Siraya update

[Rolland Nadjiwon]

Indeed, some of the problems in translation are unfathomable and some 
ridiculous.... For example: We come across the phrase 'Mother Earth' all 
the time. It works in English and possibly other languages also but not 
in Anishnabehmowin. Here's how it comes across...mother is ndodo - my 
breast(tit) and earth is aki - earth. The two combined, literally, say 
'tit earth' Our mother 'is' our breast not our earth.... And the beat 
goes on but in two different directions. The educational institutions 
don't really give a damn about language instruction or retention or 
recovery so long as the courses have strange words and pronunciations 
and puts them into the dollars.

Last evening, my step granddaughter was working on a paste up for her 
homework. I asked what she was doing and she told me she needed to do 
the paste up and then put the names of what she had pasted up in 
OjiCree. The idea floored me. OjiCree is a combination of 
Ojibway(Anishnabehmowin) and Cree(Mushkeegomowin). My granddaughter is 
Anishinabeh mentally, linguistically, culturally and geographically 
removed from OjiCree dialect, the idea of it being taught in schools in 
our area is absolutely ridiculous. None of the speakers of the local 
dialect would be able to speak with her or could they understand each 
other. It is wasted time, money, space, resources, hope and human 
potential, and is actually insulting in its level of ignorance(lack of 
knowledge) of the people they are supposedly representing or trying to 
save perhaps.

Give our communities that same opportunity to do the job right...no way. 
We are not educated enough, smart enough, aggressive enough, 
cosmopolitan enough and definitely not certified enough.

Dang, I guess I should never have started on this.... Here in my 
Mother's community, mahjon = go away. In the community I was born it 
means 'come here'.... Subtle, but we need to know this if any 
language/culture program is to be successful. In another community their 
word for 'horse' is our word for 'a big dog'....

-------
wahjeh
rolland nadjiwon



Jimrem at AOL.COM wrote:
>  
> >>Even if the materials are culturally appropriate, another problem
> with simply translating materials made for one language into another
> is that, if the languages are fairly closely related, it is all too
> easy to fail to translate completely.
>  
>  
> It is also very easy to fall prey to slight differences in dialects.  
> In the language I work with a couple of examples might be:
>  
> "Shake hands with me" in this dialect means "Kiss me" is a closely 
> related one.  And "Give me some milk" in this dialect in the other 
> would mean "Give me a breast."
>  
> Jim
>
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