Postkoloniale glottopolitiek en problematiek van de A-taal (AT) : ecovertaling als katalysator van duurzame ontwikkeling in Kameroen Glottopolitics and the Issue of "A Language" in a Postcolonial Context : Eco-translation as a Catalyser for Sustainable Development in Cameroon

The quest for well-being calls for contributions from all works of life. Therefore, besides economic or infrastructural undertakings, language policy should also be ticked as a tool (be it immaterial) to achieve sustainable development, especially in a multilingual postcolonial context such as Cameroon’s. There is need to enhance the diversified cultural realia and development task-force of various communities, by promoting linguistic diversity. In fact, as much as biodiversity can be sustained, local languages – that may as well be considered as environmental components – should also be given keen attention. Across history, one major tool used in developing languages world-wide is the act of translating ; and once translation targets the development of the environmental components called languages, this leads to some sort of ecological commitment : “ecotranslation”. In a multilingual Cameroon pregnant of about 270 languages, a genuine policy of translation may use decentralised administrative units to target individual languages in their respective geographical areas and allow those local languages to stay lively besides the official languages inherited from the pre-independence French and British administrations.