on translation

[Wayne Leman]

Bill, I found this same reaction among Cheyennes. In fact, there is very 
little desire among Cheyennes to read their own language. I hate to say it, 
but I think sometimes that those who have the greatest desire for a people 
group to become literate in their own language are people who are not 
members of that people group.

People want to read for a variety of reasons (often, they want to learn to 
read a majority language for economic reasons, so they can get a better job, 
etc.). People decide to  maintain their languages for a variety of reasons. 
There is little that we linguists can do about either, I suggest. We can, 
obviously, serve as resource people when people do want to write their 
language, records their oral literature, or develop curricula to try to 
teach their language to their own people so it will be preserved.

I collected a large number of Cheyenne stories and first person oral 
narratives and published them. But Cheyennes have little interest in reading 
them, in their language. They would rather buy books written by 
non-Cheyennes, in English, about the old days among the Cheyennes, 
especially if there are good pictures.

I don't know how characteristic the Cheyenne situation is of that of other 
language groups, but after several years of trying to do what linguists do 
among the Cheyennes, I had to conclude that what I had to offer was not very 
valuable to them, at least not now. Someday they will look at the 
dictionaries and collections of oral literature and wish they still had 
their language. It's disheartening. And it's happening all over the world. 
There is plenty of blame to go around. But we also need a good amount of 
realism as we seek government grants and other resources to try to do what 
sometimes the people themselves have already decided they don't want. They 
made their decision when they did not teach their language to their 
children. And, yes, if we survey them, they will always say that their 
language should be taught in the schools. But it's just a token effort. It 
can't keep the language alive.

If we want to give people something that they want, we need to find out what 
they want, not simply give them what we think they need. If they want to 
hear the old bedtime stories, we can teach them how to record them to CDs. 
If they want to learn how to identify traditional herbs or keep up 
traditional basket-weaving or other skills, there might be some ways we can 
help with those tasks.

Sorry for the negative words, and as someone who is part Native American, a 
member of a group in Alaska who lost our language entirely to the 
colonialists, not just once, but twice (Russians, then Americans), I really 
do care.

Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

> >I think it's quite interesting in all of this discussion of
>>translation that no one has pointed out that perhaps the best
>>idea is to start by collecting the stories and traditions of
>>the people in question and then make those available to the
>>community in a written format.
>
> That is partly because the thread started out on translation
> and partly because what you describe is, I think, routine
> practice nowadays on the part of secular linguists and not
> infrequently on the part of missionaries as well. I know that
> "our" SIL couple produced a number of booklets in Carrier,
> some of traditional stories, some of texts made up for the purpose
> of teaching literacy
>
> That said, there is also the question of what people want to read about.
> In communities in which the oral tradition is intact, people
> often don't want to write it down. They don't need to, since
> they already have it in oral form, and they may even object to
> it as non-traditional or foreign. The kind of material that
> they may be interested in seeing in written form may be
> precisely what is new and foreign. A Navajo friend made this
> point to me some years ago. She said that there was no need for
> written versions of traditional Navajo texts as the people know
> them. Her view was that what would be most appreciated would be
> Navajo translations of materials about non-Navajo ways of life,
> including even science fiction.
>
> Bill
>