Mother Tongue, Cognition Construction and Translator Education in Africa

A majority of African student translators manifest weakness at two major levels: the conceptual and productive. From different perspectives, this is either termed ‘language’ or ‘cognitive’ problem. This dual view is a pointer to the tacit but intractable bond between language and cognition. The language?cognition?translator education relationship that begins with the mother tongue (L1), as well as its impact on the African translation learner constitutes the essence of this write-up. Working from the hypothesis that the cognitive development of the African child is adversely affected by the lack of a ‘veritable’ L1 blueprint, this reflection qualitatively substantiates this claim, and then concludes that mother tongue inclusion in the African school syllabus through appropriate language planning is, more than before, an imperative, given that as a contextual L1, it engenders and nurtures cognitive skills which are indispensable in translation learning and practice.