on translation

[MJ Hardman]

You are quite right, and it is awesome.  We had a similar experience in a
conference we sponsored back in 1975 where we provided the logistics for the
meeting of peoples who spoke indigenous languages throughout Latin America.
We supplied simultaneous translation for English and Spanish for the general
sessions, but not for the sessions that were indigenous people only.  Since
some of the people attending did not speak Spanish well, we were told of a
lot of such translation across many of the languages. But what I most
remember was the final banquet when so many got up spontaneously to thank us
and did so in their own languages and the many ways in which people then got
up to translate across so many other languages the beautiful words being
said.  It still gives me chills to remember.  We had a banquet planned but
it was entirely taken over by our invitees in the most beautiful and most
multilingual manner imaginable.  It lives only in our memories; we didn't
get it recorded nor written down nor filmed.  But that is OK too.  Like you
say, it was awesome!

In addition, such translation has given rise to a new variety of Spanish in
the Andes.  I was recently translating into English some work done by some
of the teachers in Tupe when I taught there in 2006 (it will shortly be up n
the earthquake webpage; I'll let this list know when it is there).  I was
brought up short.  I had translated it into Spanish because, now, everyone
is multilingual with Spanish and that is necessary for bilingual education,
and had experienced no problem.  Going into English made the Andean Spanish
shout at me.

Also, in Bolivia, the market women are typically multilingual starting with
both Quechua and Aymara.  As well, toponyms speak to past bilingualism, in
our area mostly Jaqi and some variety of Quechua, but one student did a
thesis regarding Moquegua, mostly Aymara today, but clearly with Quechua,
Puquina and Aymara multilingualism in the past.

A lovely topic.  We should indeed be more aware of this.

MJ

On 10/1/08 12:38 AM, "phil cash cash" <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:

> One additional subject not too well known to the idea of translation is wholly
> internal indigenous translation and translators.  Most linguists and anthros
> speak of the translation act as "making sense of the foreign" and,
> maybe due in
> part to our written language bias, creating words as things--texts, corpora,
> books, dictionaries, bibles, etc.
> 
> But Indigenous translation and translators tend to exist unobserved by
> outsiders.  In one example of which I am intimately familiar is found in the
> Columbia Plateau with what are often called "echos" or indigenous translators.
> Generally speaking, speech communities in this region share a somewhat unified
> culture but are strongly multilingual or were at least such in modern times
> pre-1960s.  The presence of these "echos" promoted an indigenous
> multilingualism (no Eng in earlier times but it is more common to hear Eng
> now).  Several years ago, I once gave a short speech in Nez Perce at a ritual
> gathering and was doubled teamed by these echos, one translating Nez
> Perce into
> Columbia River Sahaptin and the other translating the same words from Columbia
> River Sahaptin into English.  It was awesome!  Other more public roles
> available to "echos" are serving as translators at the Tribal General Councils
> where they translate English into the local vernacular.  Naturally, these
> "echos" require superior linguistic/interpretive skills and it is a demanding
> occupation.  But, they too are experiencing a decline and lament the loss of
> our languages more so than most.  Certainly, as a linguistic
> anthropologist and
> tribal member, I hope to work with these extraordinary individuals since they
> are endangered as much as the languages are endangered!
> 
> Phil Cash Cash
> UofA
>