Cover not available
Part of
Translation Flows: Exploring networks of people, processes and products
Edited by Ilse Feinauer, Amanda Marais and Marius Swart
[Benjamins Translation Library 163] 2023
► pp. 3–22

Chapter 1
A naïve inquiry into translation between Aboriginal languages in pre-Invasion Australia

| The University of Melbourne
Was there translation between Australian Aboriginal languages prior to the European Invasion dated from 1788? The evidence from archeological research and the accounts of early European settlers would suggest that there were no specialized translators as such between Aboriginal languages, no specific communicative solution that could be called translation in the post-Renaissance Western sense of the term, and no evidence of a dominant lingua franca that might have acted as an alternative communication solution. Instead, we find ample reference to polyglot speakers, to multilingual meeting places for trade, ceremony and dispute resolution, to multilingual narratives, and the use of local sign languages, smoke signals, bush tracks and message sticks, all of which could help in the performance of communication across language borders. Taken together, these practices suggest interlingual communication flows based not on conveying a message clearly or quickly, but on multilayered interlingual practices based on respect for the territorial embeddedness of languages and the active, informed interpretation of data. Unlike Western calls for ever more translations across ever more languages, Indigenous practices might enhance sustainability by teaching us to respect linguistic diversity, translate less, and think more.
Keywords: translation flows, borders, Indigenous languages, code-switching, language contact, interpreting, multilingualism, sign languages, message sticks, multimedia communication
Article outline
  • Why the inquiry?
  • Assumptions about translation flows
  • What can lines on a map tell us?
  • Polyglot speakers as a translation solution
  • Non-linguistic semiotic resources
    • Sign languages
    • Multimedia narratives
    • Message sticks
  • Interlingual flows in an economy of interpretative restriction
  • So, what can we learn?
  • Postscript: The lesson of the river
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.163.01pym
References (54)
References
Bowker, Lynne, and Jairo Buitrago Ciro. 2019. Machine Translation and Global Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.Google Scholar
Burarra Lexicon. Accessed April, 2022. [URL].
Campbell, Lyle. 2000. American Indian languages. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chatwin, Bruce. 1987. The Songlines. London: Picador.Google Scholar
Chesterman, Andrew. 2001. “Proposal for a Hieronymic Oath.” The Translator 7(2): 139–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cronin, Michael. 2017. Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dawson, James. 1881. Australian Aborigines. The Languages and Customs of Several Tribes of Aborigines in the Western District of Victoria, Australia. Melbourne: George Robertson.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas. 2007. “Warramurrungunji Undone: Australian Languages in the 51st Millennium.” In Endangered Languages, ed. by Peter K. Austin and Andrew Simpson, 19–44. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.Google Scholar
Frankel, David and Janine Major (eds). 2017. Victorian Aboriginal Life and Customs through Early European Eyes. Melbourne: La Trobe University. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gammage, Bill. 2012. The Biggest Estate on Earth. How Aborigines made Australia. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Ginsburgh, Victor and Shlomo Weber. 2011. How Many Languages Do We Need? The Economics of Linguistic Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Jennifer. 2014. Drawn from the Ground: Sound, Sign and Inscription in Central Australian Sand Stories. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. “Mothers, Mountain Devils, and Pointing to Eternity: The ‘Horns’ Handshape in Australian Indigenous Sign Languages.” Sign Language Studies 22(1), 5–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Howitt, Alfred William. 1889. “Notes on Australian Message Sticks and Messengers.” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 18: 314–332. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1904. The Native Tribes of South-East Australia. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1974. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Inkamala, Rhonda. 2018. “Working on the dictionary.” In Carl Strehlow’s 1909 Comparative Heritage Dictionary, ed. by Anna Kenny, 15–22. Transcribed and translated from the German by Anna Kenny. Translated from Aranda and Loritja to English by the Inkamala families and members of the Western Aranda community. Acton ACT: Australian National University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joseph Jurt, Martin Ebel, and Ursula Erzgräber. 1989. Französischsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur 1918–1986/87. Eine bibliographische Bestandsaufnahme der Originaltexte und der deutschen Übersetzungen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Piers. 2020. “Australian message sticks: Old questions, new directions.” Journal of Material Culture 25(2): 133–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2021. “The linguistics of message sticks.” Webinar, November 5. The University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam. 1988. Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kenny, Anna (ed.). 2018. Carl Strehlow’s 1909 Comparative Heritage Dictionary. Transcribed and translated from the German by Anna Kenny. Translated from Aranda and Loritja to English by the Inkamala families and members of the Western Aranda community. Acton ACT: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Korff, Jens. 2020. Tribal punishment, customary law and payback. Accessed January 1, 2022. [URL].
Marusic, Ivan, Joy Damousi, and Susan Broomhall. 2018. “Turbulence isn’t just a science problem.” The Conversation, June 20, 2018. [URL]
McBride, Isabel. 1986. “Artefacts, language and social interaction: A case study from south-eastern Australia.” In Stone Age Prehistory, ed. by G. N. Bailey and P. Callow, 77–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McConvell, Patrick and Claire Bowern. 2011. “The Prehistory and Internal Relationships of Australian Languages.” Language and Linguistics Compass 5(1): 19–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moorkens, Joss and Marta Rocchi. 2021. “Ethics in the Translation Industry.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics, ed. By Kaisa Koskinen and Nike K. Pokorn, 320–37. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mulvaney, Derek John. 1976. “The chain of connection. The material evidence.” In Tribes and Boundaries in Australia, ed. by Nicolas Peterson, 72–94. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Olive, Noel (ed.). 1997. Karijini Mirlimirli: Aboriginal histories from the Pilbara. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press.Google Scholar
Paton, Robert. 1994. “Speaking through Stones: A Study from Northern Australia.” World Archaeology 26(2): 172–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pym, Anthony. 1992. Translation and text transfer. An essay on the principles of intercultural communication. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 1997. “Transferre non semper necesse est.” Quaderns. Revista de traducció 1(1): 88–93. Google Scholar
. 2003. “Alternatives to borders in translation theory.” In Translation Translation, ed. by Susan Petrilli, 451–463. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Propositions on Cross-Cultural Communication and Translation.” Target. 16(1): 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Negotiating the frontier. Translators and intercultures in Hispanic history. London/New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. “Introduction: Why mediation strategies are important.” Language Problems and Language Planning 42(3): 255–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “For a sociology of translator training.” In Translator Training, ed. by Junfeng Zhao, Defeng Li, Lu Tian, 9–19. Singapore: Springer Nature. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pym, Anthony and Ester Torres-Simón. 2021. “Is automation changing the translation profession?” International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 270: 39-57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pym, Anthony and Grzegorz Chrupała. 2004. “The Quantitative Analysis of Translation Flows in the Age of an International Language.” In Less Translated Languages, ed. by Albert Branchadell and Lovell Margaret West, 27–38. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robinson, G. A. 1841. “Vocabulary and census of the Manemeet Station. May 24. Portland Bay.” Papers 54(2): 136–65. Google Scholar
Roth, W. E. 1897. Ethnological Studies among the north-west Queensland Aborigines. Brisbane: Government Printer.Google Scholar
Rumsey, Alan. 1993. “Language and territoriality in Aboriginal Australia.” In Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia, ed. by Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop, 191–206. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Sapiro, Gisèle. 2014. “Translation as a Weapon in the Struggle Against Cultural Hegemony in the Era of Globalization.” Bibliodiversity 3: 31–40.Google Scholar
. 2019. “Translation and Translation as a Weapon’.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Singer, Ruth and Salome Harris. 2016. “What Practices and Ideologies Support Small-scale Multilingualism? A Case Study of Unexpected Language Survival in an Australian Indigenous Community.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 241: 163–208.Google Scholar
Smith, Mike. 2013. The Archeology of Australia’s Deserts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strubell, Emma, Ananya Ganesh, and Andrew McCallum. 2019. “Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP.” Paper presented to the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Florence, Italy. July 2019. [URL]. DOI logo
Sveiby, Karl-Erik. 2009. “Aboriginal Principles for Sustainable Development as Told in Traditional Law Stories.” Sustainable Development 17 (6): 341–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sveiby, Karl-Erik and Tex Skuthorpe. 2006. Treading lightly: The hidden wisdom of the world’s oldest people. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Thomson, Donald F. 1949. Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land. Melbourne: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Trigger, David S. 1987. “Languages, Linguistic Groups and Status Relations at Doomadgee, an Aboriginal Settlement in North-West Queensland, Australia.” Oceania 57 (3): 217–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vaughan, Jill and Debbie Loakes. 2020. “Language contact and Australian languages.” In The Handbook of Language Contact, second edition, ed. by Raymond Hickey, 717–40. Hoboken NJ: John Wiley and Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Western Arrarnta Lexicon. Accessed April, 2022. [URL].
Wordlist of Eastern and Central Arrernte. Accessed April, 2022. [URL].