The Influence of Christianity on the Indigenous Languages of Taiwan: a Bunun Case Study

Busser, Rik De

doi:10.1163/24688800-00202007

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 4 publications

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“…189-190). Unlike in other Asia-Pacific countries, where the church suppressed Native languages, the church in Taiwan helped to develop such languages by translating the Bible into them and using them in Sunday services (De Busser, 2019). But, like the state, the church suppressed Native cultures.…”

Section: Inclusive Development and Indigenous Policy In Taiwanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inclusive development, translation, and Indigenous-language pop

Sterk

2022

LANS-TTS

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This article is about a cost-effective approach to inclusive development in a settler state that shows what translation has to offer minorities. For almost two decades, Taiwan’s government has rewarded Indigenous minority recording artists who sing in endangered ancestral languages at the Golden Melody Awards (GMAs), Taiwan’s Grammys. These language-based GMAs stimulate the private production of popular music in such languages. They also stimulate translation into such languages, which certain recording artists have been learning as adults. I found that one GMA hopeful, Yoku Walis, translated her hip-hop lyrics from Mandarin Chinese into Seejiq, her ancestral language, with a language learner in mind, and that a pedagogical goal also guided the titling of her music videos. But language pedagogy is only one part of an innovative package. Yoku’s Seejiq hip hop is a contribution to inclusive linguistic and cultural development. The language-based GMAs illustrate the ways in which settler states such as Taiwan can help to empower Indigenous translators such as Yoku to make such contributions.

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Section: Inclusive Development and Indigenous Policy In Taiwanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inclusive development, translation, and Indigenous-language pop

Sterk

2022

LANS-TTS

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Pedagogical devices

Sterk

2022

Babel

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The “partial translation” of Inuktitut-language lyrics in the Indigenous film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (directed by Zacharias Kunuk, 2001) has been interpreted as a means of challenging outsiders to understand the film “emically,” meaning from insiders’ perspectives. On this interpretation, Atanarjuat is linguistically exclusionary, because the challenge of partial translation effectively excludes most outsiders from a full understanding. But given the problem of language shift in Indigenous communities, we should not expect Indigenous films to be linguistically exclusionary in general, or they would exclude young Indigenous insiders along with outsiders. We should instead expect Indigenous films to adopt an inclusionary approach to subtitling, consistent with projects of language revitalization. To see what form such an approach might take, I analyzed three Indigenous films from Taiwan in which speech in Atayalic languages is subtitled in Mandarin. Staggered over three-and-a-half decades, these three films index the subtitling approach as a function of concern about language shift. I found that all three films were fully, not partially translated, but that the two films made in a context of concern about language shift were subtitled pedagogically. The two pedagogically subtitled films are “devices” for the pedagogy of Atayal, the most widely spoken Atayalic language. This result from Taiwan suggests that a pedagogical approach might be common in the subtitling of Indigenous films in settler societies around the world.

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Ecologising Seediq: Towards an Ecology of an Endangered Indigenous Language from Taiwan

Sterk¹

2020

Int. J. Taiwan Stud.

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An ecolinguistic system, like a biological ecosystem, is self-regulating, yet it cannot be entirely self-contained, because words, like living species and the non-living substrates upon which they depend, are border-crossing. As a result, any ‘language’ is to some extent ‘creolised’, lexically or syntactically. Creolisation, however, may be perceived as a threat to an endangered language. The Seediq language is endangered, and, like any language, to some extent creolised. Though much less creolised than Ilan Creole, Seediq contains numerous Japanese and Chinese loanwords. Yet many of these loanwords have Seediq analogues. It may be that the Seediq language community has responded to the influx of loanwords by coining new terms based on Seediq roots. If so, their response combines linguistic purism with cultural cosmopolitanism: the loanword is a threat, the concept is not. Regardless, the coexistence of indigenous words with loanwords is part of an ongoing linguistic adaptation to modernity. I try to understand this adaptation in terms of ‘language ecology’.

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The Influence of Christianity on the Indigenous Languages of Taiwan: a Bunun Case Study

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Inclusive development, translation, and Indigenous-language pop

Inclusive development, translation, and Indigenous-language pop

Pedagogical devices

Ecologising Seediq: Towards an Ecology of an Endangered Indigenous Language from Taiwan

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