Found in Translation

Till De ath Do Us Part
Estimates vary as to how many languages exist. The number lies somewhere between six and seven
thousand, depending on how one distinguishes between a language and a dialect. This number is by
no means stable. According to linguist David Crystal, about three thousand languages will die
within the next hundred years.
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That’s about one language every two weeks. (A language is
considered dead when the last speaker dies.) Why are efforts made to preserve languages? Because
every language is a unique representation of the human experience, and every extinguished language
makes humanity that much poorer.
Surfing like a Shaman
Canada is an officially bilingual country: English and French enjoy “equality
of status and equal rights and privileges…In all institutions of the Parliament
and Government of Canada.”
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In practice, this means a lot of translation.
In fact, Donald Barabé of the Canadian government Translation Bureau told

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us that the bureau billed federal government departments and agencies $171.7
million (Canadian) for translation in the 2010–2011 fiscal year alone, almost
all of which is spent on French–English translation.
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On the provincial and territorial level in Canada, though, the language
landscape looks quite different. It is interesting that there is only one officially
bilingual province, and it’s not the one you might think because le français est
la seule langue officielle du Québec (French is the only official language of
Quebec). Instead, it might surprise you to learn that it’s actually New
Brunswick on Canada’s east coast.
In the northern territory of Nunavut, most translation efforts are centered
around the Inuktitut language. And there’s a good reason for that emphasis: In
the 2006 census, close to 83 percent of Nunavut’s population reported Inuktitut
as its mother tongue.
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Inuktitut (and Inuinnaqtun, a variant spelled with Roman
letters) is the name given to the different variations of the language spoken by
the Inuit people, who used to be called Eskimos. The Office of the Languages
Commissioner in Nunavut’s capital of Iqaluit (which calls itself “Canada’s
coolest arctic city”) provides a number of essential translation resources,
including this mouthful: the Inuit Uqausinginnik Taiguusiliuqtiit (written in the
wonderfully strange syllabary as
). The taiguusiliuqtiit is
the language authority that standardizes the Inuit language, aiding translators as
they coin new Inuktitut terms for many modern concepts and attempting to
provide unity for the vast dialectal differences within the language.
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Julia Demcheson, an English-into-Inuktitut translator, provided us with some
fascinating examples of this dialectical variety:
Qujana means “forget it” in south Baffin, but it means “thank you” in Greenlandic. In some
areas of the Baffin region, “thank you” is qujannamiik or nakurmiik, depending on the
community, and in Nunavik—the dialect spoken in northern Quebec—it is nakurami or
nakurmiik. In the Qitirmiut region, “thank you” is koana, and in the Kivalliq dialect it’s
matna.
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It seems that the well-known story of the fifty different words for snow in
Eskimo languages should have been referring to “thank you”!
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Julia also highlighted an example of coining new terms on the basis of a
rich native heritage that would make any translator ’s heart pound with
excitement. Eva Aariak, Nunavut’s former languages commissioner (and later
premier of Nunavut), chose the word
(ikiaqqivik) as the Inuktitut
translation for “Internet.” It’s a traditional term that means “traveling through
layers,” and it refers to what a shaman does when he travels across time and
space to find out about living or deceased relatives, “similar to how the net is

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used now,” Julia adds. We can’t think of a better example of how the variety of
languages and translation can enrich our collective worldview.
And this brings us back to human rights. In its 1996 report, the Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada stated that the “revitalization of
traditional languages is a key component in the creation of healthy individuals
and communities.”
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Though this has a lofty ring to it, it might sound just a
little too theoretical. But consider the translation of “Internet” into Inuktitut and
how it can affect your perception of your own world. An additional finding in
the same report seems more concrete: “The threat of their languages
disappearing means that Aboriginal people’s distinctive world view, the
wisdom of their ancestors and their ways of being human could vanish as
well.”
Languages, translation, and human rights: Suddenly it’s not only about them,
but about all of us.

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