on translation

[William J Poser]

>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