Sabine Fenton

For Better or for Worse (eBook, PDF)

Translation as a Tool for Change in the South Pacific

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The essays in this book explore the vital role translation has played in defining, changing and redefining linguistic, cultural, ethnic and political identities in several nations of the South Pacific

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis
• Seitenzahl: 294
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. Juli 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781317640578
• Artikelnr.: 41212766

Autorenporträt

Sabine Fenton

Inhaltsangabe

For Better or For Worse: Contents
Introduction, Sabine Fenton, pp 1-9
Some fifty years ago historians viewed the Pacific Islanders' encounter
with the Europeans as a 'Fatal Impact'. "From this time onward the islands
were pawns in the great game of international rivalries" (Oliver 1961:97).
Colonized by the British, French and Germans, the Pacific Islanders were
mostly portrayed as naïve victims of foreign exploitation and domination.
This view of the effects of colonization is also shared by many
postcolonial writers on translation. They have scrutinized and exposed the
role translation played in the processes of colonization and termed the
close relationship between both the "shameful history of translation"
(Bassnett and Trivedi 1999:5). Today, however, many Pacific scholars
recognize in their historic analyses the fact that the Pacific Islanders
were not only victims but also played an active role in the cross-cultural
events they were party to, helping to shape their own destinies. The
writers of this volume of papers on translation in the Pacific are
therefore putting forward a politics of double-inheritance. On the one
hand, their essays provide evidence of the total transformation of the
Pacific by the arrival of the Europeans. On the other hand, however, they
also demonstrate the extent to which the changes were and still are today
co-directed by the natives themselves
The Humpty Dumpty Principle at Work: The Role of Mistranslation in the
British Settlement of Aotearoa. The Declaration of Independence and He
Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o nga hapü o Nu Tïreni, Margaret Mutu, pp
12-35
From 1840 to this day Mäori have protested that English immigrants to New
Zealand were acting far in excess of the rights they had been afforded.
Those rights derived from acknowledgement made by the King of England in
1836 of the paramount authority of Mäori chiefs in New Zealand as set out
in He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o ngä Hapü o Nu Tïreni (the Mäori
version of the Declaration of Independence) and the subsequent signing of
Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a Mäori language treaty made between Mäori and the
Queen of England. The rights conveyed included allowing the Queen of
England to take responsibility for maintaining peace and good order amongst
English immigrants while they lived under the paramount authority of Mäori
chiefs as the rulers of their own country. Examination of the original
nineteenth- century documents setting out these rights and conditions
reveals that mistranslation has played a significant role in allowing the
suppression of the protests of Mäori by English settlers. While the Mäori
versions of official documents uphold the Mäori understandings, the English
versions do not. The English versions convey the erroneous notion that
Mäori were unsophisticated, child-like and desperately seeking English
protection. Written histories of New Zealand almost all either disregard or
refute the Mäori language versions of these documents and Mäori
understandings of the nature of the Declaration and the Treaty. Oral
traditions of many Mäori tribal groups around the country, on the other
hand, have maintained these understandings. As a result Mäori continue to
assert their sovereignty over New Zealand despite the severe disadvantages
they now live under both numerically and in terms of all officially
measured socio-economic indicators.
Survival by Translation: The Case of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Sabine Fenton &
Paul Moon, pp 37-61
The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 by a representative of the
British Crown, and a translation of it into Maori by over 500 Maori chiefs.
The Treaty is considered the founding document of the New Zealand Nation.
However, over the years serious misunderstandings have emerged as to what
had actually been signed. While in the English version Maori had ceded
their sovereignty to the British Crown, no such fundamental cession was
agreed to in the Maori version. In this article the Treaty of Waitangi and
its translation are investigated in their role as a double-edged tool:
first in the hands of a colonizing power conqueringa nation, and secondly
in the service of the colonized redressing past wrongs. The article begins
by outlining briefly the historical background and the context in which the
translation occurred, followed by an analysis of the main areas of
misunderstanding in the two texts. The article then demonstrates how
throughout history the translation not only ensured the survival of the
Treaty of Waitangi itself but also that it became the corner-stone of Maori
restistance and the guarantor of their economic and cultural survival. The
present day societal impact of the Maori resistance based on the
translation is explored and some future trends are suggested.
Translating the Ancestors: Grey's Polynesian Mythology, John O'Leary, pp
63-88
Sir George Grey (1812-1898) is an important figure in the history of
translation in the Pacific. His work as a translator, however, has been
relatively little studied, despite the fact that his English-language
version of Maori myths and legends, Polynesian Mythology (1855) exerted,
and still exerts, a determining influence on how this Pacific mythology was
and is perceived. In this article, Grey's intellectual and philological
interests are described, his translation practices are discussed, and his
book is analyzed in terms of other, earlier accounts of indigenous
mythologies; also described are the book's intended audience, and Grey's
treatment of his Maori-language source text, Nga Mahi a Nga Tupuna [The
Deeds of the Ancestors] (1854). Special attention is paid to Grey's
translation of the Hinemoa legend, which for complex historical and
cultural reasons was extremely popular with Grey's mid-nineteenth-century
European readers.
Interpreting as a Tool for Empowerment of the New Zealand Deaf Community,
Rachel Locker McKee, pp 89-132
Interpreting has been an enabling mechanism in the New Zealand Deaf
community's assertion of their identity and agenda as a linguistic
minority. This chapter examines sociolinguistic impacts of interpreting and
interpreters on the New Zealand Deaf-world over the period 1985 -2002, in
which professional interpreting services have been available. Also
considered are ways in which interpreting has the disempowering potential
to create an illusion of access or independence that has not been
actualised. As one of the first group of sign language interpreters trained
in 1985, the writer bases the analysis on her involvement in the
development of the profession and her observation of the Deaf/hearing
interface since that time. Although written from an interpreter's point of
view, the chapter also draws upon Deaf people's accounts of their
experiences regarding interpreting.
Translation in New Caledonia: Writing (in) the Language of the Other The
"Red Virgin", the Missionary, and the Ethnographer, Raylene Ramsay, pp
133-170
This study turns on the centrality of translation in New Caledonian
culture. It traces the interaction between two cultures, European and
Kanak, through the translation work of major figures: the translation of
Kanak tales at the height of the colonial enterprise by Louise Michel,
deportee from the Paris Commune; the pioneering work of the first French
Protestant missionary, Maurice Leenhardt in the early twentieth century,
and the contemporary work on texts in Paici and Cemuhi by the ethnographer
Alban Bensa. More than half of the texts of indigenous Kanak oral
literature exist only in translation. In its turn, the translation of these
texts has influenced the emergence of literature by a settler population of
European origin. We follow the contributions made by Michel, Leenhardt and
Bensa to a translated and hybrid culture considering the distinctive value
and particular character of the 'third spaces' created by very different
modes of translation.
Foreigner Talk to Exonorm: Translation and Literacy in Fiji, Paul Geraghty,
pp 172-206
The linguistic diversity of Fiji was prehistorically midway between that
typical of Melanesia, where there is great linguistic fragmentation, and
Polynesia, with its largely monolingual island groups. When the
missionaries arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, they found that a kind
of standard Fijian already existed, and attempted to learn it in order to
translate the Scriptures and other religious and educational works. They
were however not totally successful in learning standard Fijian, and their
translations were in 'Old High Fijian' - a mixture of foreigner talk and
translationese with vocabulary from both standard Fijian and the Fijian of
Lau, the eastern islands where they had begun their work. This written form
of Fijian became the accepted literary form - an example of an 'exonorm',
or standard language based on the speech of people outside the linguistic
community. The translation of the Deed of The linguistic diversity of Fiji
was prehistorically midway between that typical of Melanesia, where there
is great linguistic fragmentation, and Polynesia, with its largely
monolingual island groups. When the missionaries arrived in the
mid-nineteenth century, they found that a kind of standard Fijian Cession,
by which Fiji was ceded to Great Britain in 1874, was written in Old High
Fijian, but this does not appear to have greatly impeded the understanding
of the terms of Cession by the chiefs who signed it. During the colonial
period (1874-1970), particularly the last few decades, Fijian viewed as an
obstacle to development, was used as little as possible in government, and
was banned and denigrated in schools. The status of Fijian (along with the
other major vernacular, Fiji Hindi) has improved a little since
independence in 1970, and the Institute of Fijian Language and Culture
worked to create a new written standard language based not on the Old High
Fijian exonorm, but on spoken Fijian. Since 1997, both Fijian and Hindi
have been designated official languages of Fiji, along with the colonial
language English. Nevertheless, citizens who do not speak or read English
are still greatly disadvantaged because literacy in Fijian and Hindi is not
officially encouraged, and there are very few translators or interpreters,
and none of them are professionally trained.
Decolonization by Missionaries of Government: The Tokelau Case, Tony Angelo
& Tioni Vulu, pp 208-240
When three small and separate atoll communities of the tropical Pacific are
required by international standards to develop a joint system of national
government which can take over the central role of the colonial power, the
task for translators is huge. It is demanding in terms of both vocabulary
and culture. This paper concerns the translation endeavours of the people
of Tokelau in the context of their decolonization. The paper uses a number
of key Government documents written since 1980 to provide evidence that
Tokelauan translators have been slow to adopt a consistent terminology for
the new legal and political ideas, and that they have preferred to source
the words of translation in the existing language. A consequence of the use
of traditional words for the alien ideas of Western European style
government has created some resistance to the social acceptance of the
ideas because they are not understood or because the cultural resonance of
the ideas in the Tokelauan words of translation is often at odds with the
political concepts of the English source text.
The Translation of Queen Salote's Poetry, Melenaite Taumoefolau, pp 242-268
In this article I will be concerned with explaining some of the
difficulties of translating the poetry of Queen Sälote (QS) from Tongan
into English. Tongan belongs to the Polynesian branch of the Austronesian
language family. Along with Niuean, it is a daughter language of
Proto-Tongic, one of the two major subgroups of Polynesian. The other
subgroup is Proto-Nuclear Polynesian, to which belong all other Polynesian
languages, including the Outlier Polynesian languages in Micronesia and
Melanesia. Whenever difficulties in translation arose, I found it was
mainly for either of two reasons: structural differences between Tongan and
English - examples of these will be given in section 2 - and cultural
differences or differences in cultural knowledge between the
Tongan-speaking audience for whom the Tongan original was composed and the
non-Tongan-speaking audiences for whom the translation was produced -
examples of these will be given in section 3. In section 4 I present two
translated poems and their commentary.