CJ and "pidgin English" translations of it

[David D. Robertson]

The following is a note from one of our list members about some CJ
translations I did for that person out of the Kamloops Wawa.  We thought
the issues raised might be interesting to you folks.  --  Dave R.


> ----- Original Message -----
>> This is fascinating stuff.  I wonder if less English-literate
>> nineteenth century Aboriginal people would translate it in more broken
>> "tonto-style" english, and if that is something I should consider for
>> any published version of the translation?  Late nineteenth century
>> renditions of Aboriginal people speaking Chinook (ie. court
>> transcripts
>> and petitions to the govt) generally have the English so terribly
>> broken-up as to sound stereotypically degrading.  Where might the
>> balance be?  For example, your text "skukum tomtom kopa S.T. pi kopa
>> styuil" (which you translate so gracefully as "faithful to God and to
>> prayer") could, I supppose, be read simply as "strong to the Chief
>> Above and to prayer."  I guess I'm thinking here of the people who say
>> Chinook was far to limited to convey anything in a sophisticated or
>> complex manner, and yet clearly, your translation is both
>> sophisticated
>> and complex.  I'm sure you deal with this all the time as a linguist.
>> How would you advise me?


On Friday, October 10, 2003, at 08:05 PM, David Robertson wrote:

> Your question touches on a fascinating point.  I've noticed some
> (English-literate) learners of CJ in earlier times and now, who put any
> English translation of their own CJ productions into that
> word-for-word or
> "broken English" mode.  I've also noticed some representations of
> Indians'
> CJ in the same "broken" mode.  Interestingly, I don't think I've seen
> much
> of *Whites' CJ* given that kind of "Tonto treatment."  Have you?  I
> suspect
> a racial stereotype myself.
>
> Another point of view should be brought to bear, though, in fairness:
> Perhaps the old court transcripts, at least, show someone's painstaking
> effort at transparency and truth in representation of Native
> plaintiffs,
> defendants and witnesses.  That is, especially in the era when Chinook
> Jargon was pretty widely known among Whites, it might have been quite
> an
> important consideration to convey testimony translated from CJ in a
> form
> recognizable as hewing to CJ norms of syntax, (non-)inflection, and
> vocabulary choice.  One wouldn't want the courts' decisions being
> frequently
> attacked on the grounds that "the translator made the Indians sound
> like
> educated men," and the simplest preventative measure to avoid such
> expensive
> and destructive goings-on could have been to make the English version
> of the
> Natives' CJ sound pidginish.
>
> Furthermore, I take it as well-documented that the English of very many
> Natives in BC and elsewhere circa 1904 was much simplified -- probably
> having many pidgin characteristics -- in comparison with Standard
> English.
> It may have seemed to Whites as though "all Indians talk broken."
> Thus,
> hearing Natives represented as speaking correct English, even in a
> translation from CJ or a Native tongue, could have seemed ridiculous
> on the
> face of it to many Whites.  Such are the metalinguistic assumptions
> people
> are known to make.
>
> Against this, I propose however that many Native people were quite
> fluent in
> CJ.  There were standards, of which both White and Native speakers of
> Jargon
> were aware, of what constituted fluent, "good" use of CJ.  We see the
> same
> ideas of a targeted set of grammatical rules and word-choices whether
> we
> look at the CJ speech of the one group or the other's.  And
> circumstantial
> evidence strongly indicates that there were those among the Shuswaps
> (and
> Lillooets and Thompsons and Okanagans, inter alia) who understood well
> the
> CJ of Father Le Jeune:  They subscribed in fairly significant numbers
> to
> Kamloops Wawa and were known to write letters in that variety of
> Jargon, and
> they attended LJ's religious services conducted in Jargon, singing
> hymns in
> that language.  Some of these people were even buried in graves marked
> by
> headstones written in shorthand Jargon, an indication they could be
> identified by their kin through that medium.  It's also appropriate to
> mention that the large Kamloops Wawa corpus is completely intelligible
> (there are just a handful of vocabulary differences, and those are
> cleared
> up by contextual cues) to those who know the creolized Grand Ronde,
> Oregon
> variety -- i.e. a variety which had become people's home language from
> birth, or in other words the variety used by the most fluent speakers
> ever.
>
> For these reasons I translate Kamloops Wawa into English that is
> nuanced
> enough to reflect the distinct ideas I find are intended in the Jargon
> original.  The snippet you quote below is an excellent demonstration.
> "Skukum tomtom" does literally mean 'strong heart,' but an important
> grammatical process of CJ is compounding into wholes that mean more
> than
> their parts, in this case 'faithful.'  Importantly "tomtom's" literal
> meaning is in English either 'heart' or 'mind' whereas in Jargon
> that's a
> single concept, paralleling notions found in the Native languages, and
> equally importantly there is an established convention in CJ that
> compounds
> ending in "tomtom" carry the sense of someone's characteristic
> disposition.
> Finally, spoken CJ disambiguates between a literal reading 'strong
> heart'
> and the result of compounding, 'faithful;' the person experienced with
> Chinook Jargon can infer the proper reading from the printed word as
> well.
> Thus "skukum tomtom" has as precise and distinct a meaning in CJ as
> say the
> English 'broken-hearted' has for us.
>
> "S.T." ("Sahali Tayi"), meaning 'God', is another great example.  The
> literal meaning in English is 'Above Chief', but "sahali" when applied
> to a
> person's characteristics (even God's) tends to mean 'superior, better
> than
> others', as in the compound "sahali tomtom" which means
> "characteristically
> having elevated thoughts."  Not only did "S.T." not have as limited a
> meaning as 'the Chief Above,' it also was such a frequently used term
> in
> Jargon that it clearly must have been the established way of referring
> to
> the (quickly well-established concept) of the Christian God.
>
> A final point, specifically relevant to the
> transliterations-and-translations I've done for you:  It would be
> established practice in linguistic publications to provide a
> word-for-word
> gloss of the CJ, in a line below the CJ itself and above the English
> translation.
>