Translation Problems for Traditional High Cultures

Currently this page contains a summary of the problem, with links to work on improving translations of the Popol Vuh, starting from the good work of many predecessors and the tools provided by the recent editions by Allen Christenson.
I hope during the coming year to add some suggestions on translations of place names, perhaps Western Apache or others. For this last, please see Wisdom Sits on the Land by Keith Basso..

There is an enormous responsibility which goes with any act of translation, since one is necessarily representing one culture to others who may know it only through those translations.

There are serious problems in the vast majority of translations from one culture into another. It is difficult to become aware of these problems, simply as a matter of craft skills. And it is difficult to understand how the image of the "other" is often distorted. Word by word, phrase by phrase, great damage can be done.

A very simple example was mentioned by Joel Palka at the Mayan Weekend (University of Pennsylvania Museum, April 2008): the term "Cranial Deformation" is standard among archaeologists, but it is both negatively evaluative and in other ways strongly misrepresents the meaning of the practice to those who valued it. "Head shaping" is a more scientifically accurate term. It is neutral as to evaluation, but presupposes that there was a purpose ("shaping"). This is not a matter of political correctness, this is a matter of using terminology which conveys factually accurate meanings rather than scientifically false ones. "Deformation" is something that can equally occur in an auto accident, which is not what we are usually talking about here. (Though there are instances where we don't know whether we have an example of intentional "shaping" vs. unfortunate "deformation", such ambiguity is probably quite rare.). The fact that our own culture regards head shaping as bizarre gives us no excuse for misrepresenting another culture by using such a term when it factually is not applicable.

Word-for-word glossing is not translation. (Even though Mayanists do a lot of it, it is not translation.) If there is any difference at all in grammatical structures between two languages, it will give a bad impression of the "other", because it will use for example English words in ways which a literate person does not use them in English. Translation, properly understood, always gives the MEANING of the original accurately, with no reflection of the grammatical form of the original. That means that if we do not correctly understand the meaning of an original in some language, we simply cannot translate it into our own language or into any other. Some will protest against such a strict criterion, but it is a valid statement. It is a caution against misrepresenting other cultures as illiterate, incompetent, or stupid. Doing so actually damages us, because it encourages us to think of ourselves as exceptional. It prevents us from seeing our own mistakes and from interacting respectfully with others. Please see Eugene A. Nida 1964 Toward a Science of Translating. Leinden: E. J. Brill

Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
The following .pdf downloads are intended to be used together. This is obviously work in progress.
You are welcome to download for personal use, but please do not reproduce otherwise.
Please do undertake your own projects to improve translations of this or of other important documents, always to avoid errors which would not reflect well on the people whose ancestors produced the documents.
Please do make suggestions on any matter where you wish to. Email Lloyd Anderson here.
The versions accessible here are partly as of 20 December 2007, modified after discussions in the workshop led by Allen Christenson and Frauke Sachse at the WAYEB meetings earlier that month in Geneva. Some sections may not have been updated yet to reflect those. This will be checked in May, 2008.

"Translating the Popol Vuh" is a collection of special case studies of idioms,
     metaphors, etc., indicating how and why particular translations are used.
The Cover page gives a one-page version of this introduction.
The English and Quiche versions are here through line 1720, the defeat of 7 Macaw.
     They are arranged to be printed and then viewed as facing pages
     These use the full width of the paper to lay out the structure of the text
     as revealingly as possible. The English is not yet smooth normal English,
     it still has some prominent reflections of Quiche word order,
     but at least in other respects it is getting closer to normal English.
     If you are careful about sequencing the sheets, and use the cover page,
     you can print them back-to-back (two-sided) and end up with the
     translations facing each other. .
     (intended for 8.5 x 11 inch paper -- European paper may cut off the sides slightly)
Translating_Popol_Vuh_2007Dec.pdf
Popol_Vuh_Cover_2007.pdf    [version older than the other three]
Popol_Vuh_English_2007Dec.pdf
Popol_Vuh_Quiche_2007Dec.pdf

This document is copyright © 2007 by Lloyd Anderson. All Rights Reserved with the following exception: it may be freely used as long as it is properly cited and this copyright notice is retained unchanged.