"be'ashniih: I am an authority on it (and thus know how to counteract it)
Authority on it, to be an—(in the sense of knowing how to counteract it; to know how to counteract it)"
Colloquial Navajo: A Dictionary (Robert W. Young & William Morgan)
NB: not the power to enforce
NB: not the power to make sure it is followed through
I am an authority on it, in this view means I have power over it, in the very least by means of making it no longer true, by means of loosening its rein, by means of lifting the yoke, by means of direct action.
"Counteract: vt., to act directly against; check, neutralize, or undo the effect of with opposing action."
Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition (Simon and Schuster)
To then say, I am an authority on poverty, severed relations, and hunger, would mean I have the means to undo the effects of these afflictions, by some opposing action.
Thought. Music. Language. Art.
I have the means to neutralize these conditions via action. I give generously. I maintain relations. I feed the dirt. I feed the Gods.
Be'ashniih. What possibility does this bring for Nations, thoughts, and music? For people and artists? For every one living inside several mouths and several languages? How can we apply our authority, our ability to counteract, to direct action, at the level of recognizing what needs to be done and doing it, to what needs to be seen and seeing it, to what needs to be said and saying it.
Showing posts with label Dine Bizaad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dine Bizaad. Show all posts
14 August 2012
31 July 2012
Translation
Dá'ák'eh: the whole family goes out and works the fields
Every one plays a part in the preparation of the fields. The youngest members are given seeds. "They represent life, innocence and purity." They represent the seeds themselves. They place the seeds into the broken earth—with their own hands. We rely on them. This becomes a part of who they are, these young people working the field with their elders.
As they grow they experience the process and take the prayers inside their mind and soul. They see their family, from toddlers to elders, out upon the earth taking care of it. She takes care of them in return. This a relationship. They have been a part of this themselves, growing alongside the crops, over the years, some years better than others, but always the process of going out and working the field together.
A lot of people say dá'ák'eh means cornfield. One person is responsible for that field. The person with the tractor. They sit on the seat and start the engine. The engine muffles the prayers of the planter. "The tractor prevents families from passing on tradition and precludes family unity." Ha'ní. They say.
When you understand the word in the context of the life it creates you understand that the whole family goes out and works the field speaks to a unique process of cultivation and a particular experience of time and place. The whole family goes out and works the field requires seasons to accomplish. Winter: tools are prepared, seeds are sorted and stored. Spring: we wait for thunder. Prayers are made. People take their feet out on the earth and bring them together. There is a language between the soles of one and the surface of the other. It is spoken at these moments. Summer: everyone is involved, the plant people (weeds and seedlings), the birds and animals who desire food of their own, and the corn tassels that begin to spill from the husks. Prayers for rain abound. Water is life giving the stalks their reach. Fall: within it there is a harvest, a thin one and a big one.
Late in the season everyone is tired. The earth is weary and she needs rest. The tools need rest too. After every empty stalk has been cleared everyone is given leisure. This time we share to relax and relieve ourselves from fatigue. We lie down. We recline. We stretch ourselves into the shape of sleep beneath cloaks of night and snowfall.
All quotes are from Diné Bizaad: Bínáhoo'aah: Rediscovering the Navajo Language by Evangline Parsons Yazzi, Ed.D. and Margaret Speas, Ph.D.
Every one plays a part in the preparation of the fields. The youngest members are given seeds. "They represent life, innocence and purity." They represent the seeds themselves. They place the seeds into the broken earth—with their own hands. We rely on them. This becomes a part of who they are, these young people working the field with their elders.
As they grow they experience the process and take the prayers inside their mind and soul. They see their family, from toddlers to elders, out upon the earth taking care of it. She takes care of them in return. This a relationship. They have been a part of this themselves, growing alongside the crops, over the years, some years better than others, but always the process of going out and working the field together.
A lot of people say dá'ák'eh means cornfield. One person is responsible for that field. The person with the tractor. They sit on the seat and start the engine. The engine muffles the prayers of the planter. "The tractor prevents families from passing on tradition and precludes family unity." Ha'ní. They say.
When you understand the word in the context of the life it creates you understand that the whole family goes out and works the field speaks to a unique process of cultivation and a particular experience of time and place. The whole family goes out and works the field requires seasons to accomplish. Winter: tools are prepared, seeds are sorted and stored. Spring: we wait for thunder. Prayers are made. People take their feet out on the earth and bring them together. There is a language between the soles of one and the surface of the other. It is spoken at these moments. Summer: everyone is involved, the plant people (weeds and seedlings), the birds and animals who desire food of their own, and the corn tassels that begin to spill from the husks. Prayers for rain abound. Water is life giving the stalks their reach. Fall: within it there is a harvest, a thin one and a big one.
Late in the season everyone is tired. The earth is weary and she needs rest. The tools need rest too. After every empty stalk has been cleared everyone is given leisure. This time we share to relax and relieve ourselves from fatigue. We lie down. We recline. We stretch ourselves into the shape of sleep beneath cloaks of night and snowfall.
All quotes are from Diné Bizaad: Bínáhoo'aah: Rediscovering the Navajo Language by Evangline Parsons Yazzi, Ed.D. and Margaret Speas, Ph.D.
17 July 2012
Translation
E'e'aah: sunset, the sun is setting.
The cardinal points:
Ha'a'aah: East: Thought
Shádi'áah: South: Plans
E'e'aah: West: Life
Náhookos: North: Hope
Shił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with me.
Nił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with you.
Bił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with him/her.
Nihił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with us (2)/you (2).
Nihił dahózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with us (3+)/you (3+).
Everyone is deeply concerned with the Mayan Prophecy and the end of days. I've been told not to expect the end of days, only the end of the time of struggle.
The Hopi say: remove the word struggle from your vocabulary.
The Navajo know the way to approach evil is to acknowledge its existence and to step away. We must not pour our energy into becoming destroyers. The world is full of destruction already. Our way is to restore balance. Hózhó. Beauty. Harmony. Health.
Begin in the east with the time of infancy, birth. Move toward the south, entering childhood. Taking on responsibilities we move west. As we age, we know life continues. The black north is a place of hope.
"'Spain,' said de Foxa, 'is a sensuous and funeral land, but not a land of ghosts. The home of the ghosts is the North. In the streets of Spanish towns you meet corpses, but not ghosts.' He talked about that odor of death that pervades all of Spanish art and literature." (Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt)
Several people have explained to me that life is a route to death. We are born and there begins our journey. Death: the destination. Everyone goes there, we may meet along the way or we may sojourn alone, but eventually we arrive among them, the dead, our future.
I know several books translated from Navajo into English, one into Gaelic, but none into Spanish. Bringing these worlds into contact has passed. We live with the consequence. Our lives our different: Diné Bizaad and Español. Translation has been difficult. We have lost many in the process. They choke. They transform. The think they can exist in one and not the other. They are right. They are wrong. We hold several things in the balance. We must take several things into consideration. Philosophy is esoteric. At the same time in the same place, we understand—land, direction, Telos—differently. Sometimes those differences are fundamental. A silence we must account for, and allow, in our transcription of the music.
The cardinal points:
Ha'a'aah: East: Thought
Shádi'áah: South: Plans
E'e'aah: West: Life
Náhookos: North: Hope
Shił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with me.
Nił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with you.
Bił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with him/her.
Nihił hózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with us (2)/you (2).
Nihił dahózhóní
(the Area) is beautiful with us (3+)/you (3+).
Everyone is deeply concerned with the Mayan Prophecy and the end of days. I've been told not to expect the end of days, only the end of the time of struggle.
The Hopi say: remove the word struggle from your vocabulary.
The Navajo know the way to approach evil is to acknowledge its existence and to step away. We must not pour our energy into becoming destroyers. The world is full of destruction already. Our way is to restore balance. Hózhó. Beauty. Harmony. Health.
Begin in the east with the time of infancy, birth. Move toward the south, entering childhood. Taking on responsibilities we move west. As we age, we know life continues. The black north is a place of hope.
"'Spain,' said de Foxa, 'is a sensuous and funeral land, but not a land of ghosts. The home of the ghosts is the North. In the streets of Spanish towns you meet corpses, but not ghosts.' He talked about that odor of death that pervades all of Spanish art and literature." (Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt)
Several people have explained to me that life is a route to death. We are born and there begins our journey. Death: the destination. Everyone goes there, we may meet along the way or we may sojourn alone, but eventually we arrive among them, the dead, our future.
I know several books translated from Navajo into English, one into Gaelic, but none into Spanish. Bringing these worlds into contact has passed. We live with the consequence. Our lives our different: Diné Bizaad and Español. Translation has been difficult. We have lost many in the process. They choke. They transform. The think they can exist in one and not the other. They are right. They are wrong. We hold several things in the balance. We must take several things into consideration. Philosophy is esoteric. At the same time in the same place, we understand—land, direction, Telos—differently. Sometimes those differences are fundamental. A silence we must account for, and allow, in our transcription of the music.
11 July 2012
Novels
"Only purely mechanistic relationships are not dialogic, and Dostoevsky categorically denied their importance for understanding and interpreting life and the acts of man. " (M. Bakhtin)
"Thus all relationships among external and internal parts and elements of his novel are dialogic in character, and he structured the novel as a whole as a 'great dialogue.'" (M. Bakhtin)
This is not about Dostoevsky.
This is about being a competent reader.
"What does it mean to be a 'competent reader' of Bakhtin? Surely it means to hear a dialogue, perhaps even to recognize the major voices embedded in it, but it must be a dialogue where no voice is done the 'slightest violence.'" (W. Booth)
Life requires competent readers. Novels require life. Stories describe and ensure our survival, our continuity, our particular understanding of being human. Novels offer us a point of entry into the great dialogue itself. Hearing, recognizing and ensuring that no voice is done even the "slightest violence" can create a world very different from this one. I have taken this project on as a moral and ethical responsibility.
"suffice it to say . . .'the whole' is not a finished entity; it is always a relationship." (W. Booth)
A relationship between the work (art) and the worker (artist). T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every thing in the universe is related. A relationship between the speaker and the listener. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No word exists in isolation. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No person exists without place. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every relation requires an ethics of exchange, an agreement between beings, a willingness to be inside oneself while another is wholely inside themselves as well. Unity and empathy are not achieved by dissolution. The great dialogue is an exchange over time and across terrain (metaphysical, ideological, and geographical), where we do not disintegrate, or retain such rigid exteriors that we cannot hear, and perhaps even recognize the major voices.
Recognition requires developing an ear.
Recognition reaquires familiarity.
Recognition requires vulnerability and a willingness to being seen yourself.
all quotes are from: Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Edited and Translated by Caryl Emerson, Introduction by Wayne C. Booth, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 8
"Thus all relationships among external and internal parts and elements of his novel are dialogic in character, and he structured the novel as a whole as a 'great dialogue.'" (M. Bakhtin)
This is not about Dostoevsky.
This is about being a competent reader.
"What does it mean to be a 'competent reader' of Bakhtin? Surely it means to hear a dialogue, perhaps even to recognize the major voices embedded in it, but it must be a dialogue where no voice is done the 'slightest violence.'" (W. Booth)
Life requires competent readers. Novels require life. Stories describe and ensure our survival, our continuity, our particular understanding of being human. Novels offer us a point of entry into the great dialogue itself. Hearing, recognizing and ensuring that no voice is done even the "slightest violence" can create a world very different from this one. I have taken this project on as a moral and ethical responsibility.
"suffice it to say . . .'the whole' is not a finished entity; it is always a relationship." (W. Booth)
A relationship between the work (art) and the worker (artist). T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every thing in the universe is related. A relationship between the speaker and the listener. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No word exists in isolation. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No person exists without place. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every relation requires an ethics of exchange, an agreement between beings, a willingness to be inside oneself while another is wholely inside themselves as well. Unity and empathy are not achieved by dissolution. The great dialogue is an exchange over time and across terrain (metaphysical, ideological, and geographical), where we do not disintegrate, or retain such rigid exteriors that we cannot hear, and perhaps even recognize the major voices.
Recognition requires developing an ear.
Recognition reaquires familiarity.
Recognition requires vulnerability and a willingness to being seen yourself.
all quotes are from: Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Edited and Translated by Caryl Emerson, Introduction by Wayne C. Booth, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 8
10 July 2012
Translation
"That one aspect of Bakhtin's style most inseparable from his personality is the developing idea. Its subtle shifts, redundancies, self-quotations—ultimately, its open-endedness—is the genre in which, and with which, he worked. To translate Bakhtin, I suggest, is therefore not only to translate the ideas (they can be paraphrased) but also to reproduce the sound of the open-ended, self-developing idea. This would be his 'conversation in progress,' his dialogue about dialogue, his interlocution with readers who have still to respond." (Wayne C. Booth, introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Edited and Translated by Caryl Emerson)
As a writer and language learner I am constantly trying to use the right word in the right way. I also believe, as a language learner, that making mistakes is a form of community service. The more people laugh, the better.
Different language communities take different approaches to correcting mistakes, and maintain radically different stances regarding when you are ready to speak and when you should just learn and listen. I suppose, like child rearing and dog ownership, this really is an artifact of the parent/owner/teacher involved. Some are loving and playful and others authoritative bullies (I include dog owners who let their dogs run and pounce on strangers, because "they love people so much" as members of the authoritative bully kind).
When speaking I don't mind being laughed at, except in English (which is my first language, and the one I am corrected in most, but that's another idea, developing). But in writing I am afraid. I try to get it right and have often asked others (native speakers) to read over work (though none have been willing to, which is another idea, developing), so I don't write some ridiculous twattle that only makes sense to me.
I had a neighbor from Brazil. We'd spend hours talking. I would talk to her in Spanish. And she would talk to me in Portuguese. We'd laugh. We'd be serious. This time, talking together, bridged the 20 year difference in our age, and the dramatic variation of our experience. My wife would sometimes be with us and would answer in English. My friend's daughter would sometimes be with us and she would answer in English too. They found us amusing. When I'd get stuck for a word or phrase I'd ask her daughter to translate. They'd laugh, her daughter and my wife, and tell us both: you are not talking Spanish and you are not talking Portuguese. We have no idea what you are saying.
A few years ago I wrote my first full page in Navajo. It might be a total mess, but it is true to the people speaking (who are a total mess themselves).
I believe in writing—in the oral tradition—taking language for what it is, an opportunity, a translation. But it was only after reading Leslie Silko's Turqouise Ledge that I started to allow myself to write as freely as I speak. To use my language books, my dictionaries, my tapes to work for me in the project of communication. Keeping our languages alive requires us to speak. Keeping them in print requires a willingness to ask others to speak them as well. Most of the work I read is in translation, and every work I read has some French, Spanish, German, Czech, Italian and Polish thrown in, even if only the names, that require pronounciation. I struggle to get my tongue and teeth around them. I feel them. I hear them. I take them in, literally. They, the translators of these works, expect me to know these languages. The languages have enough weight to warrant the expectation—so they go in the translation, un-translated.
I'm writing with that in mind, knowing the languages I work with (learning and speaking) have the same amount of weight in my own life. So they go in too, un-italicized and un-translated.
My developing idea is this: if to translate is not to betray, and all language is communication, then we should make the attempt to reach from one area in language to another. Sometimes those areas are between people, but they are often within a person themselves. Allowing those areas, allowing the elasticity of mind required of reading through, makes translation difficult and rewarding. Attempting an honest experience of these moments between asks more of the world and from ourselves, and requires that we not only speak, but respond.
As a writer and language learner I am constantly trying to use the right word in the right way. I also believe, as a language learner, that making mistakes is a form of community service. The more people laugh, the better.
Different language communities take different approaches to correcting mistakes, and maintain radically different stances regarding when you are ready to speak and when you should just learn and listen. I suppose, like child rearing and dog ownership, this really is an artifact of the parent/owner/teacher involved. Some are loving and playful and others authoritative bullies (I include dog owners who let their dogs run and pounce on strangers, because "they love people so much" as members of the authoritative bully kind).
When speaking I don't mind being laughed at, except in English (which is my first language, and the one I am corrected in most, but that's another idea, developing). But in writing I am afraid. I try to get it right and have often asked others (native speakers) to read over work (though none have been willing to, which is another idea, developing), so I don't write some ridiculous twattle that only makes sense to me.
I had a neighbor from Brazil. We'd spend hours talking. I would talk to her in Spanish. And she would talk to me in Portuguese. We'd laugh. We'd be serious. This time, talking together, bridged the 20 year difference in our age, and the dramatic variation of our experience. My wife would sometimes be with us and would answer in English. My friend's daughter would sometimes be with us and she would answer in English too. They found us amusing. When I'd get stuck for a word or phrase I'd ask her daughter to translate. They'd laugh, her daughter and my wife, and tell us both: you are not talking Spanish and you are not talking Portuguese. We have no idea what you are saying.
A few years ago I wrote my first full page in Navajo. It might be a total mess, but it is true to the people speaking (who are a total mess themselves).
I believe in writing—in the oral tradition—taking language for what it is, an opportunity, a translation. But it was only after reading Leslie Silko's Turqouise Ledge that I started to allow myself to write as freely as I speak. To use my language books, my dictionaries, my tapes to work for me in the project of communication. Keeping our languages alive requires us to speak. Keeping them in print requires a willingness to ask others to speak them as well. Most of the work I read is in translation, and every work I read has some French, Spanish, German, Czech, Italian and Polish thrown in, even if only the names, that require pronounciation. I struggle to get my tongue and teeth around them. I feel them. I hear them. I take them in, literally. They, the translators of these works, expect me to know these languages. The languages have enough weight to warrant the expectation—so they go in the translation, un-translated.
I'm writing with that in mind, knowing the languages I work with (learning and speaking) have the same amount of weight in my own life. So they go in too, un-italicized and un-translated.
My developing idea is this: if to translate is not to betray, and all language is communication, then we should make the attempt to reach from one area in language to another. Sometimes those areas are between people, but they are often within a person themselves. Allowing those areas, allowing the elasticity of mind required of reading through, makes translation difficult and rewarding. Attempting an honest experience of these moments between asks more of the world and from ourselves, and requires that we not only speak, but respond.
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