The Translation of Hebrew Flora and Fauna Terminology in North Sámi and West Greenlandic fin de siècle Bibles

Abstract

This study is a comparative analysis of the strategies employed in the translation of geographically specific flora and fauna terminology in the first complete Hebrew Bible translations into North Sámi (1895) and West Greenlandic (1900). These two contemporaneous translations lend themselves to fruitful comparison because both North Sámi and Greenlandic are spoken in the Arctic by the indigenous communities which share a similar history of colonisation by Lutheran Scandinavians. Despite this common background, our study reveals a striking difference in translation methods: the North Sámi translation exhibits a systematic foreignising, formally equivalent approach using loan words from Scandinavian languages (e.g. šakkalak 'jackals' from Norwegian sjakaler, granataebel 'pomegranate' from Norwegian granateple), whereas the Greenlandic translation typically creates descriptive neologisms (e.g. milakulâĸ 'the spotted one' for 'leopard') or utilises culturally specific domesticating, dynamically equivalent Arctic terms (e.g. kingmernarssuaK 'big lingonberry' for 'pomegranate'). The paper assesses the reasons behind these different translatorial approaches.