on translation

[MJ Hardman]

And then there is the whole issue of funding.  On one grant we did not get
it was stated in the judgements for not awarding that our arrangement to
involve native speakers and include annotations, grammatical analysis, etc
etc with all of the old texts from notebooks, was utterly useless; all we
had to do was scan the notebooks and some linguist in the future could do
all the analysis.  When all speakers are dead.  And no one is there is *say*
what it all meant.  So we keep plugging along as we can, but language is a
whole.  Right now, for Jaqaru, things are still so bad because of the
earthquake, but we all keep trying.  Right now there is one young man who is
trying to write down everything his grandfather told him.  His grandfather,
a compadre of ours, recently passed away.  This young man will, I think, be
one of the ones some of you have mentioned, but right now he is having
difficulty not thinking in Spanish, which is his dominant language.  But
that he keeps writing a lot and sending it to us for correction opens such
hope!

For those of you who don't know, 'us' is myself and Dr. Dimas Bautista, a
native speaker of Jaqaru, now in his 90s, who has completed a history of
Jaqaru, writing down what his grandparents told him, in Spanish but with
massive Jaqaru examples.  We thought we had a publisher, but the editor
changed while Dr. Bautista was correcting his work, and the new editor could
see no value in it.  So we are looking again.  We've approached a couple of
foundations and were blown off, quite rudely, actually.  I want it published
by someplace where it will be recognized, even if I have to subsidize the
publication because the book is so good and so full of such massive
information.  Oh well.  Translation and its problems.

MJ

On 9/30/08 7:47 PM, "William J Poser" <wjposer at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

> On my use of Navajo as an example, I wasn't suggesting that the Navajo
> situation is typical but mentioning it as an example of the variety of
> ideas people have as to what would be useful to have in their language.
> 
> With regard to linguists' role in recording culture, that again is
> complicated.
> Certainly linguists working on endangered languages should be prepared
> to record some cultural information, and in order to investigate some
> linguistic
> topics have to learn about related aspects of culture (I couldn't
> understand the different Carrier words translatable as "scraper"
> until I learned to do skins) but it is also necessary to recognize
> that linguists are not necessarily well qualified as students of culture.
> This of course varies from linguist to linguist. Furthermore, the wider
> the range of topics studied, the more time and effort is necessary.
> When, as is so often the case, a single linguist is at work on a language,
> he or she may not have the time or expertise to do both a good job on the
> language and a good job on culture. Indeed, even within the linguistic
> area there are specialized areas that most linguists are not well equipped
> to study, in particular, the biological terminology. It is highly
> desirable to have a professional ethnobiologist involved.
> 
> The other issue here is that in communities that are concerned about
> who studies what, which is very common, linguists often receive permission
> only to work on language. Even if they receive other information in the
> course of their work, there are issues as to what they can do with it.
> Depending on the arrangement with the community and the community's
> sensitivities, as well as the kind of information, it may be that they
> are expected to ignore this information, or record it but keep it to
> themselves. In some communities there are even problems with handing
> over the notes or tapes to the community. For example, suppose that
> a linguist learns about traditional spirituality in a community that
> is split between evangelicals who regard all such things as pagan evil,
> and people more sympathetic to traditional practices. Depending on which
> group is in power, they may or may not be interested in preserving
> this information, and may even use it to persecute the people who
> provide it.
> 
> The upshot is that while I think that it is good for linguists to know how
> to collect cultural information, especially information related to
> linguistic topics (such as kinship terminology), the overall task of
> documentation is one that probably should involve more than just linguists.
> Furthermore, communities that want cultural information recorded should
> discuss this with the linguist and negotiate how it is to be handled and
> what the boundaries are.
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
>  
>