The Lord of the Rings and Other Popular Literature in Siouan Languages

[Bryan James Gordon]

Thanks, Travis, for a well-reasoned and passionate offering to a quiet,
quiet list!

Travis is right, of course, that it's a shame that the United States does
not give indigenous languages the support necessary to flourish. Worded as a
challenge to Siouan linguists, though, this beautiful idea is likely not to
get much traction. Linguists generally work 80 hours a week on whatever
projects they have funding for. Myself, I often put in a good bit more than
that. My job as a PhD student is to master my fields, Linguistics and
Anthropology, while steering my research towards the issues of language
revitalisation and power and identity that I'm passionate about, and that
takes a minimum of 80 hours a week.

And then there's money. If all of us were independently wealthy, we could do
any project we wanted to. I certainly am not. I can hardly afford to travel
to required conferences. The sheer amount of time and human heads that would
have to go into a project of this scale would require serious grantwriting.
Anyone can write a grant successfully, but it takes time. Even assuming
there are four or five linguists who want to do something like this, their
hands are likely a bit too tied.

Linguists are certainly responsible in part for both the problem that faces
us and for trying to solve it. Linguists who document languages and claim
that they're "saving them" are dishonest (or at best naïve), but the real
reason there's no support for indigenous languages in this settler state is
that the official attitude is that documentation is enough. And the real
reason for that is that the public attitude is even worse. Some granting
agencies are working to improve the official attitude, including ELF, and
linguists are at the forefront of these movements. It's fair to challenge
linguists to change the United States' attitude towards its ongoing genocide
of its colonised nations, but it's not exactly in linguists' power to
procure the resources necessary to translate Tolkien.

In tactical terms, with regards to a project like this, you can't just
decide that it's a good idea for Siouan languages in general. There has to
be community support for it, and that has to come from specific communities.
There are no ideas which are good ideas for Siouan languages in general,
because each community is different. It doesn't have to be the entire
community that supports it, but there have to be enough people for it to be
taken seriously. And you have to understand the political situation that
this kind of thing involves. That doesn't have to be a detractor, but at the
very least you have to know who's for and who's against like the back of
your hand.

Most of the people I know in the Poncas and Ioways and Otoes would prefer
not to have anything to do with popular literature. One person I know has
done a good bit of translation already, for things that are much closer to
traditional culture and therefore easier to translate, and that project
exhausted him. I know one Ponca and one non-Indian person involved in the
Omaha language who might be enthusiastic about this project, but that
doesn't mean either of them could get support from enough Poncas or Omahas
to make it possible.

Another concern is relying on Biblical translations. The Bible has been
translated into Native languages in many different ways, not all of which
serve as good literary models. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find any
Bible translation, other than perhaps in Ojibwe or Cherokee or the like,
which was intended by the native speakers as "literary" per se. All of these
Bible translations have been sculpted by the interests of the missionary
linguists that helped with them. Some of them did extensive revisions, which
may or may not have altered the extent to which the language recorded
reflects traditional styles. In fact, some revisions were intentionally
supposed to change the style, in order to make it more "Christian" or more
"acceptable" or "rational" or "linear"! Revisions like this, which are
likely buried under a hundred years of dust and sometimes are not even
indicated at all, would seriously compromise any attempt to use a Biblical
translation as a representative of "Native literary style".

Well, Travis, you're right to be enthusiastic about something like this if
you can find the people, the money, the support and the language to make it
work. Anything that spreads interest in these languages, especially among
the kids, is great. You listed off a hundred potential problems with
translation, so I'm sure just a handful more won't dampen your enthusiasm.

It will be a lot easier to get support for making written and spoken
versions of traditional stories available to communities. Both funding
agencies and community members often support projects like this, and there's
a great need for it in a time when traditional cultures are being
exterminated, and surviving ones recast as unchanging reactionary relics to
ensure their death from within. Of course, doing only traditional things in
the Native language, and leaving popular things to English, also turns
Native languages into relics. It's very difficult to get kids speaking,
expand domains of use, and preserve traditional culture all at the same
time. It's a very difficult trail to navigate, but since you obviously have
the energy and willingness to put the effort into that email, I encourage
you to navigate it and learn along with the rest of us what can be done.
Ambitious projects like a Tolkien translation have often motivated
idealistic linguists and non-linguists alike, but the realities of the
situation often force these projects to move slowly ahead on the back
burner, until the people, money and support materialise. If that's the case,
I'd encourage you to keep working towards your goal, but not let it get in
the way of getting things done today.

- Bryan James Gordon

2008/8/11 Shane Henry <shenry74 at yahoo.com>

>  Dear Siouanists,
>
> This may sound laughable to some, but I suggest it is important to
> translate popular works of the world -- such as the Lord of the Rings, Harry
> Potter, and the Chronicles of Narnia -- into American Indian languages. Each
> of the Indian languages ought to be the vehicle for a literary language with
> a similar range of expression as any other modern language. Whatever is
> being achieved for the lesser-used languages of Europe, such as Basque,
> Irish, and Welsh, ought to happen for the American Indian languages.
>
> Some of the Middle-earth stories (typically only The Hobbit though) has
> been translated into lesser-used languages: Breton, Catalan, Luxembourgish,
> Esperanto, Faeroese, Galician, Aragonese, Latin, and Irish. I'm glad to say
> that Harry Potter has even been translated into a native North American
> language: Greenlandic. Popular literature in Native languages would ignite
> enthusiasm in many Indian youngsters (and oldsters) in their language. A
> translation of one of these works into an Indian language would likely even
> make the national news.
>
> Before this could be done, it'd probably be necessary that the language
> first have a translation of the Bible (at least the New Testament) in order
> to have a literary model to work from. I'm sad to say that, according to
> Ethnologue, only these Siouan languages have Bible translations or portions
> thereof: Dakota (1879), Stoney (portions 1970), Osage (portions), Ho-Chunk
> (portions 1907), and Crow (1980-98),
>
> Though the more vigorous languages such as Lakota and Crow will have native
> speakers from which a translator can receive feedback when coining phrases
> and terminology, some of the languages, such as Tutelo and Biloxi, will
> required rebuilding. Vocabulary and grammar will have to be reconstructed
> using sister languages and Proto-Siouan. Modern technical terminology could
> be calqued on words from other Siouan languages which have developed modern
> terminology.
>
> Since Middle-earth is an enthusiasm of mine, I will give a detailed
> overview of the challenges of making a quality translation of the
> Middle-earth Legendarium,
>
> What is the Middle-earth Legendarium? The three principle works of the
> Legendarium are: 1) The Silmarillion
> 2) The Hobbit
> 3) The Lord of the Rings
>
> In fact, Tolkien explicitly stated (in his Letters) that he preferred the
> three works be published as a single work entitled The Saga of the Three
> Jewels and the Rings of Power (or, The Saga of the Jewels and the Rings).
> The Legendarium also includes some minor works such as The Adventures of Tom
> Bombadil and Bilbo's Last Song.
>
> Though the more accessible works -- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings --
> probably ought to be published first, keeping The Silmarillion in mind would
> be helpful in maintaining a consistent over-all vision for the translation.
>
> One of the challeges of translating these works is that Tolkien feigns that
> the Middle-earth Legendarium is actually a translation into English of
> stories from an antediluvian text ("The Red Book of Westmarch") which he
> mysteriously acquired. The events of Middle-earth are supposed to
> have happened on our own Earth (specifically in Europe), about six thousand
> years ago, before the Flood. Tolkien says that in order to make the stories
> from the Red Book seem less alien to the modern (English-speaking) reader,
> he translated not only the narrative text of the book from the antediluvian
> Common Speech (a.k.a. Westron language) into Modern English, but also
> painstakingly translated Westron personal names and place-names into English
> equivalents. In the Appendix of the Lord of the Rings, he gives several
> examples of how he translated Westron names into English. For example, "The
> Shire" is supposed to be an English translation of the Westron <Sûzat>
> "sphere of occupation, division of a realm, fief (+definitive ending)".
>
> Taking this scheme further, he supposedly translated the language of the
> Northmen of Lake-town and Dale into the Old Norse language because the
> Northern language is supposed to be distantly related to Westron in a
> similar way that Modern English is related to Norse. Old Norse names are
> also used to represent the "Outer Names" of the Dwarves, who borrowed
> Northern names so as to keep their own true names secret. And since the
> Mark-speech of the Rohirrim is something of an archaic version of the
> Westron language, Tolkien said he fictively translated their language as Old
> English. There are several bits of other Westron-related languages that are
> similarly "fictively translated".
>
> Here's a summary of the feigned translation scheme:
>
> Late Westron = Modern English
>
> Middle Westron = Middle English (e.g. Monendei, Trewesdei, Hevensdei)
>
> Ancient Westron, Ancient Hobbit-speech, Mark-speech, and Beorning-speech =
> Old English (e.g. Langstrand, Holbytla, Meduseld, Beorn)
>
> Primitive Anduin-speech = Primitive English/Ingvaeonic (e.g. Marhwini,
> Marhari)
>
> Northern = Old Norse (e.g. Smaug, the Dale-man names: Bard, Bain, Brand;
> Thorin, and the other Outer Names of the Dwarves)
>
> Woodman-speech (apparently the source of some names borrowed by Fallohide
> Hobbits) = Old High German (e.g. Fredegar, Adalard)
>
> Vidugavian = Gothic (e.g. Vidugavia)
>
> Old Bree-landish elements in Westron place-names of Bree-land = Old
> British/Brythonic elements found in English place-names (e.g. Bree, Archet)
>
> Old Marish-speech elements in Westron names of the Marish and Buckland =
> Old Welsh (Gorhendad, Bombadil, Yale, Crick-)
>
> Elvish elements in Hobbit Westron names = Latin (Gerontius) and Greek
> (Astyanax), in some cases in French form (Peregrin, Paladin). Since the
> Elvish languages are the "classical languages" of Middle-earth.
>
> Only languages in the same family as Westron (the "Northmanic" languages,
> which fill the role of the "Germanic" language family) are fictively
> translated. Other (non-Northman) Mannish languages of the Third Age, such as
> Dunlendish, Khand-speech, Haradrian, Wose-speech, and so on, are left
> untranslated. Also, Northman names are only translated in stories set in the
> Third Age (the time of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings), while
> Northmanic names in First Age and Second Age stories (from The Silmarillion)
> are left untranslated (such as the Hadorian, Beorian, and Adunaic
> languages). Lastly, the languages of non-Mannish peoples are in all cases
> left untranslated, including High-elvish (Quenya), Grey-elvish (Sindarin),
> Dwarvish (Khuzdul), Entish, Black Speech, Orkish, and others.
>
> When the first foreign translations of the LotR came out, there was great
> confusion as to which names should be translated, and how. In reaction to
> mangling of the names, Tolkien at first stated that all names should be left
> as they are in the English version, adapting only such things as the article
> "The" in "The Shire", and perhaps respelling the English names according to
> that language's orthography (like maybe German "Scheir" or Italian
> "Sciair"). However, Tolkien later changed his mind, and decided that the
> names in the Westron language ought to be translated into the language of
> translation. Yet he still retained Old Norse and Old English as the "fictive
> translation" of the Northern language and Mark-speech regardless of the
> language of translation*. Because of this complexity, Tolkien wrote a "Guide
> to the Names of the Lord of the Rings".for translators (the most updated
> version is in The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion by Hammond and
> Scull). Since Tolkien's death, several articles have been written about the
> methodology for translating the Legendarium, including critiques of existing
> translations, such as by Walking Tree Publishers (
> http://www.walking-tree.org/  ) and the Tolkienian linguistics journal
> Vinyar Tengwar (http://www.elvish.org/VT/ ).
>
> *Some have suggested that the translation/localization scheme could be
> taken even further than what Tolkien dictated -- that other Primary World
> (that is Tolkien's term for the "real world") languages could be substituted
> for Old Norse and Old English (and Old British, etc.) depending on the
> geographic milieu of the language of translation.
>
> If this weren't complex enough, Tolkien also "fictively translates" some of
> the *orthographies*. For example, Tolkien feigned that he "visually
> translated" the actual antediluvian Dwarven Cirth runes into Anglo-Saxon
> Furthark runes for the map of Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit. However he used
> the actual Cirth in The Lord of the Rings. But even when the "authentic"
> Dwarvish Cirth and Elvish script (Tengwar) are used to write the Westron
> language, the texts are represented as English, so this too involves fictive
> translation. For this purpose, Tolkien invented an "English Mode" for both
> Cirth runes and Tengwar script (kind of like writing the English language
> using Norse runes or the Arabic script).
>
> The best foreign-language translations invent their own "mode" for writing
> the Anglo-saxon runes (for The Hobbit map), and for the Dwarven Cirth, and
> the Elvish Tengwar (used the title pages of the LotR). For example, the
> Catalan, Italian, and Norwegian translations of The Hobbit translate the map
> runes into their own language, written in Anglo-Saxon runes, whereas most
> other translations just leave the runes in English.
>
> In, for example, a Lakota translation, the Westron language would be
> translated as Modern Lakota. How would the bits of Middle Westron (seen in
> the old Hobbit weekday names in the Appendix) be translated though? Would
> these names be represented by writing Early Modern Lakota with a Lewis &
> Clark-era orthography? There'd also be a Lakota Mode of Anglo-saxon Futhark,
> of Dwarvish Cirth, and of Elvish Tengwar.
>
> Another difficulty is translating the dense Appendices of the Return of the
> King, which contain complex descriptions of the languages, calendars, and
> genealogies of Middle-earth, and an explanation of the "fictive translation"
> scheme itself. Many foreign translations simply omit most or all of these
> Appendices. However, they certainly could (I suggest should) be included.
>
> Lastly, the stories as a whole are not easy translations. Much of the
> narration and dialogue contains archaic and lofty language. Yet there
> are other linguistic registers: the humble cottager speech of Samwise,
> Gollum's silibant speech, and debased Troll and Orc cant.
>
>  I feel it is disgrace that the supposedly richest country in the world
> will not support the cultural sphere to a degree necessary for
> its indigenous languages to flourish. There ought to be as much
> cultural fruit in each of these languages as there is in Welsh or Irish. I
> challenge the Siouan linguists to undertake this or a similar endeavor.
>
> Best wishes,
> Travis Henry
>
>
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