Translation/Local Arts

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Researching Local Poetry

Compiled by katie_frost@sil.org; with material from Chris Gassler & Christoph Mueller

Three main categories

1. ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS—GENRE

First of all, it's important for translators to be aware of their various communication genres.

  • What form(s) do they use for expressing lament?
  • What form(s) do they use for praise/exaltation of someone?
  • Explore different kinds of songs, poetry, drama, or other forms they use to communicate emotions and/or information via words.
  • What associations does their culture have with these various kinds of genres?

I’m attaching a worksheet called Questions to Find Arts—if you go to the last page, there's a chart that may prove helpful in thinking through various aspects of genres and identifying which of them might be most appropriate for translating various types of Psalms.

Chris also has these helpful categories for looking at this level—these mostly align with the chart I've sent:

A. Genre Name
  1. Meaning of genre name
  2. Other cultural implications of name—double meaning? Word play?
B. Participants
  1. Hierarchy or equality among participants?
  2. Gender distribution?
  3. Age distribution?
  4. Implications of status/title among participants and their roles?
C. Instruments used in the song
  1. Significance of any particular instruments in the society?
  2. Are the instruments required for this song or are they optional/flexible?
  3. Are any of the instruments specific to this song genre, or can they be used in other genres?
  4. Who plays the instruments?
    1. Gender requirements?
    2. Age conventions?
    3. Status/title requirements?
D. When is the song performed?
  1. Certain times of the year?
  2. Certain times of day?
  3. Certain life events?
  4. Certain community events?
  5. Cyclic regularity to times of performance? (e.g., full moon, annually, etc.)
E. Location — where is the song performed?
  1. Specific space?
  2. Prepared space vs. improvised?
  3. Always the same space, or can it differ?
F. Purpose/goal of singing
  1. Is this song for leisure or ceremony?
  2. Can it be spontaneous or planned?
  3. Is it usually directed at someone specific?
  4. Does it refer to someone specific in the text?
G. Content/Subject
  1. What is the nature of the text (historical, legend, social issues, nature/environment, supernatural, etc.)?
  2. Does the song refer to someone specific?
  3. Does the song refer to a specific life event?
H. Associations
  1. What other aesthetic forms occur with this song (dance, acting, visuals, clothing, etc.)?
  2. Any religious, political, or cultural associations?

Attachment: Questions to Find Arts 12-10-23

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2. MACRO-LEVEL DISCOURSE

Within these genres, it's also important to look at aspects of how local songs and/or poetry accomplish various communicative functions. Translators of the Psalms will need to know how to accomplish these same functions with their local communication conventions.

Whether you do this part or the technical level (see below) first will depend on whether your people like to work more top-down (big picture first, then details) or bottom-up. Also, if you can involve people who are considered proficient creators in these genres, you're likely to get more insights and ultimately better translations.

A. Main Message
  • How do they profile the main message of a piece of communication?
  • What linguistic, aesthetic, and/or performance features do they use?
  • How does this differ according to genre?
  • How is emphasis accomplished?
B. Sections
  • How do they indicate shifts/transitions in topic, mood, etc.?
  • How does this differ according to genre?
C. Emotions
  • What linguistic, aesthetic, or performance features communicate emotions?
  • How much depends on word content vs. tone, performance, or written features?
D. Connections
  • How do their genres help listeners/readers connect related information?
  • Are connections linguistic, aesthetic, or structural?

Attachment: Psalms Across Cultures 4

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3. TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

This outline is also from Chris' work and gets into more specifics of how text is treated within the various genres. Translators should think about what kinds of genres they’re likely to draw from for laments, praise, and petition, then focus on those.

A. Arrangement of the text
  1. Breaking the text into lines, verses, stanzas, strophe, etc.
  2. Correspondence of units with musical function
  3. Repeated units (lines, chorus, etc.)
  4. Contrastive units
  5. Derivative/varied units
  6. Roles – who sings what lines/sections?
    1. Significance to the roles?
    2. Shift of roles throughout a text
B. Textual features
  1. Rhythm/syllabication
    1. Correspondence of rhythmic cycles with lines?
    2. Beats per cycle; beats per line
    3. Number of syllables per line or strophe
  2. Verbal devices – metaphor, allegory, metonymy, puns, humor, etc.
  3. Word level analysis
    1. Repetition of words
    2. Use of homonyms
    3. Borrowed/archaic words
  4. Phrase level analysis
    1. Repetition of lines/phrases
    2. Call & response or through-composed?
  5. Poetic devices (sound)
    1. Assonance
    2. Rhyme (initial, medial, final)
    3. Vocables
    4. Ideophones
    5. Consonance
    6. Alliteration
    7. Rhythmic speech
  6. Poetic devices (meaning)
    1. Simile
    2. Hyperbole
    3. Metonymy
    4. Personification
    5. Symbols
    6. Rhetorical questions
    7. Borrowed words
    8. Metaphor
    9. Ellipsis
    10. Parallelism
  7. Performance features
    1. Volume
    2. Intensity
    3. Quality
    4. Pitch
C. Other technical issues (from Christoph)
  1. How do they handle person references (name, pronoun, zero-reference) and changes in person references? Why?
  2. General use of repetition and quantity of new information per utterance.
  3. Use of regular vs. special vocabulary (frequency of uncommon words; level of language).

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