Current status - Senior Bible Translation Consultant with Converge, USA. Curently managing translation projects in Idu Mishmi and Puroik. Also Consultant for Leinong translation project with EBT.
Education – PhD Linguistics, University of Oregon.
Specialty – Tibeto-Burman languages of northeast India (phonology and grammar).
Documenting and revitalizing endangered languages.
Translating Temporal and Spatial Terms
Abstract
During the course of a translation consultant session, one of the most common questions I am asked is about locations of places. The translators want to know whether people are going up or down, whether or not they are going very far and sometimes whether or not they are returning. This is a pertinent question for translators who come from rugged mountainous regions and who generally go on foot for days. However, very few available resources provide details in this regard.
In August 2015, during the 48th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, Santa Barbara there was a one-day pre-meeting workshop entitled “How Grammar Encodes Space in Tibeto-Burman. As a result of the conference and subsequent articles published later, I looked at some translated texts to see how well participant tracking in space was translated. Many languages have grammatical devices for indicating direction (of the movement), the location of the participants which cover both spatial and temporal locations. These grammatical devices (verbal auxiliaries or other morphology) give a more succinct picture of the event and it helps the translator better visualize the event.
This paper examines how spatial and temporal events are translated and discusses whether or not translations make sufficient use of the grammatical devices available in the target language. Examples of translations are presented in detail.