In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [71], (1) Lines: 0 to 27 ——— 0.73601pt P ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [71], (1) four Time, Space, and Memory Murielle Nagy When the raven became aware of himself, light came into the world, and grass tussocks turned into men. Creation. Anonymous Eastern Inuit Anthropologists working in the Arctic do not always have the time and opportunity before undertaking fieldwork to learn the language(s) of the people with whom they will work. Hence they need to hire local research assistants who will act as interpreters during the interviews. Since oral narratives are often the major sources of information with which anthropologists will work, the recorded interviews need to be transcribed and translated. However, translations are not perfect duplicates of the original narratives; they are only equivalents (e.g., Hannoum 2002; Tihanyi 2002). Although translatorsdotheirbesttotransferintoanotherlanguagewhatthenarrators have said, there are times when the original meaning of words and expressions is distorted, if not lost, during the translation process. Furthermore, once anthropologists interpret translated narratives, there is another level of translation going on, and if the translations do not represent the intention of the narrator, elements of the narratives may be misinterpreted. Yet when the researcher realizes that translations of specific words from the original are somewhat peculiar and the words are given in a variety of different ways by the translators, the translations themselves can become a source of information. Indeed one then wonders why the translator chose to translate the words in that way. Was it to get the closest equivalent in the language of the translation and thus make the translation more fluid? But Nagy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [72], (2) Lines: 27 ——— 6.4pt PgV ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: Eject [72], (2) more important, were words changed because the translator could not find similar concepts in the language of the translation? The answers to such questions can help us to understand better the language and the culture of the narrator. This chapter deals with the theoretical and methodological implications of undertaking anthropological research through translation. More specifically I discuss how Inuvialuit talk about events in the past and how translators choose to translate their words. I became interested in the representations of time, space, and memory in narratives while editing English translations of archival tapes and interviews done with Inuvialuit elders during oral history projects (see Nagy 1994, 1999).1 Context of Research The Inuvialuit make up the Inuit population living in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The traditional territory of the indigenous Inuvialuit extended approximately from Barter Island in the west to Cape Lyon in the east. Before contacts with whalers, traders, and missionaries at the end of the nineteenth century, their population is estimated to have been two thousand (Franklin 1971 [1828]: 86–228; Petitot 1876: x). The Inuvialuit were thus one of the largest Inuit populations in the Arctic before drastic decimation due to epidemics in the first two decades of the twentieth century (McGhee 1974: xi; D. G. Smith 1984: 349). By that time trapping had become the major economic activity and it was to flourish until the 1970s. In the land-claim agreement of 1984, the Inuinnait of Holman (on Victoria Island) became part of the Inuvialuit. Today, the Inuvialuit number about five thousand (Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami 2002). The Inuvialuit belong to three distinct linguistic groups. They are the Uummarmiut, who live in the Mackenzie Delta in the communities of Aklavik and Inuvik; the Siglit, who live in the coastal communities of Tuktoyaktuk ,Paulatuk,andSachsHarbouronBanksIsland;andtheKangiryuarmiut, who live in the community of Holman on Victoria Island (see map 4.1). The dialects of each linguistic group (which are named by adding the suffix -tun to the ethnonym) are mainly spoken by elders over sixty years old. 2 Uummarmiut means “people of the evergreens and willows.” They are the descendants of people from Alaska who moved to the Mackenzie Delta at the end of the nineteenth century, again in the 1920s as muskrat trapping developed in the Mackenzie Delta, and finally in the mid-1930s and...

Share