Translating Oral Literature in Indigenous Societies: Ethnic Aesthetic Performances in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings

This article is about translating oral literature in indigenous societies, especially in multilingual and multicultural areas such as Northwestern California, where shared, regional material becomes ethnically marked when seemingly small changes are introduced. A case in point is the profound symbolic effects that accompany a shift in languages. Though Dell Hymes was deeply concerned with questions of translation, he rarely applied his analytical framework to translations within indigenous cultural settings; more often, he focused on the subtleties of translating oral literature into English, with emphasis on faithfully representing aspects of the structure and style. One way to build on Hymes's legacy would be to apply his careful attention to matters of structure and style to a discussion of translation within indigenous traditions, where this approach can tease out minor differences that take on great symbolic significance. Translation is a practical, daily matter in much of the world, and in this sense Hymes's groundbreaking work on the poetics of translation continues to shed light on the subtleties of creating meaning and ethnic distinction in multilingual areas. A commentary to this essay by Charles L. Briggs appears later in this special issue.