Translation: Where the Rubber Meets the Road - II

One of the first problems I ran into, in translating the Gospel of Matthew into Udugi, was that I didn't know the Cherokee (Tsalagi) word for "virgin," I have several Cherokee dictionaries, both on paper and on-line, but none could provide me with this word. So I referred to the Cherokee New Testament, translated in the 1840s. To securely identify the proper word, I used a concordance to locate a few more example in the New Testament, learning that the correct word was ꭰꮫ (adv). Having a similar problem with the word "treasure," I used the same technique. I happened to be using an old copy of Cruden's, which gave me this information: "the word 'treasure,' among the Hebrews, signifies anything collected together; provisions, stores." I found this very interesting, and wondered what the word meant to a Cherokee. In the Cherokee New Testament, the word is "tsugvwalodi" (ᏧᎬᏩᎶᏗ), a word that also means "valuable." So there is our answer: it means "valuables." I know that I will confidently be able to use the same word when I get to Mt. 6:21, "for where your valuables are, there will your heart be, also."

The gifts of the Three Wise Men presented an interesting and instructive problem. Gold was probably not, originally, a store of value for the Cherokee, since the only market for it would have been where metallurgy was practiced--far away. In modern Cherokee, gold is "dalonige," a word that also means "yellow." But I learned from the Cherokee NT that it was called "adelv-dalonige," which means "yellow shake," probably referring to the panning process. Silver is still called "adelv-unegv," "white shake." Gold was not important in the Cherokee culture of the early nineteenth century, so it is ironic that a little gold, found in a creek in northern Georgia, was one of the principal reasons for the forced removal of the Cherokee from their ancestral lands.

"Frankincense" presented more of a problem. Cherokee has no "f" sound, and the living dialects do not have "r," either. Looking it up in the Cherokee NT, I found that the missionaries had translated it as "sweet-smell-rubber," and I have done the same in Udugi. The closest thing in any First Nations culture might be sage, but it's common, so might not be thought of as a fit gift for a king.

In the Cherokee NT, "myrrh," which comes from Arabia and East Africa, and is not part of Native American culture, was called "mila," without explanation, by the missionaries. Not being quite sure what it is myself, I have, in Udugi, followed their lead.

Sometimes the translations of the missionaries were quite clever, and served well. For example, they must have known, or someone among them did, that in Hebrew Bethlehem (beit-lehem) means "house of bread." Since Cherokee has no "b" or "th," and words cannot end in a consonant, they did not try to represent the sound. In Cherokee, Bethlehem is Gaduyi, which means "Bread-place."

Similarly, the Cherokees of today call Bartlesville, OK "Gugu," which means "Bottle." Sometimes (e.g. in the case of "frankincense," one follows the meaning, and sometimes, as in the case of "myrrh," one follows the sound.

So if I tell you that the Cherokee word for "spear" is "digatisdi," you'll now know the meaning of "adelv-digatisdi," right?

(to be continued, probably)

Text and image © 2020 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler, ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.