reading revival 2

2006-12-02T08:00:00.000+11:00

more on translation from an email from jeff s

I know it is too late for your blog but i thought this may be of interest. In Giorgio Agamben's "Remnants of Auschwitz" he cites various poets. The poetry is presented in the Italian, in the format of the poem with verse or whatever, then translated into English as one paragraph, looking like a piece of prose, dispensing with the formal layout of the poem, no verses etc. The translations give a very good 'appreciation' of the poem, but do not present as being the poem as such. I thought this would have been a good way to proceed with Ngarla Songs. The translations, this is with my having no understanding of any Aboriginal languages, seemed to me to be stiltled in atempting to match appropriate phrases. I felt frustrated often, feeling that I was missing something. Perhaps the approach adopted by Daniel Heller-Roazen in translating Agamben could have been of use to Brian Geytenbeek allowing for a more open translation (?).

2006-12-02T07:56:00.000+11:00

more from brian g

By all means, share whatever bits you wish on the blog! Languages are fascinating things, and people who enjoy reading probably also enjoy thinking about the numerous different ways in which human beings can couch their thoughts in other languages. Especially when other people's world-views are quite different from our own. The anthropological rule-of-thumb is that, "It's not wrong to be different."

(The only exception to that would be where a culture's moral standards are in serious conflict with God's. But whose isn't?! That's why he gave us the Bible, to alert us to the fact, and encourage us to do something about it.)

Incidentally, I forgot to mention last night that in Aboriginal languages in the Pilbara the pronouns do not include any gender distinction. In each language, they have just one pronoun where English has three: "he, she, it"; "his, hers, its"; "to/for him, to/for her, to/for it".

Many Aboriginal people in the Pilbara who are still switching over to speaking English have not yet learned to make the 3-way distinction, and so far have latched onto just the one form "he" and use that for all three. Thus those speakers will commonly refer to women and to things as "he". "See that woman over there. I've gotta marry his daughter." As the years go by and their control of English gets better they start to build in the extra forms.

Ngarla is an exception with regard to the "to/for him, to/for her, to/for it" set. Instead of just one form for those, Ngarla dual and plural pronouns ("those two" and "those three or more") have two, a weak one and a strong one. And for just the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular it has three, which I am currently calling "weak, medium and strong".

I don't know why it has these extra forms. I haven't worked it out, and may never be able to do so. But then, my job as a linguist is not to tell a language what it can or can't do. My job is to find out what it actually does do. And then hopefully describe what it does in a non-technical way that Aborigines literate in English can understand and enjoy and benefit from.

In contrast to the Pilbara languages, Bandjalang, that my wife and I worked on in NSW in the 1960s, had 4 noun classes: masculine, feminine, neuter, and trees.

Best wishes,

Brian.

2006-12-02T07:51:00.000+11:00

a response from brian geytenbeek, the ngarla songs translator

Re the comment on 17 August about pronouns,
(1) Ngarla often omits them once a discourse has been commenced and the "stage" set. From then on, cultural understanding of the context often makes them unnecessary, and usually they are only added if one wishes to emphasise them. E.g., "THEY are the ones at fault, not me!". Thus if you build them into ordinary Ngarla sentences you will skew the meaning considerably (from their point of view), and the readers would be quite puzzled.

(2) In the second verse about the Koolinda the composer talks to the ship in the first line, then describes what happens after the ship does what he told it to do. In the third verse the 'he' and the 'they' are the bosun and crew, then in the final line the composer talks to the ship again.

(3) In Piyuwiki/Buick all three mentions of 'he' in the second verse refer to the driver, not to the car. The pronouns are in fact non-existent in the Ngarla, but they have to be provided in English or the English would not make sense to an English speaker (though they would to a Ngarla speaker who knew a bit of English) -- an interesting example of the basic principle of translation:

"Translation must be of the meaning, not of the words."

Most people just assume that you have to translate each word in the "source" language with an equivalent word in the "receptor" language, but that is not the case at all. Figurative speech illustrates this well. For instance, if someone literally kicked the bucket on the back porch you would never translate the information in the form of "He kicked the bucket", because that would communicate the idea that he had died. Instead you would use some other circumlocution, maybe, "He bumped the bucket with his foot." It's the meaning that counts, not the words used to convey the meaning.

Actually whether you use half as many words or twice as many words in the receptor language may not be very relevant. The important things are that
(a) the result in the receptor language is so natural that the hearers/readers will not be conscious of the fact that it is a translation, and
(b) the hearers/readers in the receptor language will get the same message, and feel the same impact, as did the original hearers/readers in the source language.

That's what a translator is supposed to aim at, anyway. Whether he can always hit it or not is another matter!

Thus genre styles need to be genuine for the receptor language too. There is a marked difference in Ngarla between narrative genre and poetic genre. In some songs I had to work hard to express the poetic meanings that were in the Ngarla in suitably poetic styles in English, especially with a few songs which were expressed not in full intelligible sentences but in one-word "short-hand" poetic images. In these the Aboriginal hearers understood perfectly all the cultural clues and implications just from one word, but English readers wouldn't have had a clue what was going on!

Someone spotted Alex Beeton's Aboriginal nickname. Probably Alex Beeton never even knew that that is what they called him. (Actually his name happens to be in the Nyangumarta language that I've spent 30 years on, not the Ngarla one.) It was very descriptive. He had a huge paunch, and when he laughed he had a huge "belly-laugh", and his belly bounced up and down. Hence his nickname, "Dancing Stomach".

2006-10-05T07:32:00.000+10:00

thanks derek and louise for your comments. reading revival 3 is now up & running (walking): for current book 'australian passport' by s.s. charkianakis go to reading revival 3. the blog you are reading now contains 3 months of commentary relating to 'ngarla songs'. post any comments on 'ngarla songs' here - they will still be read & responded to.

2006-09-24T08:12:00.001+10:00

reading revival needs a revival. the blogs not dead but i have been discouraged .. parly by technical difficulties - problems with logging on which seem to have gone away, and also by lack of commentary -- & interest in the book when i went to w.a. its a very interesting book for lots of reasons as hopefully my posts have shown. the intention with r.r. was that it be a forum, a collective contribution to local critical culture .. but it seems to be mainly a disconnected monologue (an interesting new critical form tho i think). i am considering the possibility of the blog becoming more of a support for a poetry book group(s) with less regular postings. any feedback welcome.

2006-09-24T08:12:00.000+10:00

2006-08-25T07:26:00.000+10:00

one book has gone in the giveaway (to pb in sydney). one still available for the first w.a. reader to email me: readingrevival at gmail dot com.

2006-08-24T08:21:00.000+10:00

the first reader to email me at readingrevival at gmail dot com with a w.a. address will receive a copy of ngarla songs courtesy of fremantle arts centre press. another copy is available to the first reader from anywhere else. thanks to nyanda for arranging this.

2006-08-19T08:44:00.000+10:00

ngarla songs book group today at st kilda library 2pm.

2006-08-17T08:08:00.000+10:00

in 'piyuwiki'/'buick' pp 50-1, by wirrkaru jingkiri, there is (because of the grammatical structure) the same ambiguity that was in the koolinda poem (pp 40-1) with regard to gender and pronoun. the 'he' in the poem seems to refer to the car, then the meaning slides to the referent of the driver. im assuming that theres something of this aspect in the ngarla also. the effect is not just to gender & anthropomorphise the car, but to suggest that there isnt a limit to the driver or car, that they are one.

this five line poem is a belated refreshing anecdote to a terrible poem we did in class about a car being a woman? some well known american (novelist i think) dickey? one of those. (cummings has one also -- its sheer offensiveness somewhat redeems it.)

the drivers name in the ngarla is given as ''Ngarlu Jurrkanalu' -- in the english its 'Alec Beeton' - the notes dont explain why?

*

are any other bloggers having problems logging on?

2006-08-16T07:56:00.000+10:00

shearers back: its said australia became prosperous on the sheeps back. the ngarla songmakers arent described as shearers, but they all worked with sheep and or cattle in one way or another -- all station workers at some point except one who worked in a slaughter yard. an interesting juxtaposition of photos can be seen in ian macleans 'white aborigines: identity politics in australian art' pp 62-3. the left image is a photo of aboriginal shearers shearing c. 1906. on the right is a reproduction of tom roberts' 'the golden fleece - shearing at newstead' 1894, which is a scene of white shearers. (it can be seen at the art gallery of nsw.) the images are strikingly similar. the most obvious difference is the difference between the roofs & the way the light blurs into the photograph but is held at bay in the painting. another difference is that several of the aboriginal shearers are looking out of the picture toward the viewer (ie looking at the camera), while the white shearers are all looking down at their work. the only ones looking toward the painter are the wool classers(?) & possibly one other at the back who isnt working.

maclean says there was an increase in aborigines employed in the pastoral industry from over 2000 in 1881 to 4000 by 1905. he says 'employed' was a euphemism for slavery. hence the strikes that took place much later (1946).

maclean writes 'The image of Aboriginal shearers was too transgressive to be considered an icon of the nation at the time of Federation.' [i.e. 1901]

click go the censoring shears.

2006-08-13T08:32:00.000+10:00

collected works reorder of ngarla songs has arrived .. not just melbourne news, anyone can call them for mail order 03-96548873.

2006-08-11T07:44:00.000+10:00

wirrkaru jingkiri is described as a musterer, fencer and pearl sheller (p 47). his first poem 'wiyurkarra'/'fast work', like miriny-mirinyarra jingkiri's 'wupuri' concerns horse riding. just five lines, its an interesting contrast to the long romantic ballad horseriding poems of colonial poets adam lindsay gordon & banjo patterson.

2006-08-09T07:47:00.000+10:00

'Wariyarranya Nyurranga Ngurra Pungkarriya'/'Wariyarranya Is Not Your Country Any Longer' pp 44-5 is addressed to sheep, implying theyve been cursed.

'You poor fellows from Wariyarranya,
it's not your country any longer.
He will take you to Port Hedland forever.
The mild humour is gone, but the complexity and identification (with sheep this time) remain. An original song-poem -- it resonates with much beside the ostensible story: of being forced from the land, of genocide. yet even here there is the poetic and sympathetic irony of using sheep as the identification point: a prosaic reading of settlement is that sheep farming was one of the whites' reasons for driving indigenes away. this is not political in a reductive rights-based way but one that refuses to abandon notions of wholeness and integration - & thats radical.

'You are headed for your graveyard' is the final line.

2006-08-08T07:15:00.000+10:00

ive always thought the gendering of ships and nations a bit odd; tho perhaps it seems more natural to those who language is more gendered than english. in jingkiri's poem 'Kurlintanya'/'Koolinda in Harbour' pp 36-7 the ship - the kurlinta/koolinda is gender neutral - is referred to as 'it'. Yet the second stanza begins as if the koolinda is male: 'He'll head straight out into the wind' - there is no other referent than the ship at this point. four lines later the skipper appears & 'He' then seems to have been deferring referring to the skipper. the affectionate tone given to objects is typical of these poems (and for example the sensibility of the 'bush mechanics' series). It's referred to as 'a huge plucky thing' 'a plucky thing' & 'Huge Koolinda!'. The anthropomorphism(?) (animation?) of this is unusual for its humour and imagination - a reading of the image (ie of the ship) not typical of euro poetics. (a more typical translation i think would be an uncanny one, unnatural behaving of the ship in an animated fashion: in this song however, the ships behaviour is presented as perfectly natural.)

'(huge plucky thing,
all its masts and derricks standing up),
on account of the cyclone
suggests various meanings of plucky to me. plucky seems to be bristly, nervy - nerving for the weather - tho it also evokes sexual arousal. & it makes me think of a chook ripe for plucking its feathers on end. it ends

'The skipper will take care of it
out in the deep water'
the koolinda needs to be brave, going out into the sea; yet it also has a carer. the line evokes indigenous care. its an exemplary poem suggesting ways of care that white culture has only quite recently been waking up to: & its derived from indigenous culture. the perhaps paradoxical aspect is that modern culture looked to indigenous culture for ways of living in the natural world (i dont mean to sound reductively optimistic about these trends: obviously modern culture mainly exploited the indigenous in every which way) - but indigenous culture has as much if not more (or at least more pertinently) to teach non-indigenes about modern living, the urban spiritual ..

2006-08-07T09:24:00.000+10:00

i spotted a copy of ngarla songs at the paperback bookshop in bourke st, melbourne the other day. snap it up - let them know poetry sells. please let me know if you see copies elsewhere.

2006-08-05T11:43:00.000+10:00

sean cubitt writes of 'english as a racist instrument of exploitation, oppression & genocide, and the core role of other languages in the resistance to colonialism'(in 'digital aesthetics' p 2; he is discussing the work of african writers arguing for gikuyu & kiswahili languages capabilities for 'voicing the experience of anti-colonial & post-colonial struggles'.

this raises a number of issues in relation to ngarla songs .. the experience they tell of is different to the poems of jack davis & kath walker for example: or at least the way theyre told. the book doesnt say how many people speak ngarla - but it suggests that its less than hundreds. english is used to communicate these songs to non-ngarla people. the songs arent directly political in the way that davis & walker can be. this i suppose has something to do with the nature of ngarla itself, its vocabulary, and with ngarla contact with white political culture. but resistance isnt all in the writing - its in how things are presented, & how read.

(& resistance isnt everything. theres an education in these poems.)

the main act of resistance here is of course presenting the songs in ngarla - proof that ngarla (as an example of an aboriginal culture) survives - & not just that it survives, but how: the songs show the adaptation to modernity to non-indigenous impact.

another level of politics is in the bios that tell of the 1946 strike for better conditions for aboriginal workers. (wirrkaru jingkiri p 47)

these songs show its not possible to reduce aboriginal poetry / songs to a mode or two.

2006-08-02T08:52:00.000+10:00

how western is it? geytenbeek automatically brings his english speaking/writing heritage into the translation. ngarla itself -- as a written form -- is westernised by using roman letters to form words to approximate the pronuncition of english.

a convention of bilingual texts in english speaking countries (or at least those ive seen from the uk, us, & australia) is to present the original language on the left page & the english on the right. this encourages a reading by an english reader from right to left. anyones reading practice might be different - but i usually read bilingual texts right side first, whether a line or whole poem, and then refer to the left. tho - especially if im interested in learning the language i might read the left first. or i might not read the left, if im tired, hurrying.

reading from right to left is more typically an eastern (arabic, asian) practice.

2006-07-26T08:16:00.000+10:00

its interesting to compare adam lindsay gordons 'The Sick Stockrider' with miriny-mirinymarra jingkiris 'murrkanyakarni' / 'Going to the Lock Hospital' p 33: also about a sick stockrider (if were to read the poem autobiographically that is - jingkiri was a stockrider or stockman; gordon wasnt exactly a stockrider as far as i know, but a horsebreaker and jockey, he is known for his abilities with horses and his horsey poems: jingkiri was known as 'horse boy jimmy' according to his bio p25, most of his work being with horses) but the latter is travelling by truck. the latter is more ambiguous with regard to dying: 'Will we go home better, or/ will we go home to die?'. the notes say the word 'convalesce' which ends the poem (im unsure which is the corresponding ngarla word) is used as a euphemism for 'die'. gordons poem ends with a reference to the bush flowers on his grave; jingkiris last stanza begins

'Memorise, look at those shady red gums.
Their tops will be swaying in the breeze for us
when we are ready to go home to convalesce'
ie he is saying memorise the trees for when you are dead.

2006-07-22T08:51:00.000+10:00

ngarla songs book group at st kilda library. the second reading revival book group will be held at st kilda library 150 carlisle st on august 19, 2pm. if youre using public transport, trmas no. 3 & 16 stop outside - or u can get the sandringham line to balaclava station & walk along carlisle 400m. please let me know if yr coming: email readingrevival at gmail dot com. all welcome / free.

if u havent got/read the book nows the time. (st kilda & port melbourne library have copies; also the writers centre 37 swanston st have one coming for their coffee table .) to buy use the online links on this page or order from yr local bookshop. collected works do mail order - (03) 96548873.

2006-07-19T08:37:00.000+10:00

theres a distinct anti-heroic humour in these songs. eg. 'wupuri'p 43 is a portrait of a famous horse-breaker. those watching him are laughing at him, but there is nothing to suggest that wupuri is pretentious, too big for his boots .. he doesnt come a cropper, theres no moral. the poem ends: 'Wupuri will make him sweat': the horse will try, but wont dislodge wupuri.

2006-07-17T09:59:00.000+10:00

comments - i had blog programmed to accept registered users only - have changed to 'anyone' - so if youve had difficulties, try again - hope this doesnt result in lots of spamming - well see - have also added some new links today

2006-07-17T08:53:00.000+10:00

'murrkanyakarni'/'going to the lock hospital' p 33 - i wonder if there are many poems to compare to this? poems written about sickness in the plural? first person is used in the poem, but not in terms of the narrator's illness. the tone too is far from selfpity. the patients travel in a truck, a reminder of holocaust literature but its tone is miles away.. the truck is 'gobbling up the many miles, humming a tune ..'
Hey! I didn't realise there were so many of us
going to Murrkanya.
'I wonder how we will fare.
Will we go home better, or
will we go home to die?'

2006-07-14T08:21:00.000+10:00

more on 'mr nipurl'/'mr neville'. the translation reads like a series of 3 haiku: simple, concise, with a sense of (thousands of) years of culture behind each word or phrase. i can't? keep on saying this, but perhaps the original is more explicit, more rich. the original would have less of a haiku effect in that it has many more syllables per line than the english version, and would i think be said (sung) faster. the style in the translation is straightforward, vernacular, but without the notes (which are longer than the poem) it would be quite obscure to me. but this isnt i dont think what would be concerning me exactly. there are various tones in which to express 'what does this mean?': querulous, resentful, curious, excited ... poems don't need to stand alone. 'ngarla songs' gives the poems plenty of context with the introductions & notes to poems, the bilingual text .. but even without all that, the poems would still have each other. thats how you can read poems, as part of a larger text. reading isnt a closed transaction. (and as derrida writes somewhere obscurity and clarity are both metaphors, already mediating the secondary text, ie the saying/writing on a text.)

2006-07-12T08:46:00.000+10:00

mr nipurl: the second mr neville poem 'mr nipurl' / 'mr neville' p30-31 presents at least 3 different ironies in the english version. the poem tells of the eating utensils provided to the speaker (an inmate of the lockup hospital). the first stanza expresses a mocking surprise at the 'worn-out antique/stuff' he has to eat from. the second stanza says mr neville (nipple?) has been 'nursing' the stuff but the last line is: 'Neville came here to be a father to us!' - whats the tone of this line? - there seem to be a range of ironies behind it. the notes dont say anything about a gender switch in the original. the third line still retains some humour, however the content is serious: the speaker feels forced to eat from the utensils of the dead, according to custom they 'should have been buried with the owner; to use a dead person's belongings was to invite sickness or death' (notes).