Commencement—Knowledge Exportation

The first written translations from South African indigenous languages were produced by travelling European naturalists in the period of Dutch colonial rule. This translational contact between European science systems and Khoekhoe segmented society expressed Western supremacism and processes of so-called intellectual subjugation. Translation was a form of knowledge extraction and echoed material forms of colonial extraction. In terms of SST, translation was part of European societies’ groping into the environment and facilitated the reduction of environmental complexity while simultaneously drawing a distinction between systemic and environmental characteristics according to degrees of civilisation. Translation possessed a “referential” purpose rather than a directly communicative purpose, since its meaning lay in what it expressed concerning indigenous peoples rather than in the propositional meaning of translated words.