Inside Tambara

“Tambara” is the Academic Journal of the Ateneo de Davao University. Below is an article written by its editor-in-chief, Dr. Macario D. Tiu.

 In August of each year, the editors of Tambara formally meet to review the articles that would constitute the year’s issue of the journal. As early as January of course, each editor would have been assigned either to write at least one article and/or to collect and edit articles from colleagues and friends. August is the month of truth. We would then know if there are enough articles to come up with say, a 200-paged journal by December. If not, then it is panic time. 

Fortunately, in the six years I have headed Tambara we have not really experienced panicking, although we did fall short of several pages in one or two issues. I wonder how the other academic journals in Mindanao fare as far as collecting articles is concerned? I truly envy some Manila-based journals that have the leisure to get their articles refereed. They must have a lot of submissions and therefore can be more choosy. Indeed you get more rank and promotion points if you get published in a refereed journal. 

Who was it who said that we remain largely an oral people? Even in academe we do not find many people who write. My favorite theory for our underdeveloped writing culture is of course the language problem. Imagine having to write in a foreign tongue. Unlike the government that insists on more English to correct the problem, I advocate the opposite: use mother tongue education and mother tongue writing. 

So at Tambara we accept English, Tagalog, and Cebuano articles. I think we are the only academic journal in the country that publishes in three languages. Practice what you preach, as the advice goes, so we are dignifying the local language by mainstreaming and intellectualizing its use. As expected, nobody’s rushing to submit articles in Cebuano. Cebuano speakers themselves complain they find it harder to write in their own tongue. Well, if a lot of people do not (cannot) write in English which they have studied to death since kinder, how do you expect people to write in a language (even if it is their mother tongue) which they have not studied at all? 

Aside from myself, four others have contributed articles in Cebuano. Don Pagusara is a Bisayista, so it’s no surprise. The Hugpong Kinaiyahan, Inc, a nongovernment organization engaged in environmental activism in tribal areas, wrote a report of their work in Cebuano. And surprise! Fr. Albert Alejo SJ and three of his M.A. students dissected cockfighting in Cebuano (“Ang Klarong Sabong: Etika, Estetika, ug  Epistemolohiya sa Sabong,” Tambara 2002). Renante Pilapil also problematized the issue of language and philosophy in Cebuano (“Ang Pulong: Usa ka Pamalandong,” Tambara 2005). It can be done! So I hope there will be more articles in Cebuano in the coming years. It is my theory that native Cebuano speakers who can write in English can write in Cebuano after two years of reading the weekly Bisaya magazine. Maybe even less. Let’s push the theory further: Native Cebuano speakers can learn to write faster in Cebuano than in English given the same time of study. Now the language debate is long and heated, so we leave that for another paper.

Our editorial introduction said: “We encourage more people to write, and we will dispense with so-called scholarly rules if, in our opinion, the article is relevant, substantive, and useful to our readers” (Tambara 2001). This policy continues to guide us in accepting articles. Once an article interests any of the editors, he/she will move heaven and earth to get it published. That means repeated revisions. Mostly we ‘slash and burn.’ It seems many writers think, erroneously, that to be scholarly means to write very long sentences and use difficult words. Whether you write a scholarly paper or not, there’s only rule to follow: write to be understood. We do get articles that do not need editing. But most articles are redrafted at least four or five times before they are fit for publication. The record holder is seventeen drafts, with the author gamely going through the editorial demand for additional information, explanation, or clarification. 

That is the kind of effort we put in every article that gets published in Tambara. We ensure that each article is useful, relevant, and substantive. I think substantiveness would be the major value of the article, that is, a particular topic gets a more or less thorough treatment. So prospective contributors, you know what we are looking for: a substantive article on any subject in the social sciences, humanities, philosophy, and theology. We even ransack from other disciplines and from outside academe. Give us a substantive paper, and we will help you get it published by making it readable. 

Sometimes, we become so focused on the readability that we forget the technical side – such as consistency in format, heading, attribution, sequence, etc. So when the press delivers the new Tambara to us, we feel another kind of panic. What have we overlooked this time?! Because even if the articles have gone through several editing, and the laid-out articles proofread twice or thrice, errors can still slip through – a misspelling here, a senseless sentence there – and so we don’t want to look closely at the inside pages. But evaluate it we must, and so in January, we meet, go over each page, make resolutions, and plan for the next issue, all the while exchanging light banter. After all, August is too far away to panic.