Born in the Blood: On Native American Translation

19. Memories of Translation: Looking for the Right Words

Memories of Translation Looking for the Right Words M. Terry Thompson and Laurence C. Thompson This is not a technical essay on the sport of translation. It is some reminiscences about the experiences of a pair of linguists while studying several of the twenty-three Salishan languages of the Pacific Northwest during the active working years of our lives, between 1960 and 1995. We realize how very fortunate we were to be able to work with elders of the Lummi, Lushootseed, Thompson River Salish, Klallam, and Tillamook. As linguists working on dying unwritten languages, where much if not all of the traditional culture survives only in the memory of elderly speakers, it is hard to translate from the native language into English. In the case of things, the speaker must describe the item and its uses, and then the translator must try to find an English word that fits the description . Often these objects show up only behind museum glass or in photos from times past. It is one thing to translate from one living language to another, and quite another from a dying one. This calls for a linguistic archaeology of sorts, re-creating the traditional world before deciding how to capture it fairly in English. Language and culture are also inextricably intertwined. Translating from a language, not only words but the worldview behind them is necessary . Translating one European language into another poses little problem because there is so much shared culture. Though the languages may differ greatly in structure, such as between Finnish and Swedish, or Basque and Spanish, the modern cultures overlap greatly and ease the translator ’s task. Translating Salish into English is quite different from translat446 ing from Swedish into Finnish. It is more like trying to pound square pegs into round holes, and often the holes are black holes. The cultures vary greatly, and the way culture is encoded in words varies greatly. To become an expert in Salish culture so as to get things right in English requires access to a community often distrustful of outsiders, especially those asking intimate questions about things existing mostly in the graying heads of the language’s last speakers. There is iceberg tip after iceberg tip, and the translator must recognize the entire berg to get the idea right. As we have analyzed the grammars and built dictionaries for several languages, we have come across some interesting, frustrating, funny, and sometimes emotional problems in the exercise of translation. All field linguists have these experiences in routine research. English-speaking linguists like us normally find difficulty working with the traditional languages of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. We have been fortunate , since all of our language experts spoke English fluently. We have great admiration for those who must translate through a third language. And there is a special place in the world of translation for those who share no common language with their consultants, when actions are the only means of communication. We admire the dedication and frustration of those who must translate their daily experiences into another language. Larry’s beginning experience as a linguistic field worker was two years in Vietnam (1950–52), resulting in a number of articles and a grammar of Vietnamese, a tone language. At that time French was the second language in Vietnam, and Larry’s French was fluent, so he found it too difficult to get much information on the language in Saigon. He had to drive, in a French military convoy, up into the hill country to find speakers who would teach him Vietnamese—through French. His first experience with the very different Salish languages was in the 1950s, when he first started teaching at the University of Washington. He began his study with Martha Abbott, who grew up on the Lummi Reservation north of Seattle. She was willing to try to teach him some of her Lummi language. In the beginning it was frustrating for both of them. The Salish languages have a number of sounds English speakers have trouble getting their tongues around, and they were unwritten; the spoken language first had to be translated into phonetics, so that took most of the time at first. The Salish languages also have a wealth of suffixes. One word in Thompson River Salish has been documented as having eleven suffixes. Memories of Translation 447 Mrs. Abbott had not used her language for a long time and...