Obtaining a degree in the field of translation/interpretation can be a grueling and costly process. Top U.S. universities like the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and top-tier schools with degree-seeking programs in this field, like Georgetown and Stanford University, have yearly tuitions exceeding $30,000, and relatively few slots available for highly competitive merit-based scholarships. But before the future translators and interpreters of the world lose hope, it should be noted that grants, scholarships, and fellowships are out there. To help you start your search, we’re providing you with information about some of the most generous funds currently available to language students.

The most coveted scholarships offer full rides to worthy students, usually asking for a period of community service upon graduation. The National Security Education Program (NSEP) offers the Boren Fellowship, which covers up to $30,000 for American students to increase their foreign language proficiency by studying highly-needed languages like Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Swahili. The NSEP asks for a one-year commitment to the U.S. federal government in a position of national security upon a fellow’s graduation. Fulbright grants, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, offer the full cost of tuition and living expenses for their scholars. Fulbright scholars typically study/research a foreign language abroad or teach English, but funds are also available for students wishing to conduct research on personal projects abroad. Another initiative funded by the State Department is the Critical Language Scholarship Program. Similar to the Fulbright, it offers students of languages critical to U.S. interests the ability to study for free. Unlike the Fulbright, this program is intended as an eight-week intensive course for undergraduate and graduate students.

In addition to federally-funded fellowships, there exists a staggering amount of money available to students of particular languages. While Spanish and the Asian languages enjoy the largest popularity with scholarship search engines and generous funding, many other languages have niche markets and organizations and individuals dedicated to preserving them and encouraging their expansion. Free scholarship websites like FastWeb and College Scholarships.org have proven useful in allowing students to cast a wider net and find more scholarship opportunities.

In general, the more specific a scholarship’s goals and requirements, the less money is disbursed. The American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation offers a scholarship worth $2,500 called the JTG Scholarship in Scientific and Technical Translation or Interpretation. On a quirkier note, the Klingon Language Institute offers a $500 scholarship to students of any language – provided they take a “creative” approach to that language. Many, many more minor scholarships exist, and, every year, tens of thousands of dollars of financial aid remain untouched. While a degree in translation or interpretation can be costly, the burden of funding it can be somewhat alleviated with a little patience and a lot of sent recommendation letters. We hope this helps with your search!

Resources for Language Students

Scholarships, Grants, and Programs
The Boren Fellowship
The Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) Program
Critical Language Scholarship Program
JTG Scholarship in Scientific and Technical Translation or Interpretation
The Foreign Language Enhancement Program (FLEP)
Phi Sigma Iota Scholarships
Klingon Language Institute Kor Memorial Scholarship

Organizations
The National Security Education Program (NSEP)
American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation
Institute of International Education

Search Engines
Fastweb: Search for Scholarships, Financial Aid, Student Loans and Colleges
College Scholarships.org
The College Board Scholarship Search
Scholarship Experts
Scholarship Monkey

Related Articles

Top 10 U.S. Translation Schools
Translation Graduate Programs Overview
Paths to Success in Translation: Interview with Aaron Maddox
Paths to Success in Translation: Interview with Mary Maloof

                          

What is it that a translator does?

He reads with maniacal attention to nuance and cultural implication, conscious of all the books that stand behind this one; then he sets out to rewrite this impossibly complex thing in his own language, re-elaborating everything, changing everything in order that it remain the same, or as close as possible to his experience of the original. In every sentence the most loyal respect must combine with the most resourceful inventiveness. Imagine shifting the Tower of Pisa into downtown Manhattan and convincing everyone it’s in the right place; that’s the scale of the task.

Thank your translators today!

                          

The translation landscape is a minefield that must be carefully navigated. Obtaining a quality translation that will represent the source text of a document faithfully and eloquently in the target language is a difficult task to achieve for a project involving just one language. For each additional language, the probability of obtaining high quality across all languages diminishes dramatically when using untested resources. Add the elements of technical source files, multilingual desktop publishing, and large scale project management, and the argument for using an established, trusted agency becomes very strong.

The primary advantage of using the services of a professional translation agency versus finding a private translator is the higher probability of obtaining a quality product.

The reality of the translation business is that there are nine mediocre translators for every good one, and the truly exceptional are even harder to find. Many translators enter the field because they’re bilingual and want to find a career that utilizes this ability. However, merely being fluent in a foreign language does not mean an individual is an outstanding writer.

There are certainly disreputable agencies out there that employ translators who haven’t been properly vetted; however, the reputable agencies have generally gone to great lengths to assemble a team of translators in various languages and specialties who, in some cases, have been working with that agency for decades. The ability of these translators to deliver a quality product and consistently meet critical client deadlines has been established over many years. If you have questions about how to choose between companies offering translation services, refer to one of our first blog posts, How to Choose a Translation Company.

You believe you’ve found a quality translator, but are you certain that he or she will deliver the translation on time?

Translators are not robots—they’re people with human flaws and tendencies. Some translators have the ability to deliver quality work but cannot be relied on to consistently deliver projects on time.

Project managers know their resources. They know which translators are dependable, which ones tend to get stressed out and unreliable if overloaded with work, and which ones are so prone to missing a deadline that a fictitious deadline must be created in order to ensure on-time delivery. Translators and translation projects have to be “managed,” and that’s part of the value-added service of working with a professional translation agency.

Imagine you have a critical project being translated into seven different languages. Not only do you have to ensure that you’ve found quality translators for all seven languages—you also have to hope that all seven translators will deliver their work on time. The probability of achieving both goals using untested translators with whom you’re working for the first time is remote.

Are you working with source files in software programs like Adobe InDesign, FrameMaker, Illustrator or QuarkXpress?

Few translators are able to work directly with files from these desktop publishing programs, as very few actually own the programs. Most translation agencies have invested many thousands of dollars into both the desktop publishing software itself as well as the software required to export the text in files from these programs in a way that allows translators to work with it without actually having to own the programs themselves.

Additionally, most clients whose source files are from a desktop publishing program don’t just want translation—they want full layout services as well, and a final deliverable that is truly print ready. Most translation agencies employ the services of design specialists who are experts in multilingual desktop publishing. The rare translator who actually owns a program like Quark or InDesign is even less likely to have a true expertise in the area of desktop publishing.

Translation agencies are a one-stop shop for multilingual projects.

With a single phone call or email, a project comprised of multiple languages can be handled by a single source. Using private translators requires a client to deal with multiple individuals, which can be extremely time consuming and problematic.

Project managers spend significant time each day fielding questions and handling issues that arise during the course of a translation project. Clients who’ve hired a team of translators in a number of different languages have to be prepared to do the same.

Project management is a skill that requires an individual to wear many different hats, and project managers are more than language experts. They’re also experts in managing projects in a way that ensures a successful outcome. This includes expertise in areas like workflow, quality assurance, technical support and software. Project managers at translation agencies manage both projects and translators, and, in doing so, provide tremendous added value to their clients.

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ALTA has 30 years of experience providing translation services to government agencies and businesses of all sizes. In addition to handling over 50,000 large-scale multilingual translation projects over the years, ALTA was the official translation services provider for the 1996 Olympic and Paralympic games held in Atlanta, GA.

                          

Spring has arrived and we’re taking a look back at the articles we’ve posted since January. Here are a few from the past four months that you might have missed. Hopefully, they’ll provide an informative and entertaining break to your day:

Top Multilingual U.S. Cities
If you haven’t already filled out your 2010 Census form, this article might inspire you to bust out a pen and a stamp. Using data from the previous census, we ranked the United States’ 40 largest cities according to their multilingual characteristics.

Fictional Languages in Film:
The Linguists Behind Na’vi, Sindarin, Klingon and Ulam
Get your geek on! Jennifer discusses the linguists who created a few of the most popular fictional languages in film, and she provides short clips of the languages in use.

10 Confusing English Words and How to Conquer Them
Beyond Words contributor, Maria, looks at five pairs of words that English speakers often muddle up. After reading this, you’ll never “flout” your mastery of English again.

Beyond Words Podcast: Landing in Morocco, An Arabic Lesson
This is the first episode of Beyond Words’ new language podcast. Take a few minutes to learn how to get from an airport to a hotel speaking Modern Standard Arabic, and download the lesson for later playback.

Periodic Table Manners, Wordnik.com, and other Notes on Language from Erin Mckean
Is it possible to not love Erin Mckean? We don’t think so. If you still don’t know who Mckean is, this article serves as a great introduction to the lexicographic work she has been doing for years.

Hegan: The New Male Vegan
The latest neologism of 2010 is hegan. Beyond Words contributor, Jes, analyzes the development of the new word, and offers insights on its cultural sticking power.

10 Foreign Language Covers
Studies show that singing in a foreign language might help learn that language faster. In this article, we compile ten fun English language songs and pair them with their foreign language counterparts. You can listen to both versions of the songs, which should leave you walking like ein Ägypter.

Top 10 Languages Tested
This article breaks down the top languages ALTA’s clients tested for in 2009. The results provide an interesting glimpse at language trends for business and government.

5 Must-See TED Talks on Language
We sorted through all of the TED talks about language from past TED conferences. These are five of the most thoughtful, interesting, and entertaining talks on the subject.

If you’re interested in getting more language-related articles and media from around the web, follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Happy reading, listening, and watching!

- photo by mccoryjames

                          

Since the earthquake in Haiti, thousands of medical workers, translators, and interpreters have organized for specialized relief efforts. Translators Without Borders will soon offer a medical triage dictionary for use with Haitian Creole, and ALTA has enlisted our resources to translate and record Haitian Creole medical phrases for aid workers and volunteers. Based on selections from the Emergency Multilingual Phrasebook published by the Red Cross, we hope that the phrases are useful for those who want free Haitian Creole pronunciation practice.

Haitian Creole sometimes has more than one term or phrase to describe a medical condition or English term. In those cases, our translator was asked to choose the most common Haitian Creole variant in order to be understood by all speakers despite regional and cultural differences.

You can listen to the phrases directly on our website or download them for later playback on any standard MP3 compatible device. Each sound clip contains a recording of the English phrase followed by the Haitian Creole pronunciation, and finishes with the Haitian Creole phrase repeated for emphasis. We hope that this resource is helpful and we welcome any feedback.

Haitian Creole Medical Phrases:

1. What is your name?

2. I am a nurse.

3. I am a doctor.

4. I am a disaster volunteer.

5. I am a social worker.

6. May I examine you?

7. How old are you?

8. Were you recently injured?

9. Did you lose consciousness?

10. When did you become ill?

11. Do you have any pain? Where does it hurt?

12. Does it hurt when I press here?

13. What is your level of pain, rating it from 1 to 10?

14. Are you bleeding anywhere?

15. Do you have a cough? Are you coughing anything up?

16. Are you having trouble breathing?

17. Please take a deep breath.

18. Please open your mouth, stick out your tongue, and say “aah”.

19. Please hold this under your tongue.

20. I’m going to take your temperature.

21. You have a high fever.

22. Do you have diarrhea?

23. Are you constipated?

24. Do you have any swelling?

25. Do you have trouble seeing?

26. Do you have trouble hearing?

27. Do you have trouble swallowing?

28. Do you have trouble walking?

29. Are you pregnant?

30. When was your last menstrual period?

30 (b). Alternate phrase using a common idiomatic expression for ‘menstrual period’:

31. Do you have a history of cancer, heart disease, or diabetes in your family?

32. Do you have any chronic diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, or epilepsy?

33. Are you taking any medicine right now?

34. Are you allergic to any medicine?

35. I need to take your blood pressure.

36. I need to listen to your chest.

37. I need to give you an injection.

38. I need to take a blood sample.

39. I need to give you some stitches.

40. You have a broken leg.

41. You have a broken ankle.

42. You have a broken arm.

43. You have a broken wrist.

44. You have a broken shoulder.

45. I need to put a cast on your broken leg.

46. I need to put a cast on your broken ankle.

47. I need to put a cast on your broken arm.

48. I need to put a cast on your broken wrist.

49. I need to put a cast on your broken shoulder.

50. Please urinate into this container.

51. Do not eat or drink anything. (Note: Haitian Creole recording separates this into two phrases: Do not eat anything. Do not drink anything)

52. You are going to be okay. Don’t worry.

Download

To download these Haitian Creole Medical Phrases for playback on any MP3 compatible device, simply right click and “save link as” or “save target as” — DOWNLOAD .

Related Articles

Beyond Words Podcast Episode 4: Emergency Medical Phrases, A Haitian Creole Lesson

Other Online Resources

Byki Haitian Creole for iPhone and iPod Touch
English – Haitian Creole Medical Dictionary
Haitian Creole Phrasebook
Translators Without Borders

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The Help Heal Haiti graphic T-shirt by Bruno Postigo can be purchased online. Proceeds go to Red Cross.

ALTA is an Atlanta based Language Services Provider celebrating 30 years in business. In addition to providing Translation Services, Language Testing, and Language Training, ALTA participates in various charities, from raising money for AIDS research, to offering free language training programs to non-profit organizations. For more information, please call 404.920.3800.
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During the Summer Olympics in Beijing, language played an important, and sometimes confusing role. According to a Telegraph article from 2008 , taxi drivers and Olympic officials completed an intensive English training course, but despite the country’s best efforts, much of the accented English was barely decipherable. In response to the language barrier, one company developed a new translation platform called Jajah Babel, which was essentially a free telephone service that translated English into Mandarin and vice versa. Marketed at visitors, the IBM-based platform helped Olympic tourists navigate simple questions and answers at the touch of a phone.

Some translation issues, however, cannot be navigated by a simple iPhone-type application. How do coaches and athletes and officials communicate during events? Almost all communication between officials and athletes or coaches occurs in French or English (or in the home country’s tongue, which, this time, is English and French, coincidently), but for visitor navigation and other Olympics-related language barriers, the home country, in this case Canada, supplies the translators.

According to Werner Patels, the blogger behind Translation-Language-Culture-Communication , Canada may not be prepared for the onslaught of Olympic crowds. In April of 2009, The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, reported that Graham Fraser, the Commissioner of Official Languages, i.e. the official promoter and supporter of a French-English bilingual Canada, appeared before the House of Commons’ official languages committee and stated that Olympic organizers were falling behind in their efforts to make the Olympics fully bilingual. Apparently the federal government was holding back on assistance to the Olympic organizers — an ironic stance given that the government aims to promote bilingualism.

Patels argues, however, that the federal agency (the translation bureau) translation and interpretation services are sub-standard, and that the bureau contracts translators all around the world rather than using the many professional French-Canadian translators and interpreters right in their back yard:

Bureau interpreters, for example, regularly interpret into a “B” or “C” language, rather than exclusively into the “A” language (A being the interpreter’s mother tongue). English Canadians who want to follow proceedings in the federal parliament are therefore treated to English interpretations with thick and often unintelligible French accents. Quite often, too, those interpreters produce a kind of franglais that makes most people’s hair stand on end: in this context, I always give as an example that francophone Bureau interpreter with a really thick accent who rendered “dans un cafe” as “in a coffee” several times in a row in such phrases as “We discussed it while sitting in a coffee”.

The question, then, is whether Canada actually responded to this language crisis. In September, The China Post reported that, “Federal Heritage Minister James Moore announced US$7.7 million in new funding for the Olympics just hours after reports raised concerns that the organizing committee was out of cash to meet the commitment.” Even with the extra funds, though, it seems as if Canada never quite got it together bilingually — something very odd given that much of the country is bilingual.

On February 7, 2010, Kelowna reported that while the organizers arranged for a wide array of francophone artists to take center stage at cultural events, the Cultural Olympiad’s 86-page program guide was subpar (in regards to translation):

The guide’s French translation is peppered with grammatical inconsistencies, awkward sentence structures and, strangely enough, a few cringe-inducing typos…but the biggest issue we found with the guide is that French readers will sometimes find themselves confronted with event descriptions that read more like backwards run-on sentences without a proper beginning, middle and end.

Kelowna reports that VANOC (Vancouver Olympics Committee) had the massive translation completed “by hand” — by which, I’m assuming they mean that Vancouver avoided using Machine Translation. However, it is not clear whether they employed any computer-assisted translation tools (CAT). The two are very different. From 2006 to 2009, Vancouver translated over three million words (with an additional five million needed by the end of the Paralympic Games in March). It would be difficult to produce such a large scale translation, and keep it accurate and consistent all the way through, without software assistance. Sometimes people outside the language industry do not know how CAT platforms function, so here’s a brief explanation:

SDL Trados and Déjà vu, to name just a couple of the major CAT options, offer translators and project managers with an interface that breaks the text into segments and presents the segments in a convenient way to make translating easier, faster and more consistent. Most importantly for large scale projects such as the Olympics Guide, these tools have Translation Memory capabilities. Translation memory files store previously translated source texts and their equivalent target texts in a database and retrieve the related segments during the translation of new texts for consistency across and multiple documents over time. These are tools that assist humans in performing large scale, complicated translation jobs — they are not machine translations.

Even with CAT software, errors sometimes creep into large scale projects, but it does seem a bit strange that VANOC and its contractors have been unable to render accurate French translations. Below is an example of the incorrect translations via Kelowna:

Description for Art of Craft, at the Museum of Vancouver (p. 18).

Original English text (excerpt):
Celebrating the inventiveness and refinement of over 100 fine craft artists from across Canada and the Republic of Korea.

French translation (excerpt):
Celebrer l’imaginaire et le raffinement de plus de 100 artistes des metiers d’art de partout dans le Canada et en Coree du Sud.

Our translation:
Une exposition celebrant l’imaginaire et le raffinement de plus de 100 artistes des metiers d’art de partout au Canada et en Coree du Sud.

(Note: The English text assumes the exhibit is “celebrating,” therefore it needs to be fleshed out in French. Our version is one of many options — it could have easily been “celebrez,” where the audience is the subject instead but the infinitive form “celebrer” is incorrect. “Dans le Canada” is a literal translation of “in Canada,” which might have been part of the original English text before editing. This particular French phrasing, in any context, remains awkward.)

Whether Vancouver will live up to its bilingual heritage or not, only time will tell. Until then, let’s just hope that everyone ends up where they need to be and learns what they need to know — whether it is in French or English.

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ALTA is an Atlanta based Language Services Provider celebrating 30 years in business. In addition to providing quality Translation Services, Language Testing, and Language Training, ALTA was the official Translation provider for the 1996 Olympic and Paralympic Games held in Atlanta, GA.

The above photo depicts an art installation by Ron Terada that is currently outside the Vancouver Library. Photo taken, and brilliantly cropped, by Uncle Buddha

                          

Top 20 Target Languages (2009)

                          

When news of J.D. Salinger’s death was reported late Wednesday afternoon, I was surprised, but then not. Despite being one of the most recognized American authors of the twentieth century, Salinger was also one of the most reclusive. After being thrown into the limelight in 1951 with Catcher in the Rye, Salinger moved to a 90 acre home in Cornish, New Hampshire and, after an unwelcomed newspaper article was published about him by a group of high school students he had befriended, he erected a 6 ½ foot tall fence around the perimeter in order to keep people out.

Even though few of us knew anything about his failing health or major accidents, Salinger was 91 years old, and 91 is a ripe old age.

Salinger’s most recognized work, Catcher in the Rye, faced issues in translation that still haven’t been resolved today, some fifty-nine years later. According to Bernd Wahlbrinck, an English teacher and Salinger enthusiast living in Germany, the novel was harder to translate into certain languages than others.

He writes specifically of Heinrich Boell’s German translation originally written in the 1950s. Part of the inaccuracies of the translation were possibly due to a lack of proper slang or the cultural taboo around slang—‘that David Copperfield kind of crap’ is translated into ‘David Copperfield Zeug’, where ‘Zeug’ more accurately refers to ‘stuff’ and should have been ‘Scheiss’, but also the:

…weird tendency to translate the past tense into German Praeteritum, which is, however, usually stupid because in colloquial language we just don’t use it most of the time. Thus, in the very first sentence of the novel, it says ‘… was meine Eltern taten…’. Actually, nobody says that, certainly not a kid of 17; we would say something like ‘was meine Eltern (so) gemacht haben’.

In 2003, however, a new German translation was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, and the verdict is out on that one, but the first sentence of the new translation seems a bit closer to the original English:

Wenn ihr das wirklich hören wollt, dann wollt ihr wahrscheinlich als Erstes wissen, wo ich geboren bin und wie meine miese Kindheit war und was meine Eltern getan haben und so, bevor sie mich kriegten, und den ganzen David-Copperfield-Mist, aber eigentlich ist mir gar nicht danach, wenn ihr’s genau wissen wollt.

Wahlbrinck’s website contains a plethora of other translations, like the first sentence of the book in Portuguese:

Se querem mesmo ouvir o que aconteceu, a primeira coisa que vão querer saber é onde eu nasci, como passei a porcaria da minha infância, o que meus pais faziam antes que eu nascesse, e toda essa lenga-lenga tipo David Copperfield, mas, para dizer a verdade, não estou com vontade de falar sobre isso.

Also, the Dutch translations translate the “you” in the first sentence in various ways: “the first (1958) uses the singular “je”, in the second (1967) “u” is used (same use as in Afrikaanse translation, a language very similar to Dutch), the latest translation again uses “je”. Interesting is that David Copperfield kind of crap is never translated using the name DC. The translation in Dutch is: “van dat soort sentimentele gelul” (that kind of sentimental crap).’

The website is definitely a good read for anyone interested in translation and Catcher in the Rye, and I’m interested in hearing from translators if you all agree with Wahlbrinck’s assessment of the issues surrounding the novel’s translation.

                          

The boundaries between formal and informal language are often blurry. Misunderstandings can arise when a language student or interpreter does not choose correctly when speaking a language that distinguishes between formal and informal personal pronouns. One runs a risk of being considered impolite on the one hand, or snobbish on the other.

The formal singular pronoun is used to express respect to an addressee, whether it is a superior, an older person, a business partner, or a new acquaintance. The informal pronoun, conversely, establishes a sense of closeness and trust among friends and relatives. There is a very special—even intimate—moment when the formal pronoun suddenly changes to its familiar form in the middle of the conversation; or there is a reverse effect of chilling distancing when the formal pronoun is uttered in place of the familiar. Interestingly, most European languages preserve the distinct forms of polite and familiar personal pronouns. In Modern English, however, the practice became largely obsolete.

A similar form of both formal and informal pronouns exists in almost every Indo-European language. Here are a few examples:

In linguistics, the practice of distinguishing personal pronouns on the basis of familiarity and social courtesy is referred to as a T-V distinction, from the first letters of Latin pronouns tu and vos. Common to most of the Indo-European languages, the formal singular pronoun derives from its plural form. Addressing someone in plural has been a universal symbol of inexorable power and authority. According to some sources, the first record of addressing a superior in plural dates back to the Roman Empire during the 4th century. Later, plural pronouns began to be commonly applied to the European aristocracy—so-called “majestic plural.”

In Old English, second-person pronouns thou and you derived from the plural ye. Originally, thou was simply a singular counterpart to ye. The Norman Conquest of 1066 AD marked the age of the French language influence on English. Thou—just like its French version tu—was used to express familiarity, affection, or even condescendence, while the plural ye was reserved for a superior during a formal address. Starting in the Middle English period (mid 15th century), ye gradually generalized to you, which became a standard in both plural and singular forms with no distinct connotation of familiarity or social distance. Thou, which was losing its prominence in the early 17th century, is still preserved in some regions of England and Scotland; it is also commonly used in religious context.

This can pose a challenge to translators and interpreters. They must be aware of the cultural and social circumstances that require a more formal tone to avoid an insulting statement and, at the same time, to avoid archaic and awkward wording. It is even more difficult to reflect the subtle nuances and shades of meaning that accompany the two forms of pronouns. One way to ameliorate the problem is to reserve to the so-called compensating translation. Using a first name or a nickname instead of honorifics or using some informal phrasing, one can “compensate” for the lost meaning or implication.

                          

Last summer while I was researching various journals on translation testing methods, I constantly ran across articles mentioning the difficulty surrounding Cherokee language testing, specifically in the Bilingual Education Program. Although I don’t have the articles anymore, the gist was that under several testing programs it was nearly impossible to create an equal English language literacy and Cherokee language literacy test. In testing young elementary school children of both Cherokee and non-Cherokee background, the program administrators found that bilingual children achieved noticeably lower scores on the English language tests, and that these scores were not due to a limited exposure to English but due to the cultural-linguistic nature of the Cherokee language.

The problem with technical academic journals is that the amount of background information or history is limited. While the studies made sense and were useful regarding the information I needed for my own project, I was left wondering what exactly were the differences between Cherokee and English, and why exactly the two languages could not be accurately tested in a bilingual situation. I’d nearly forgotten about the issue until recently when I picked up a copy of Christopher Camuto’s book, Another Country.

I read Camuto’s three published books (the three I could easily access, he recently published a fourth book, Time and Tide in Acadia in 2009) in backwards chronology, starting with his most recent, Hunting from Home, then his second book, A Fly Fisherman’s Blueridge. As those titles suggest, Camuto’s writing is interested in the Appalachian landscape, in hunting and fishing and the environment of the Appalachian mountains. Camuto is also interested in language and the way language works in relation to the environment. In his first book, Camuto explores the relation of the Cherokee people to Appalachia and spends a great deal of time discussing the Cherokee language.

Cherokee is a Creek Indian word meaning, “people with another language.” Native speakers actually call the language Tsalagi, but they typically do not have a problem with the term Cherokee.

While the book is marketed as centering around two central issues—the reintroduction of the red wolf, Canis rufus, to the Great Smoky Mountains, and the history, culture, and mythology of the Cherokee people—a much larger section of the book is devoted to the Cherokee than to the wolves (perhaps due to the failed reintroduction of the wolves—there’s only so much you can write about that). Very quickly I discovered many of the answers to the questions I asked last summer about the Cherokee language—specifically why it is so difficult to translate.

In the first major paragraph of his section on the Cherokee, Camuto writes:

Linguists were struck early on by the complexity of Cherokee, a polysynthetic language in which words are constructed to convey an intended assertion as well as its context and a host of connotations about the speaker, the action, and the object of the action. In 1852 Hans Gabelentz, a German philologist, noted not only the ‘great formative ability’ of the language but also that it embodied a distinction between nouns ‘such as express living beings and such as express lifeless things.’

Further,

The five categories in Cherokee, each loosely attached to a physical feature, are thought to be vestiges of an earlier stage in the language, one dominated by the names of things…the system invites the speaker to carefully consider the nature of every action, how one thing might be treated with respect to another, as if kinship, philosophically speaking, extended beyond the idea of the clan. So, for example, the form of the verb to hold you would use to say that you held an object would depend on the nature of the object—whether it was animate, flexible, long and rigid, liquid, or round—the last a catch-all for anything not assigned to one of the other categories.

This application of the nature of the object to the verb form obviously complicates the language, probably far beyond what any written multiple-choice language test could ever assess. And as Camuto points out time and time again throughout the book, the Cherokee language is immediately dependent on the landscape. After being driven out of the forested mountains in the Southeastern United States to reservations in the Plains region, much of the language became useless—a relic of a home no longer accessible.

While these two sections do not adequately explain the complexities or beauty of the Cherokee language—it certainly remains somewhat obscure in my mind—it does help explain why a bilingual assessment of Cherokee-English children is nearly impossible. How could one come up with a balanced, 100% testable series of questions regarding how a bilingual Cherokee child reads a sentence?

In many circumstances, the simple sentence: “I threw the red ball” could be translated in several different ways: how hard was the ball thrown, how big is the ball, what material is the ball made out of, etc. all play into the way the sentence is translated. Certainly the gist of a sentence could be translated, but the English-Cherokee interplay of language is entirely object-person specific (and, in many cases, landscape specific). Creating a multiple choice test that covers all those factors would be an expensive and daunting task. Impossible? Probably not. But definitely difficult.

For more information about Cherokee, visit this wonderful resource on Native American Languages: Native-Languages.org

Above photo is of a postcard depicting Seqouyah, the creator of the Cherokee Syllabary, and is by Ali Emerov