For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: "Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison."

I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.

People went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday, the Bible in translation is being read to thousands and thousands in Africa. It is an integral part of their functioning and the way they look at the world.

The Bible affects everybody's life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia. The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.

You get another person who operates only in an African language and there are many persons who operate only in African languages; he or she is excluded from all the goodies that come with English. And even in terms of justice, law codes, the legal system. A person who does not know English in Africa is excluded from that system because he can only operate through acts of translation.

We can appreciate each other's languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.

If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community - then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.