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The Translation of Key Phrases in the Treaties of 1837 and 1855 John D. Nichols IN CONNECTION WITH THIS LITIGATION, I WAS ASKED TO EXAMINE THE ENGLISH LANguage texts of the Treaties of 1837 and 1855, especially certain passages dealing with hunting, fishing, and gathering and with the relinquishment of right, title, and interest to certain lands, to determine how key phrases might have been translated into Ojibwe by interpreters at the negotiations and how they would have been understood by the Ojibwes present at those proceedings. The research undertaken involved examination of those texts and the journals of the negotiations, study of early to mid-nineteenth century dictionaries and grammars of Ojibwe, review of my own field notes and dictionary files based on interviews with several hundred speakers of the language, and study ofwritten translations between English and Ojibwe done in the early and mid-nineteenth century. In order to understand possible translations and to ascertain the form and meanings of particular words, I interviewed seven speakers of Ojibwe from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, and Manitoba. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND OJIBWE LANGUAGES AFFECTING TRANSLATION English and Ojibwe are about as different as any two languages can be in the way that words and sentences are constructed. They package information in very different ways. English tends to have one or two ideas per word; Ojibwe tends to wrap up many ideas into a word, with each idea represented by a word part (a root, a prefix, or a suffix) or a modification of sounds. For example, the idea of Ubreak" is expressed in English by a single word break which cannot be analyzed into any smaller pieces. A small number of suffixes can be added to inflect it to represent such English grammatical ideas as third person singular subject (he/she/it) in breaks and on-going action in breaking, with the idea of past tense shown by a modification of the vowel in broke. To talk about different kinds of breaking or what is broken, different words, organized into particular patterns of phrases or clauses, must be added. In contrast, Ojibwe analyzes "breaking" into separate sets of ideas, each of which is represented by one or more word parts rather than by a whole word. Several word parts Tanner, Lund, and Nichols must be combined in accord with certain rules or patterns to make a pronounceable word. The appearance of the object which is broken is specified by a root; three of the possible roots for this idea are: bookw- Hin two equal pieces," biigw- Hin several pieces," and biisHin small fragments." The means or instrument by which this configuration was achieved is then specified with a suffix; a few of the suffixes that can be used are: -a' Hby some tool," -n Hby the hand," -bid Hby the hands pulling," -shk Hby the body or foot" -sid "by dropping or hitting against" and aganaand "by hitting." A third part identifying a specific kind of object (such as a body part) or the nature of the material broken (such as -aakw "something stick-like," -iig "something flat and flexible," or -aabiig "something string-like") may come between the two main parts. The resulting word stem specifies how something was broken and what the result looks like; it may identify exactly what was broken or the nature of the material of what was broken. There is no general word corresponding to the English word "break." A few of the hundreds of verb stems that can translate the English word "break" and which use the elements given above are: bookwa'- "break something in two with a tool," bookon- "break something in two in the hand," bookobid- "break something in two by pulling ," bookoshk- "break something in two by sitting, bumping or kicking," biisibid- "break something into small fragments by pulling," biisisid- "break something into small fragments by dropping," and bookwaakobid- "break something stick-like in two by pulling." These verb stems are still not words that can be pronounced in sentences. The stems must be surrounded with inflectional prefixes and suffixes identifying the basic grammatical ideas of Ojibwe to become actual words which fit into meaningful sentences. There are many of these grammatical ideas, the majority of which have no direct equivalents in English. They specify such things as the gender, number, person, and relative importance of the subject and any objects; tense; aspect; state of negation; and, clause type (main, subordinate, or imperative). Each of the verb stems for "break...

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