refuses to accept food. 47
DJ Afro and Repetition
Another stylistic device that DJ Afro uses is repetition. Panelope Brown, a linguist, defines repetition as "the same thing" happening again, overtime.” (223) In this case repetition using similar words or phrases to make a certain idea clearer or memorable or both. This therefore means that repetition is an integral part of understanding signs and symbols. Brown argues that repetition is important for the definition of all cultural objects including music and performance which make use of re-enactments of some sort. Most cultures make use of repetition in their daily interactions for various reasons. Brown argues that repetition is key to the creation of semiotic systems. She argues that:
“Repetition not only underlies semiosis, it also functions as a semiotic device. Even
in the construction of the sentence we find repetition (e.g., concord and agreement repeat
the coding of a semantic feature on different words; reduplication is used to indicate
emphasis, intensity, iteration, or plural in many languages). Beyond the sentence level,
repetition is an important stylistic device in narrative and poetic discourse. Indeed, as
Roman Jakobson pointed out, "on every level of language the essence of poetic Journal of
Linguistic Anthropology artifice consists of recurrent returns." Repetition and
"parallelism" (repetition with patterned variation) characterize high registers, formal styles,
oratory, and ritual language in many societies, especially in oral communication” (224)
Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” employs repetition heavily to emphasize the urgency of the matter. In Dr. King’s speech the phrase “I have a dream” is repeated multiple times to allow the audience to picture that “dream.” Apart from helping the audience to immerse themselves into the presentation, Dr. Kings’ use of repetition makes the speech powerful and unforgettable. 48
DJ Afro repeats certain phrases, words and sentences for a variety of reasons. One reason is emphasis and intensity. DJ Afro uses the phrase tunakuingiria/wanakuingiria (going to/they are coming for you) a lot in most movies that he has translated. In Mercenary Fighters he repeats the phrase tunakuingiria to announce that he has finished the introduction and now he is about to start narrating “the real events.” Just like the introductory word ooooooright, tunakuingiria is meant to prepare the audience to get ready.
Wanakuingiria is repeated in most of his translated films to announce that the main characters or actaa is about to be attacked, or vice-versa. It is also a call to the audience to get ready for some action. In Mercenary Fighters, DJ Afro repeats this phrase when the American mercenaries attack the Kuruba tribe who are rebelling against the current regime. He also uses the phrase when the rebels ambush the army and the mercenaries who are on their way to arrest the rebel leader.
DJ Afro also uses repetition to make the films that he translates memorable. He does this strategically by repeating a character name several times. When Cliff Taylor’s character, Ron
O’Neil, is introduced DJ Afro explains that he is a very experienced pilot. He then says that his name in the movie is Ron O’Neil but his real name is Cliff Taylor. For the rest of the movie and in all the repetition of the character’s name he refers to him as Cliff Taylor instead of the name the character goes by in the film. DJ Afro says “sometimes I use the real name of the character because part of my audience already knows these people from different movies. So, it is easy to just use the names of these people” (DJ Afro 2018). In the scene where Cliff Taylor’s character is introduced his name is mentioned four times in less than forty seconds. DJ Afro repeats the names of the other characters at least three times when they are introduced. 49
As argued above, repetition is a strategy that most performers use strategically to emphasize or make a performance memorable. However, sometimes DJ Afro uses repetition as a filler. In linguistics, fillers are words or phrases that people use as they think of what to say next.
Since DJ Afro does not use a script in his interpretations, he relies on his memory and improvisation. DJ Afro says that “I normally do a freestyle” (DJ Afro, 2018) His “freestyle” means he watches the film maybe once or twice to get the plot then he visualizes how he can relay the different scenes. “Sometimes I think of certain jokes that I plan to use for different scenes but when it comes to doing the real thing sometimes I forget then and I must freestyle” (DJ Afro, 2018).
In the scene where Ron O’Neil goes to meet T.J, played by Reb Brown, DJ Afro repeats certain phrases and sentences as a filler. He says, “Jitu mwenye jina Reb Brown, Reb Brown mwenyewe ndio huyu” (“the big guys name is Reb Brown, this is Reb Brown himself”). This sentence is serves as a filler for him to think about the next thing to say. DJ Afro acknowledges that he uses fillers because “it is not easy being a performer who doesn’t have a script” (DJ Afro,
2018). Another phrase that he uses as a filler is “bira shaka” (without a problem) and “wololo yaye” (an exclamation that mostly Luo people make to show surprise). Both these phrases are fillers because they are not used in the context that they are supposed to be used in. For example, there is no problem nor surprise with introducing T.J in the film but DJ Afro still uses this phrase and exclamation multiple times. Repetition as a tool has worked so well and helps DJ afro to make the film very memorable. It does not matter that he uses it deliberately to emphasize a point, character’s name (as will be discussed later in this chapter), or whether he uses it as a filler. His skillful storytelling and humor cover up for the fillers. 50
DJ Afro and the Use of Humor
As mentioned in the introduction, there is no academic literature on DJ Afro. There is also not so written about him apart from a few stories carried by newspapers and blogs. One online newspaper published a story about him in 2014 and titled it “DJ Afro Movies Lead as Urban
Kenya’s Preferred Home Cinema Collection.” In the story, Stella Kabura, the author writes, “Tired of watching Eastern, Western or old action movies while reading subtitles simultaneously? Using simple technology, DJ Afro Amingos, Kenyan translator cum commentator has mastered the art of keeping viewers glued to the screen without butting (sic) an eyelid, inspiring others to follow the trend” (2014). What Kabura doesn’t say explicitly is that DJ Afro’s storytelling skills and humor are what “keep the audience glued to the screen.” DJ Afro’s translations are heavily reliant on his personality and sense of humor to keep the audience entertained.
DJ Afro’s ability to “freestyle” and create as he goes on with the translation enables him to tell jokes as the movie goes on. In the interview that I had with him, he said, “In the first place you must tell the storyline the way it is. You must make sure that you understand the movie very well. So, whatever you change is just like using another word for the original word, but the storyline doesn’t change because you are interpreting that movie to people. You must have the storyline in your head” (DJ Afro, 2018). He does manage to follow the storyline, but through jokes and anecdotes, DJ Afro almost shifts the original tone of the film.
There are so many instances that DJ Afro uses humor in Mercenary Fighters and I will mention a few here. Some of the jokes are societal and known in Kenya while others are his pure creation. DJ Afro, for instance uses local names for some of the characters and some of the places shown in the film. This works very well for the film because it is mostly set in Central Africa, but this is not unique to films he translates that are set in Africa. Most of his translations looks at local 51 names but the nature of my study does not allow me to review the hundreds of translations that he has done. When Ron O’Neil goes to meet T.J to convince him to join him on going to “work” in
Africa, DJ Afro mutes the conversation and assumes O’Neil’s character. He says “Unaskianga
Africa…Africa! Pahali kunakuanga na watu kama Mugithii! Pahali kunakuanga na watu kama
Muikamba! Pahali kunakuanga na watu kama Mubaluhya! Huko ndiko nataka twende!” (“You
Just hear about Africa…Africa! Where there are people like the Abagusii! Where there are people like the Akamba! Where there are people like the Abaluhya! That’s where I want us to go!”) The localized names, the accents they are said in, and the pauses in his speech offer a comic effect, thus making the audience laugh.
At some point in his translation, DJ Afro uses local names for the characters in the film and since the audience understands the context and knows people who go by these names, the joke serves its intended purpose-to make them laugh. In the scene where Colonel Kyemba, the army colonel who hired the mercenaries, gets a reporter taking pictures of the massacre, he orders that the reporter be shot as he is walking away. DJ Afro’s translation of this scene is humorous for three reasons: first, he names the reporter Victor Watende, who at the time of the translation was a very popular reporter in Kenya. Secondly, DJ Afro mimics Victor Watende’s way of reporting and the way he says his name at the end of his reporting- by elongating the vowels of the surname-
Watende. The repetition of this name and the mimicry also helps to heighten the humor. Thirdly, when the reporter is shot and falls down, DJ Afro assumes the dying person’s character and says,
“Ni Victor Waateendee na nimetendewa!” (It’s Victor Watende and they have mistreated me!)
There is an internal rhyme in the name Watende and tendewa, which is a verb, which makes the audience both laugh and admire the creativity and poetry in his delivery even during this tragic scene. 52
There are very many instances where DJ Afro offers humor even though it is obvious that that is not how the original film was directed. Another instance that stands out in the film
Mercenary Fighters is in an emotional scene where Ruth confides in T.J about how her aunt and other volunteer nurses were murdered by Colonel Kyemba. T.J comforts her and they end up kissing. DJ Afro mutes the audio and does a commentary about this scene making use of humor.
He says, “Wacha kulia, shika mate-mwaaa-tena ingine. Kumbe mate inaweza kufanya mtu asili!
Kama venye mtoto akilia anapatiwa nyonyo kumbe mtu mzima akilia anafaa kupatiwa mate!”
(“Stop Crying, have a kiss, get another one. I didn’t know that a kiss stops people from crying!
Just the way the baby gets their mothers breast when they cry, when adults cry they need a kiss!”)
There so many reasons why this translation and commentary is humorous. First DJ Afro calls a kiss “mate”, which literally translates to “saliva”. This is not DJ Afro’s creation. Young people in
Kenya who use the Sheng language refer to a kiss as mate. Another reason is the comparison that he makes between crying babies getting milk and crying adults getting mate thus infantilizing the characters. DJ Afro then addresses the audience and says, “watazamaji, hiyo ni kitu nimediscover!
Nafaa kuwekwa kwenye guiness book of records. Kama venye kuna watu walidiscover gravity.
Mtu mzima akiwa na hofu anafaa kupwea mate. Hiyo ni discovery…na mtu akidiscover kitu anawekwa kwa guiness book of records. Watu wa Guinness nileteeni Guinness ili niingie kwenye guiness book of records” (Viewers, that is something that I have discovered! I need to be in the
Guinness Book of Records. Just like how they discovered (force of) gravity. When an adult is sad they need to get saliva (a kiss). That is a discovery and when someone discovers something they are put in the Guinness Book of Records. Hey Guinness people, bring me Guinness (the beer) so that I can enter into the Guinness Book of Records!) This part is funny because of how DJ Afro plays with words. First, he takes the opportunity to educate the audience. He tells his audience 53 about discovery and where unique discoveries are stored. He then acts stupid and asks the company that produces Guinness to bring him beer so that he can enter Guinness Book of Records. The audience is forced to laugh at the stupidity as well as the creativity which is found in the same statement.
As mentioned in the introduction, I chose to analyze Mercenary Fighters because of all the
“DJ Afro” films that were posted on YouTube it had the most views and the highest number of comments. Most of the comments compliment DJ Afro on doing a good job as well as his witty delivery. A YouTube user by the name of Martin Odhiambo says “DJ afro I like you movies your the best ahead of the best. How many languages do you know if I may ask” (sic). One can argue that DJ Afro is the best because he has inspired other film translators in Kenya and some parts of
East Africa. I inquired why the other translators were not as successful to which he said, “the problem with the others is they copy and paste! Another reason is maybe they are not funny…my friends think I am funny even when I’m not trying to be funny. You cannot force comedy!” (DJ
Afro, 2018). He says that he realized that people laugh every time he has a conversation with them.
According to DJ Afro, his personality plays a big role in his translations. He personalizes the films and puts a piece of himself to produce content that is captivating to his audience.
Another user that goes by the name Judymwangi Muthoni says, “never thought you are so funny talented or dirty first time I finished a movie with a dj my bestfrnd boyfriend always tell me to try...NYC job afro” (sic). Muthoni just like most Kenyans (myself included) were skeptical about DJ Afro movies at first but after watching, one cannot hold their laughter. This is because some of the jokes are very relatable and known by the audience while others are just too absurd like when in Mercenary Fighters he says, “nitakata figo yako na ni nikule kama nyama choma!” 54
(“I will cut your liver and make a barbecue out of it”). This joke forces the audience to laugh at the absurd idea that one can cut someone’s liver and take time to roast it then to devour it!
Most of the comments are people just typing “ha ha ha” or putting laughing emojis while others just say, “this is so funny, give us more!” (Lukas, 2017; Langat 2017; Wambui, 2017 et al)
These comments indicate that they are very entertained by DJ Afro’s translation and use of humor in his delivery. Some of the people that have commented under the movie, say that they are Kenyan living in other countries, while others are just from other countries. One user says that they are from Tanzania and they enjoyed the movie. This is interesting in the sense that an American film goes all the way to Kenya, gets translated and then flows back to other parts of the world. A globalized text is therefore localized and then becomes a globalized text once again. Kenyans and people who understand Kiswahili or Sheng in different parts of the world get to access this localized text from anywhere in the world through YouTube.
DJ Afro and Code-switching
According to Bakhtin, language goes beyond playing a communicative role. Bakhtin argues that language does not relate directly to an external world. He views language as something that is mediated by social interactions. According to him, language is social and adapts according to the society in which is spoken. The notion that language is just descriptive makes it “dead-like,” something that is very rigid. Bakhtin further argues that social ways of viewing a language are not stagnant but are always in dialogue and shifting.
Bakhtin criticizes scholars such as Saussure who look at language as a closed system. He views such interpretations as being complicit in creating a unified language to be used as a tool for centralized power. He argues that most of the time standard language is the language of the elites 55 and making this hegemonic language the “standard” limits the heteroglossia of various everyday speech-types. This forces everyday speech to adapt to the official style for it to be viewed as part of a privileged speech community.
For a long time, Sheng was not viewed as a “language” and those that used it were viewed as lawless people who never went to school or had any ambitions to “work in an office” or w even in a decent place. Kiswahili purists argued that Sheng was bad for Kiswahili and should be fought.
I was once punished by my teacher for speaking Sheng in school. The teacher said that I was a bad influence on the other students. In Kenya, the reality is that not so many people speak “standard
Kiswahili” because of the influence of the other languages. Most people code-switch a lot in whatever conversations they have daily. “Code switching is defined as the practice of selecting or altering linguistic elements so as to contextualize talk in interaction” (Nilep, 2006).
The fact that Kenya has more than 42 languages as well as Kiswahili and English which are either learnt in everyday interactions or in school makes almost every Kenyan multilingual.
This therefore gives them multiple languages and words to choose from when having everyday conversations with friends, family members, workmates and so on. So, DJ Afro’s use of code- switching is not unique to him.
There are so many instances in which DJ Afro uses code-switching in translating
Mercenary Fighters. I have selected just a few for analysis. The following are a few examples of code-switching in the film.
Dinga lilifanya masummersault (The car rolled/summersaulted)
Anaitaji mamacenaries (He needs mercenaries)
Kumwagiliia shamba fertilizer (To apply fertilizer on the farm/garden) 56
Kulingana na information (According to the information)
All these phrases (and sentences) are composed of two or more languages. The first phrase, for example, is composed of three languages. Dinga is a Sheng word that means car/vehicle while the second word, lilifanya, is a verb that denotes that an action took place, and the last word is a mix of Kiswahili and English where the prefix ma- in Kiswahili is sometimes used to denote plurality. Therefore, Masummersault means that it was more than one summersault. The second phrase, Anaitaji mamacenaries, which means ‘he needs mercenaries’ is composed of two languages; Kiswahili and English. The same goes for the phrases, Kumwagiliia shamba fertilizer
(to apply fertilizer on the farm/garden and Kulingana na information (According to the information) is an example of an advantage of multilingualism. The big advantage of multilingualism is that when one lacks a word in one language, they can still express themselves because they have alternative vocabulary from the other language(s) that they speak.
DJ Afro and Word Creation
Popular culture has always influenced language. In October of 2006, Fraser McAlpine published an article on BBC online with the title “10 words from pop music culture that made it into the dictionary” in which he listed ten words that were created by popular culture, specifically hip hop, and then got added to the dictionary. Some of the words that McAlpine highlights include to yolo, shizzle, diss, and, bootylicious. The action of recognizing such words that are created by popular culture legitimizes their use and proves that popular culture is very influential to everyday language and culture.
Klingon, an artificial language used by characters in Star Trek, is a language that was created through popular culture and is used by trekkers or trekkies (ardent fans of the Star Trek 57 franchise). According to a periodical article published in the Education Journal in September 2016 titled “Klingon now taught in the UK,” the (imaginary) language is being taught in the United
Kingdom. According to the periodical, the classes are offered online and at the time of the publication of the article, they were recruiting for more teachers of the language.
DJ Afro says that “Certain words said in vernacular become so bad” (DJ afro 2018). He says this to account for why he decided to create and use certain words in his translations. DJ
Afro’s reason for creating words is to hide the “nakedness” of certain words used in the film or certain actions in the films that he translates. He says that some things are accepted in the US and that is why they make films about them, but in Kenya they might not be received so well. He therefore uses different words to explain certain actions that are not normally discussed openly.
Actions such as sex and things that go on in the bedroom are not discussed openly in Kenyan languages according to DJ Afro, so he has to create his own. Some the words that he has created are listed below. Some of them are not in the film that I analyzed but he uses them enough so that his audience is very familiar with them. I inquired about those words and he listed them to me and told me what they mean. Those words are:
Mukina-Dog
Manyungurus- buttocks
Makagare -A man’s private parts
Kibwenye-womens private parts
Kuguthana ulolo- having sex 58
Most Kenyans use euphemisms for certain and actions that are deemed to be inappropriate.
For example, it is not polite to say that one is going to the toilet. The polite way to say this
“ninaenda kujisaidia” which literally means “I am going to help myself.” Sex and the genitals are also not discussed in public, and so people euphemisms to talk about them. A man or womans private parts, for example, is just given a general term, “sehemu za siri” (private parts) and that is how they are referred to most of the time. The above stated words that DJ Afro localize the films in the sense that he doesn’t “offend” the target culture.
DJ Afro and Authorial Intent
In his book, Dialogical Imagination, Bakhtin argues that in a monological novel -which here I extend to texts including the one that I analyzed- characters exist only to convey the author’s viewpoint, and that the author only represents their own idea. Bakhtin argues that such novels
(texts), tend to dull and be marked by only one tone. He is very skeptical about authorial intent because it does not allow other voices to exist. Sometimes during DJ Afro’s translation, he gives his point of view about the topic. For instance, in the beginning of the film in a scene where mercenaries attack a village in Nicaragua, a small girl is seen standing in the middle of a gunfight.
DJ Afro offers his opinion by saying:
“Woi! Cheki mpaka watoto! Mtazamaji ukiskia vita usiwahi taka! Mwanzo kama
kuna kitu huwa inarudisha nchi nyuma, kama kuna kitu huwa inaharibu Maisha ya
mwanadamu basi ni vita!” (Look! Look at the children! Viewers, war is a very bad thing!
War does not support development in a country, war destroys every aspect of human life!)
(DJ Afro, 2018) 59
In another scene, where the mercenaries and the army attack the Kurubu villagewhere they vandalize property, shoot, and burn people, DJ Afro says, “Cheki venye wanafanyia watu maskini wa mungu!” (Just look at what they are doing to the innocent human beings!) (DJ Afro, 2018).
Narration, in DJ Afro’s case, almost doesn’t permit him not to offer ‘authorial intent’ which
Bakhtin is against. DJ Afro even finds a way to almost force the audience to identify with certain characters and to hate others. He uses the phrase “jamaa wetu” (our man/woman) for the good guys in the film and doesn’t use the phrase for the villains.
Conclusion
Language is very important for DJ Afro’s translation. He uses words creatively to keep his audience entertained while watching his films. For instance, he uses different accents to make fun of stereotypes in Kenya. He also uses repetition of certain phrases to emphasize certain scenes, actions, and characters. In the process, he points out to the audience what they should identify with and what they should frown upon. DJ Afro also uses language creatively to produce humor even in instances where tragic things such as people getting killed take place. Most of his audience members appreciate his creative use of words, specifically the words he has created as euphemisms for the “dirty” words in the films that he translates. The words that he has created are being incorporated in to every day conversions thus making him a very important figure in Kenyan
(popular) culture. 60
CONCLUSION
For a long time, audiences have been viewed as passively accepting messages of popular culture texts that they consume. For instance, some scholars view globalization as a threat to local cultures-that it is imperialistic. There is so much scholarly literature on cultural imperialism and how popular culture from the West is used to weaken cultural institutions in less powerful countries. Early studies on media influence did not view the audience as having much agency in the consumption process. The “hypodermic needle” or “magic bullet” theories, for example suggested that mass media had powerful impacts on the audience (Bineham, 1988). Since then, the debate about influence of media has escaped any agreement or resolution among scholars as to the degree, implications, and scope of media influence. In recent times, there have been lots of studies and a wide body of literature that queries the level and scope of influence of transnational media. Some researchers have questioned the concept cultural imperialism without offering alternate concepts, while others have drawn from interdisciplinary literature in the humanities and social sciences to come up with theoretical alternatives to cultural imperialism. Cultural imperialism theory suggests that audiences all over the world are profoundly affected by messages in the media especially those from Western industrialized nations. According to Mirrless (2013), there is a slight difference between media imperialism and cultural imperialism but most studies in the field of international communication consider media imperialism as part of cultural imperialism.
Scholars such as Johan Galtung studied cultural imperialism by focusing mainly on nation- states as the major actors in international relations through the center periphery theory. This theory posits that the western nations which he refers as “center” are free and have a lot to export to the 61 non-western nations or “periphery” nations while the periphery nations “have only one or very few primary products to export” (Galtung, 1971). This theory credited wealthy, technologically advanced, and Western nation-states with actions and intentions by which they spread their socio- cultural values and beliefs to weaker and poorer countries in the developing world. Many studies supported this supposition by showing that flow of entertainment and news was biased with many of these coming from industrialized nations (Hartley, 2012). This bias is evident both in terms of both quantity and quality. The studies showed that most media flows were produced and exported by Western nations and imported by developing countries.
Scholars such as Stuart Hall and Henry Jenkins view audiences as active participants in the consumption process therefore allowing for an increased level of independence and agency for audiences. This borrows from Michel De Certeau’s argument in his book The Practice of Everyday
Life (1984) which suggests that scholars need to look beyond just the text and its producer, but also to look at how audiences receive and use culture. De Certeau expanded his research into commonplace areas, looked at how people used everyday things, and how they produced meaning from them.
Stuart Hall in his essay, Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973) explored how audiences decoded the messages that the producers of cultural products had encoded within them. Hall maintained that audiences had more independence and agency than was previously believed. Hall’s audiences were not passive recipients, blindly accepting messages put into the media they were exposed to. Hall saw audiences demonstrating a varied range of methods when interpreting the messages in what they came across. While some people did in fact decode the messages in media as anticipated by the producers, others interpreted and internalized the
62 intended messages differently. Some audience members negotiated with the provided messages, accepting some while rejecting others. Others directly opposed or challenged the messages, choosing to reject the values and ideas in the cultural texts.
Jenkins, in his book Textual poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992) argues that audiences do not just passively consume culture but participate on many levels. He did a study of fan subcultures and found that fans have a deep relationship with their favorite texts.
Some fans were actively participating by creating new texts based on existing cultural settings, characters, and situations. These new texts reflected not the values proposed by the initial creators, but the values of the fans who created the new material. Jenkins posits that audiences actively consumed culture, interpreted it in their own fashion, and frequently used the settings to establish and promote their own values: Jenkins’ use of the term “poaching” implies that this process exists in a grey area and might not be legal. Fan created texts are not technically “canon,” but stretch the bounds of what the initial creators intended. This therefore offers a counter argument to scholars that argue that audiences are passive and can be manipulated.
On the other hand, Livingstone (1998) argues that, “audience are plural in their decoding,
[and] that their cultural context matters.” He agrees with Hall that audiences can interpret texts multiple ways. For Livingstone, context is key when understanding how global texts are decoded.
Geographical context is very important in my thesis. Creators of Hollywood produce texts for the
American audience because that is their core audience. When these texts are distributed to the rest of the world they don’t necessarily carry the same messages. Kenyans, for instance, have beliefs and worldviews that are informed by the Kenyan society and may not be compatible with the
American orientation of Hollywood films. Certain things may be accepted in the United States but
63 frowned upon in Kenya. DJ Afro, for instance, says that when he translates Hollywood films he pays attention to the context of his Kenyan audience.
One way that globalized texts are localized or made accessible to local audiences is through audiovisual translation. According to Munday (2016), audiovisual translation refers to a specialized branch of translation that addresses the transfer of multimedia and multimodal texts into another culture or language. There are several techniques used in audiovisual transitions: dubbing, subtitling, and voice-overs. According to DJ Afro, dubbing and subtitling are very taxing financially and in terms of time taken to get the final product. Mavia (2005) argues that “Kenyans are not readers” while trying to justify why local writers are not supported. Subtitling, then, is not very popular in Kenya.
DJ Afro is the innovator and the most famous commentator/translator in Kenya. DJ Afro claims that he started this phenomenon in East Africa, but an interview conducted in Uganda by
Lagarriga (2007) found out that commentating of Hollywood films was started in 1988. DJ
Afrolocalizes Hollywood films by translating them into a blend of Sheng, Kiswahili and Kikuyu and adding some of his own commentary to the production. Hollywood translated movies are continuing to gain popularity while the practice of Hollywood film commentary and translation is continuing to take root in various parts of the country (DJ Afro, 2018). The Kiswahili and Sheng- speaking commentators and video hall owners have taken advantage of advancements in digital recording technology to offer voice-overs. The voice-overs are offered in form of simultaneous live and recorded interpretations of the Hollywood films, making sense of the films for the audience and making the interpretations available for consumption in Kenya. The voice-overs draw on the linguistic and cultural background of the Kenyan local audience-this will be discussed
64 in detail chapter three. DJ Afro started translating Hollywood movies ten years ago and has continued to become more and more famous over the years because of his movie translation tactics-which will be analyzed in chapter three. He currently holds live shows in movie halls where he commentates motion pictures of Hollywood movies as well as recording voice-overs and selling his work on DVDs and making it available through YouTube. DJ Afro says that he has translated more than 1000 films since he started in 2006. According to him, most of them are Hollywood films, but he also translates Bollywood films as well as Nollywood films.
Translated Hollywood movies are disseminated by the translators through three major channels: movie halls, YouTube, and DVDs. Movie halls or “video shows” are temporary structures in slums and rural centers in Kenya, created for showing films to a paying audience.
People that visit these entertainment dens pay Ksh 10 (10 cents) to watch one film. Hollywood films are the most popular, followed by Nollywood films in these video halls. Lately, “DJ Afro” films have been very popular in video halls thus prompting owners to do away with the original versions of these films.
This thesis has analyzed the film Mercenary Fighters (1988) which was translated by DJ
Afro in 2016. I specifically picked this film because of all the translated films on YouTube this one had the most views and the most comments. I analyzed DJ Afro’s language choice to understand why this specific film had got so much attention from the audience members. He has done more recent films but says that they have not been uploaded on YouTube. According to him, he has translated films such as John Wick: Chapter Two (2017), The Fate of the Furious (2017), and Sleepless (2017). DJ Afro says that sometimes members of his audience recommend films that he should translate.
65
One thing that stands out about DJ Afro is his accent which is influenced by the Gikuyu language-his first language. He uses his accent all through the translation but sometimes he exaggerates the accent for aesthetic purposes. I call this excess which I define as which I define as an artistic mimicry of accent that is overstretched therefore creating a variation of that accent. He also uses popular accents when mimicking dialogue from different characters in the film. When employing these accents, DJ Afro perpetuates stereotypes of the people whose accents he is making fun of.
DJ Afro makes use of repetition as a stylistic device. There are certain phrases that are repeated because they are part of his formula. He elongates the vowels word “alright” to inform the audience that the film is getting started, tunakuingiria (going into or coming for you) to announce that he is done with the introduction and the action is getting started or sometimes to indicate that an attack is about to take place or is taking place. He also uses repetition as a filler-to help him organize his thoughts. This is done all through the film and he justifies this by saying, “it is because I am freestyling” (DJ Afro, 2018). Most of his work involves him using improvisation to keep the translation going. The audience also gets to laugh through his repetition. DJ Afro uses and repeatedly says popular local names for some of the characters in the film making the audience laugh because they identify the context.
DJ Afro’s personality makes the film very interesting to watch. He uses lots of humor in his translation, even in the most tragic scenes. Although Mercenary Fighters is a film involves characters killing and destroying property he stills finds humor. Because of this, the audience gets cushioned from the seriousness of the film. Most of the comments below the film on YouTube praise his creativity and humor. DJ Afro’s YouTube viewership seems to like words that he has
66 created for the translations. Kenya is a conservative culture; certain things are rarely discussed openly. DJ Afro’s words serve as euphemisms not only for when he translates obscene scenes but also when he wants to make fun of a character’s body part.
DJ Afro also uses code-switching in his translation. Most Kenyans, because they speak more than one language, code-switch when having day-to-day conversations. English is learnt in school; Kiswahili is learnt both in school and at home; people who live in rural areas also learn their mother tongue at home. Code-switching enables Kenyans to have a large repertoire of vocabulary to choose from speaking. DJ Afro employs this so many times in his interpretation of
Mercenary Fighters. I argue that DJ Afro uses code-switching involuntarily because he, just like most Kenyans, communicates this way in his daily speech pattern.
Even though Bakhtin is against the idea of authorial intent, DJ Afro heavily offers his opinion on certain matters when he translates scenes that involve them. Just like he makes fun and creates humor during tragic scenes he also offers sympathy in others. For instance, he condemns war and tells the audience that they should never desire war. DJ Afro also seems to direct the audience’s attention to adore and relate to certain characters by referring to them as jamaa wetu
(our guy). By referring to a character as jamaa wetu, the audience is (almost) forced to identify with these characters because he/she is “one of us!” However, even though the film is set in the
Democratic Republic of Congo and a number of the characters are black, the phrase jamaa wetu is not used to refer to them. The phrase is used for T.J, a white American mercenary hired by the
(unnamed African nation) government to kill a rebel leader.
Some of the people that have commented under the film on YouTube say that they are
Kenyan living in foreign countries, while others are from neighboring countries. There are at least
67 three comments from people that say they are from Tanzania and they enjoyed the movie. This is interesting in the sense that a Hollywood film goes all the way to Kenya, gets translated and then flows back to other parts of the world. A globalized text is therefore localized and then becomes a globalized text once again. Kenyans and people who understand Kiswahili or Sheng in different parts of the world get to access this localized text from anywhere in the world.
DJ Afro is a cultural and linguistic mediator who uses accent, repetition, humor, code- switching and other techniques to localize and ensure that marginalized Kenyans access
Hollywood films. This is an indication that audiences are not passive as envisioned by proponents of cultural imperialism theory. Whether one chooses to look at this phenomenon as poaching, appropriation, or piracy the fact remains that DJ Afro is offering a service to those that would otherwise not have access to Hollywood films. He actively shapes how Kenyans watch Hollywood films and influences local language and culture more generally.
68
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