ALL teachers can be said to translate and interpret material to some extent, and this is particularly true of the teacher whose practices are accented. This chapter examines two examples of the ‘ideal’ teacher's accentedness; and in addition the asymmetries of power and advancement involved in this translation and accenting work. Although this chapter offers the clearest examples of accented teachers in action, it is also the least optimistic chapter. Translation and interpreting are essential aspects of accented learning, but what the discussion below acknowledges is that African languages and English are often not simply different languages through which we gain neutral access to equal versions of the same material. Routes in and out of the classroom are not merely translated versions of one another, and the English language version of knowledge carries its own accents. The ‘English’ version of a text or a conversation is not a neutral version out of and into which other languages are translated.

The first teacher, or set of teachers, is a group of film facilitators. We see them interpret their educational material to their audience, but they also address the viewer (us) to interpret their work to us. The second teacher is also a guide, and we learn that he has acted as guide in a number of spheres. He is the man referred to as ‘Sizwe’ in Jonny Steinberg's book Three Letter Plague. In this chapter all the teachers are men, and all have one topic: disease and how to care for the body.

The film (Ask Me, I'm Positive) follows three men and a mobile cinema making a few stops in Lesotho to screen educational films about HIV and to talk to local viewers about the stories represented on the screen. Two of the young men in the film had been university students, and through various twists of fate are no longer students but teachers instead. They are wonderful teachers, engaging, responsive to context, self-aware, often showing vulnerability – all the things one would want a teacher to be. But of course locked up in these new careers is also a huge sadness, the sadness of lives affected by HIV, and the doors the disease is closing for them even as it opens others.