Toki Pona is a 130-word minimalist constructed language created by Sonja Lang. Because of the extreme paucity of words, you have to really think about what you mean when you translate something. This makes it a great tool for clarifying your own thoughts.
There is no single word for “free” in Toki Pona. The community-sourced Toki Pona dictionary lists pona, meaning “good,” as the top translation. The other relevant translation is ken, meaning “can.” The latter better represents what I mean by “free,” but is it enough?
Right now, Palestinians aren’t free to move around their own country. They aren’t free to go back to their homes that they still hold the keys to, to determine their own fate, or even to go to school in many cases. They aren’t free from bombings, or from collective punishment, and they aren’t free to exist in their own land free of suspicion and hate.
Years ago, when I was an angrier person, I translated “Free Palestine” as follows:
o weka tan ma Pilisin!
Get out of Palestine!
While many people do mean this when they say “free Palestine,” and this makes it a valid translation, it’s not the way I feel now. Admittedly, it’s also not up to me, but it’s not what I want to say when I say “free Palestine.” Another Tokipona speaker, jan Tepan (Stephan Schneider), later came up with a translation that better captures “free” to me:
o pana e ken ali tawa ma Pilisin!
Give all rights/abilities/powers to Palestine!
[Tatoeba]
That phrase ken ali – literally “can all” – captures the meaning of “freedom” to me better than anything. Years later, I further simplified jan Tepan‘s phrase into jan Pilisin o ken ali, and created the first draft of my “Free Palestine” design in Toki Pona. Then I was messaged by Sonja Lang and told that a name next to jan means that it is a person’s name, and not that of their group. Furthermore, the local pronunciation is closer to Palasin than to Pilisin, which is more literary.
kulupu Palasin o ken ali!
May the Palestinian people have all rights/abilities/powers!
Get this on a sticker (all profits to World Central Kitchen)
Or download it at Wikimedia Commons
I was then asked if this meant I felt the Palestinians were allowed to do anything necessary to break free. And what I think is that they’re entitled to do anything that other groups are entitled to do. This means violent resistance to achieve sovereignty is fair, as peoples rarely achieve it any other way. But it should go without saying that nobody in the world is entitled to do everything. Nobody has the right to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity. As it was pointed out to me, Islam has its own code for how to carry out a war, as do most religions and cultures.
It was suggested that I change it to ken ali pona (have all good rights/abilities/powers), but I don’t like this. Freedom is, in large part, the freedom to do the wrong thing. There is a large range of things that are ike (bad) that free people have the right to do. Lying, for example.
I still think ken ali, while imperfect, is the simplest and best way to translate “free.” But I made another design in response to this feedback:
kulupu Palasin o lawa e ona sama!
May Palestinians govern themselves!
Get this on a sticker (all profits to World Central Kitchen)
Or download it at Wikimedia Commons
As you can see, despite the ambiguity of most of its words, Toki Pona often forces people to be more clear about what they mean than a political slogan in a natural language would be. This makes it an interesting vehicle for political discussions and for clarifying your own political positions.
I should mention another translation that I partly came up with, inspired by someone in ma pona pi toki pona (the Toki Pona Discord):
o weka e lawa Isale tan ma Palasin!
Get the State of Israel out of Palestine!
This is better than the first way I put it. I still prefer kulupu Palasin o ken ali, but I thought this deserved a mention.
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