This article examines how localized Islamic interpretation dynamically shapes gender and reproductive norms in Werabe Town, Ethiopia, a predominantly Muslim community. Employing ethnographic research and an Islamic feminist perspective, the study reveals that hermeneutical contests over religious texts constitute critical sites where male authority over reproduction is simultaneously reinforced and contested. Islamic discourse is shown to have a dual nature; it can be a source of restriction while also providing means to challenge those restrictions. These interpretive conflicts are deeply influenced by other intersectional factors, notably economic standings. Ultimately, the findings present gender justice as an internal process of reinterpretation within Islamic tradition, highlighting how religious authority fundamentally organizes women’s reproductive realities.

This paper aims to analyse the socio-cultural context and functions of linguistic taboos (such as fart, euphemised as ‘release air’) in Mubako, language of the Bali Kumbat people in the North West region of Cameroon, and explain their implications for translation. The study stems from the background that taboo linguistics is an essential element of language use in society and understanding its operational dynamics is critical for language learners and professional language mediators, including translators. The dataset comprises sensitive language, including taboo words and expressions, most of which have established euphemisms. Taboo expressions are collected from six purposively selected Mubako speakers with the help of unstructured interviews, and analysed qualitatively. According to the data, Mubako linguistic taboos are classified as decorum-related, morality-related, fear-related and religion-related. Findings reveal that religion-related taboos constitute the highest number of linguistic taboos in Mubako and they do not have euphemistic alternatives like the other three categories. Translating Mubako linguistic taboos can contribute significantly to the development and promotion of the Mubako language by increasing its societal uses. However, such translation is challenged by lexical, syntactic, semantic, and paralinguistic constraints, which require selected approaches, especially foreignisation strategies such as borrowing, literal translation, transference, and notes.

BaYaka forest hunter-gatherers of the Northern Congo-Brazzaville refer to anything that threatens community wellbeing as ‘negative noise’ mòtɔ́kɔ́. People utter ‘stop the noise’ whenever behaviours of others are wrong and encourage them to conform to the norms of the group. If not ceased, noise might lead to unhappiness, hunger, illness, and death. This ethnography demonstrates how noise instigates people to conform to the group’s norms on one hand and describes its role in children’s learning to contribute to community wellbeing by norm enforcement. Noise (akami) was introduced by Colin Turnbull in his work with the Mbuti hunter-gatherers of the Ituri Forest. Based on ethnographic research, this paper illustrates a similar concept amongst the Mbendjele BaYaka of Nothern Congo-Brazzaville.