Creating Nationally Oriented Textbooks of Russian as a Foreign Language for African Audiences: The Malian Experience

With Russian-African relations steadily getting stronger, creating nationally-oriented textbooks of Russian as a foreign language aimed specifically at African countries is becoming increasingly important. The linguistic situation established in Mali after the adoption of the new constitution, which demoted French from “the official” to “the working language” and simultaneously elevated the status of former national (indigenous) languages, is characterized by the increasing use of local languages in various spheres. One of the textbooks in the “We are learning Russian” series, published by St Petersburg State University, has been adapted especially for the Republic of Mali. The textbook uses a conscious-practical teaching method, so, in the process of adapting the textbook for the Malian audience, the grammar explanations, as well as the wording of the assignments, were translated into the lingua franca of Mali—Bambara (Bamana). A translator interpreting a technical text into one of the functionally limited languages, which operates primarily in the oral sphere, is bound to face a multitude of terminological difficulties. The terminological problems encountered by the translator can be divided into two types: 1) the lack of specialized linguistic terminology; 2) the lack of general scientific terminology and words denoting modern urban realities; for the latter, several synonyms often coexist, most often a word borrowed from French and one or more competing neologisms. Difficulties associated with the lack of terminology are to be overcome by referring to the internal resources of the language: the oral tradition of commenting on written texts, native language schooling traditions, as well as the terminological usage that spontaneously develops in the media language. The contents of the textbook were adapted to Malian realities: personalities known to and positively assessed by Malians were introduced, the names appearing in the text were partially replaced with Malian ones in order to create the necessary balance of “familiar” and “foreign.” The experience of creating a nationally oriented Russian language manual for Mali may help in implementation of similar projects aimed at African countries.