Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún (Yoruba:[kɔ́látúbɔ̀sṹ]ⓘ; born 22 September 1981) is a Nigerian linguist, writer, translator, scholar, cultural activist and film-maker.[1][2][3][4] His work and influence span the fields of education, language technology, literature, journalism, and linguistics. He is the recipient of the 2016Premio Ostana "Special Prize" for Writings in the Mother Tongue (Ostana Premio Scritture in Lingua Madre) for his work in language advocacy.[5][6][7] He writes inYoruba and English, and is currently the Africa editor of theBest Literary Translations anthology, published by Deep Vellum.[8]
At the University of Ibadan, he was a campus journalist and rose to the position of president of the Union of Campus Journalists, which he led from 2002 to 2004.
In 2009, he was aFulbright scholar, and he taughtYoruba atSouthern Illinois University Edwardsville until 2010.[10][11] His debut collection of poetry/travelogueEdwardsville by Heart covers this period.[12] In 2010, while still in the US, he worked as a volunteer adult literacy tutor, with resettled immigrants, at the International Institute ofSt. Louis, Missouri. In 2012, he completed a master's degree in Linguistics/TESL and returned toLagos, Nigeria, to take up a job as a high-school teacher ofEnglish language.[13]
For a few years between 2015 and 2019, he worked as a linguist at Google Nigeria first as a Speech Linguistics Project Manager from 2015 to 2016, and later as a Project Manager forNatural language processing tasks in African languages in 2019.[14]
His work of advocacy has focused on documentation and the role of African languages in technology, education, literature, governance, and entertainment. He founded theYorùbá Names Project in 2015, a lexicography project, to show how technology can help in revitalizing local languages. As a writer, he has produced work in travel writing, travel poetry, essays on literature, scholarly writings, journalism, and film.[15][16]
From September 2019 to September 2020, he was aChevening Fellow at theBritish Library in London as a Research Fellow on the Library's African language printed collection from the 19th Century.[17]
Tubosun is known for his work in linguistics, technology, and language advocacy.[21] He has written extensively on the need to empowerNigerian languages, andNigerian English, to function effectively in education, technology, governance, and literature. He has also engaged in projects in furtherance of these objectives.[22]
In 2012, he led a successful campaign to haveTwitter includeYoruba in the list of languages into which the platform was being translated.[23][24][25][26][27]
In March 2015, he founded the "Yorùbá Names Project" at YorubaName.com[28][29] as an effort to document all names in Yoruba in an accessible multimedia format. The project also released a free Yorùbá Keyboard software for Mac and Windows to allow its users to type inYorùbá language andIgbo on the internet.[30][31][32]
Tubosun's team atGoogle Nigeria was behind theNigerian English voice/accent on Google platforms.[33][34][35] The voice was launched in July 2019.[36] His collaboration at Google was helpful in getting Nigerian language diacritics into GBoard, and also correcting the mistranslation of the Esu, the Yoruba trickster god, on Google Translate.[37][38][39][40] He has also worked withGoogle Arts & Culture on some of its exhibits in Nigeria and Kenya.
In 2017, he collaborated with OrishaImage to create Yorùbá Melody, a multilingual 90 minutes freeYorùbá language "audio phrasebook for Olórìṣà and cultural tourists".[42] The audio phrasebook was released in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In August 2019, a fourth language was added: German.[43]
He also worked withBBC Academy to help localize the Journalistic Style Guide of theBBC intoIgbo,Yoruba, andNigerian Pidgin, ahead of its maiden broadcast in those Nigerian languages.
In honour ofUNESCO's declaration of 2019 as theInternational Year of Indigenous Languages, Tubosun, throughThe YorubaName Project in collaboration with Rising Voices created @DigiAfricanLang, a twitter rotation curation account featuring scholars and professionals working in African-language documentation and revitalization across the continent.[44]
Tubosun has contributed to Nigerian creative writing since 2005, through poetry, travel writing, essay, prose, travel writing and literary criticism. His work has appeared in theInternational Literary Quarterly,Sentinel Poetry,Brittle Paper,Ake Review,Popula,NTLitMag, andEnkare Review.
He worked as the pioneering editor of a literary magazine of new writing from Nigeria and Africa calledNTLitMag, from 2012 to 2015. In November 2015, he co-edited as well asAké Review, the literary publication of theAké Arts and Book Festival, with Kolade Arogundade. From 2015 to 2016, while he taught as a school teacher, he edited two issues ofThe Sail, an anthology of creative works of high school students.[45][46][47][48][49][50]
Tubosun has been on the advisory board of the Aké Arts and Book Festival since July 2019.[51]
After writing an illuminating travel profile on Nobel laureateWole Soyinka in 2018,[56] Tubosun was awarded the 2019Morland Writing Scholarship to write a biography of the writer, Africa's firstNobel Laureate in Literature.[57][58][59] In August 2023, he secured funding to create a documentary film about Wole Soyinka titledEbrohimie Road.[60] The film premiered in Lagos in July 2024 as part of activities to mark Wole Soyinka's 90th birthday.[61][62]
While a student at theUniversity of Ibadan, Tubosun was an active campus journalist. In 2002, he became the president of the Union of Campus Journalists. During his tenure, he reformed the organisation, brought the press board online, instituted formal training for campus journalists, and connected the campus organisations with many media houses in the country, who in turn opened internship roles for student journalists during their holidays. One of the recipients of the first internships wasFisayo Soyombo, then a student of agriculture, who later became a decorated journalist in Nigeria.
In 2010, he contributed to234Next as a travel writer.[63]
In 2015, he was nominated for the CNN African Journalists Awards for a travel piece he first published onKTravula.com, becoming the first blogger nominated for the Prize.[64][65]
In 2016, after the illegal demolition ofIlojo Bar, a national monument located onLagos Island, Tubosun wrote a three-part series inThe Guardian investigating the cause and consequences of the demolition on the history of Lagos and Nigeria.[66][67][68]
In September 2019, Tubosun co-foundedThe Brick House Cooperative, with eight other publications[69][70] with the aim of presenting independent viewpoints from all around the world. He became the founding editor-in-chief and publisher ofOlongoAfrica, a literary-journalistic platform for new creative writing from Africa.[71]
Tubosun writes poetry inYoruba and English. His chapbookAttempted Speech & Other Fatherhood Poems was first published bySaraba Magazine in 2015. An earlier oneHeadfirst into the Meddle was published in 2005.
In 2018, his first full collection of poetryEdwardsville by Heart was published. It is a book described as "a magical meeting place of travelogue, memoir, and poetry",[12] covering a period of three years when the author lived in the midwestern United States. It is "a quiet, reflective book",[72] "by far a rather enjoyable read."[73] Petero Kalulé calls him "a poet who writes so freely, so playfully, so beguilingly about the everyday and its “effing possibilities.”[74] JM Schreiber says it has "an uncluttered vision—emotionally contained and all the more powerful as a consequence."[72]The book was selected as one of "Africa's Must Read Books of 2018"[75]
His second collection of poetry,Ìgbà Èwe was published in June 2021.[76][77] It has been described as "an affirmation of two or more cultures in a progressive conversation."[78]
He is a translator of literature from and intoYoruba, his mother tongue, and has argued for more literary translations into African languages as a way of revitalizing the languages.[81] His translation of a short story by Kenyan writerNgũgĩ wa Thiong'o into Yoruba was published in the Jalada Language Translation project[82] in March 2016. In 2019, his translation of a short story byChimamanda Ngozi Adichie was published in the Absinthe Journal in 2019.[83] He has also translated James Baldwin,Wole Soyinka, andHaruki Murakami.[84] Since 2005, he has translated into English some of the poetry of his father,Yoruba language poet,Olatubosun Oladapo through thePoetry Translation Centre in London.[85] One of these poems was published inNo, Love is Not Dead: An Anthology of Love Poetry from Around the World, edited by Christopher McCabe, andSwirl of Words / Swirl of Worlds – Poems from 94 Languages Spoken Across Hackney (gathered by Stephen Watts).[86][87][88]
His second collection of poetry,Ìgbà Èwe, is a bilingual collection with original Yorùbá translations of poetry by American philosopher and poetEmily Grosholz[76][77] and illustrated byYemisi Aribisala.
In January 2016, Tubosun was chosen as a recipient of aPremio Ostana "Special Prize" for Mother Tongue Literature (Il Premio Ostana Internazionale Scritture in Lingua Madre 2016), a prize given to any individual who has done writing and notable advocacy for the defence of an indigenous language.[5][6][92][93][94] The prize ceremony was held from 2 to 5 June 2016, in the town ofOstana (Cuneo, Italy).[7][95][96] Tubosun was the first African to be so honoured by the organisation.
In October 2015, he was nominated for theCNN African Journalists Award[97] for his travel pieceAbeokuta's Living History, first published atKTravula.com. He was the first-ever blogger on the award shortlist.
Edo North: Field Studies of the Languages and Lands of the Northern Edo (ed., 2011). Essays in Honour of Professor Ben O. Elugbe. Zenith Book House.[105]
His fatherOlatubosun Oladapo, was a poet and journalist. His sister,Yemi Adesanya, is an accountant and author. His wife,Temie Giwa foundedLifeBank, a health logistics company. He lives between Lagos, Nigeria and Minneapolis, Minnesota.[107]
^Olofinlua, Temitayo (25 May 2015)."Nigerian Scholar Creates an Online Home for Yoruba Names".Global Press Journal. Global Press. Archived fromthe original on 4 September 2015.With the help of volunteers and crowdsourcing contributors, he is creating an online compendium of Yoruba names with meanings and aural pronunciations.
^Anothai, Noh; Call, Wendy; Tekten, Oyku; Tubosun, Kola (19 April 2024). Hirshfield, Jane (ed.).Best Literary Translations 2024. Deep Vellum.ISBN978-1-64605-335-3.
^Elusoji, Solomon (21 April 2015)."Cultural Export".This Day Live.Archived from the original on 2 April 2016. Retrieved30 March 2016 – via AllAfrica.An online Yoruba dictionary has been launched to help the Yoruba race in Nigeria go beyond borders.
