Born in the Blood: On Native American Translation

9. Ethnopoetic Translation in Relation to Audio, Video, and New Media Representations

Ethnopoetic Translation in Relation to Audio, Video, and New Media Representations Robin Ridington, Jillian Ridington, Patrick Moore, Kate Hennessy, and Amber Ridington Introduction This chapter describes our use of video and Web-based media to present an electronic equivalent of “interlinear” translations of ethnographic texts. The initial tape recordings of elders of the Dane-zaa of northeastern British Columbia were made by Robin Ridington in the 1960s. Jillian Ridington and Howard Broomfield joined the work in the 1970s and 1980s, and Jillian continues to be a partner in the projects. In recent years, Robin has added video recordings to the collection. The entire audio archive has been cataloged and digitized and is available to members of the Danezaa community. More recently, the Doig River First Nation, working collaboratively with Amber Ridington, Kate Hennessy, Patrick Moore, and Robin and Jillian Ridington, began recording video as part of their Virtual Museum of Canada exhibit entitled Dane Wajich—Dane-zaa Stories and Songs: Dreamers and the Land. Interlinear and Ethnopoetic Translations There is a long tradition in anthropology of presenting ethnographic texts as transcriptions of the native language, accompanied by a close interlinear translation. Some of the most important work resulted from a collaboration between a native-speaking researcher and a non-Native ethnographer . Many of the Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw) texts that Franz Boas published were collected by George Hunt. Those of Alice Fletcher and 211 Francis La Flesche derived from an even closer collaboration in which the Omaha native-speaker, Francis La Flesche, was also a coauthor of the published work. In his Ethnology of the Kwakiutl, Boas presented lines in English at the top of each page and corresponding lines in Kwak’wala at the bottom (Boas 1921). His work, however, is not known for its poetic value or for making First Nations literature accessible to a non-Native audience. In 2000, Ralph Maud suggested that Boas’s collaborative work with his Tsimshian colleague Henry W. Tate to produce Tsimshian Mythology (1916) misrepresents the narratives as “authentic,” when in fact they were edited heavily by Tate and reflect Tate’s personal and multicultural perspective on Tsimshian mythology. With this new perspective, Tsimshian Mythology may be seen to represent an interesting syncretic creation in itself, but perhaps not the age-old tradition as transmitted among the Tsimshian people that it was purported to be. Some premodern ethnographies also included free, often line-for-line, verse translation. They are therefore examples of what we now call anthropological poetics. Fletcher and La Flesche (1911) were particularly successful in using this method of translation when presenting highly formalized ritual song texts, such as those relating to the Sacred Pole of the Omaha tribe. These song texts were first presented with accompanying musical notation, then with a literal translation, and finally with a free translation. Their presentation of one song is as follows: Omaha text: Thea’ma wagthithonbi tho ho! gthitonba Wagthitonbi, wagthitonbi, tho ho Te’xi ehe gthithonba Wagthitonbe, wagthitonbe te’xe ehe gthithonba Literal translation: Theama, here they are (the people); wagthitonbi—the prefix wa indicates that the object has power, gthitonbi, touching what is theirs (“touching” here means that the touching that is necessary for a preparation of the objects); tho ho! is an exclamation here used in the sense of a call to Wakonda, to arrest attention, to announce that something is in progress relating to serious matters; te’xi that which is of the most precious or sacred nature; ehe, I say. 212 Ridington, Ridington, Moore, Hennessy, and Ridington Free translation: The people cry aloud—tho ho! before thee. Here they prepare for sacred rites—tho ho! Their Sacred, Sacred Pole. With reverent hands, I say, they touch the Sacred Pole before thee. (1911:233–42) During the 1970s, the journal Alcheringa, first edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Dennis Tedlock, featured a number of experimental works using poetic translations of ethnographic texts. Unlike earlier ethnopoetics, Alcheringa presented translations of recorded audio documents. It also innovated the practice of including thin vinyl audio records, bound within the magazine. Tedlock’s 1972 collection of Zuni narrative poetry (Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians) is an excellent example of Alcheringa’s ethnopoetic tradition applied to a substantial body of oral literature. Tedlock set out his translations of Andrew Peynetsa and Walter Sanchez in a line-for-line form, using typography to represent performance values documented on the original audio...