Tìwà tìwà là ńràjò.
Character as the ground of a person
Original
Tìwà tìwà là ńràjò.
Literal gloss
- Tìwà tìwà with-character with-character là ńràjò is-how we travel.
Idiomatic English
"It is in the company of one's character that one goes on a journey."
No translator is named in the source.
What it means
Character travels with you.
Used when
Owomoyela: "No one leaves his or her character at home when venturing abroad" Spoken to someone who assumes a new town or a new post will let them start clean.
Notes on the translation
The reduplicated tìwà tìwà is an intensive, roughly "character and nothing but," and it has no English equivalent that is not clumsy. Compare entry 7, which makes the identical point with a habit rather than a character.