Rescued into extinction? : the case of the Naxi texts in translation

Abstract

Translation – when dealing with ethnic minority texts such as those of the Naxi dongba, from the Lijiang basin in Yunnan – is a form of anthropology, specifically the writing of a culture. Establishing this link between the acts of ethnography and translation means that we are not just asking how texts are translated (into Chinese, into English), but what the process means for the culture in question. China has enshrined dongba culture and the textual traditions of its 310,000 people as part of its intangible cultural heritage, a heritage which must be “rescued” because it is in danger of going extinct. Can translation go beyond the text and rescue a culture? Perhaps “rescue” presupposes the possibility of a final translation, an accepted version which can be safely passed down. But what if there is no fixed source text and no fixed copy, and the Chinese and Western anthropological translators have failed to hold their translations accountable to this possibility? It may be the case that the uniquely semi-oral nature of the Naxi traditions needs to be re-evaluated and recreated in translation, for the Naxi ritual texts are at once written and oral; they can be read, but not in any fixed form. Adding to the metonymic complexity of these texts is the logographic dongba script, exoticised as a kind of “picture writing” and at the same time seemingly ignored in translation. If our “rescuing” translations fail to take these issues into account, then perhaps a new kind of translation is needed to rescue the rescuer.