CJ and "pidgin English" translations of it

Thu Oct 16 01:45:04 UTC 2003

Seems to me that any time one translates from one language to another, if
one is fully competent in both languages, one has the opportunity to produce
a "broken", "tonto-style" version in the target language or a "graceful"
version. It is even possible to translate a "tonto-style" text in one
language into a "graceful" text in another.

"Traduttori, traditori" the old Italian maxim says: "Translators—traitors".
*Any* text in *any* language will lose and/or (usually "and") gain something
in translation to another language, and there will be more than one arguably
best translation for it.

But of course it would never occur to most people who are fluent in both
English and Italian to translate a graceful text in one into a "tonto-style"
text in the other. That this is frequently done by fluent anglophones when
putting CJ texts into English is not a linguistic issue so much as a
sociopolitical, sociopsychological, etc. one.

But when your correspondent writes

"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?"

other issues are in play. Of course "less English-literate nineteenth
century Aboriginal people" (perhaps meaning people whose "English" is just
as much a pidgin as their parents' CJ ever was) would produce a more broken
English. (For that matter, a lot of Euronorthwesterners of the time who
thought of themselves as fluent in CJ probably translated English texts into
relatively "broken" CJ, and then pontificated about the deficiencies of the
medium.) As for a published version of a translation, what is the purpose?
If your primary interest is in approximating the English of an illiterate
19th-century Aboriginal speaker, go for brokenness. If you primary interest
in is conveying the sense of the text or utterance to a literate
21st-century English-reader, go for grace ... assuming that the CJ is
graceful in its context.

lilEnd

        ROS' Haruo / 204 N 39th / Seattle WA 98103 / Usono
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      ("la Esperantisto antauxe nomata Liland Brajant Ros'")

>From: "David D. Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU>
>Reply-To: "David D. Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU>
>To: CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>Subject: CJ and "pidgin English" translations of it
>Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:30:17 -0400
>
>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.
> >

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