On the Translation of Style in Oral Narrative Author(s): Dennis Tedlock Source: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol.

84, No. 331, Toward New Perspectives in Folklore (Jan. - Mar., 1971), pp. 114-133 Published by: American Folklore Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/539739 Accessed: 22/06/2009 07:28
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DENNIS

TEDLOCK

On the Translationof Style in Oral Narrative

turnedwriterand retoldthe stories,a dangerous applied. processhere successfully The retelling, one might say, is ethnologicallyhonorable.The storieshave not This sounds been prettified,elaborated, ladenwith pseudo-literary or trimmings." but reassuring, there is more: the stories "have simply been put into a familiar idiom, with restraintand good taste, and in some cases purged of the insistent and repetitions clutteringdetailsthatprimitivepeople often stuffinto theirstories Wishing for greater authenticity,our reader may turn at last to the vast But collections scholarly by produced Boasiananthropologists. he will soonwonder was as choppyand clumsyas that whetherthe original style of these narratives to If of most English translations. he takesthese translations represent,as Boas and claimed,"faithfulrenderingof the nativetales,"3 if he remainsdisappointed with popularizations, may end by agreeingwith La Farge, who said, "The he whethermythsor tales, is nil. value of a greatdeal of primitiveliterature, literary
1 Such an evaluation is made in one of the blurbs on the back cover of the paperback edition of this book (New York: Hill and Wang, I953). In the preface de Angulo says, "I wrote these stories ... for my children" (p. 5). 2 Theodora Kroeber, The Inland Whale (Berkeley, Calif., 1963), 8-9. 3 Franz Boas, Race, Language, and Culture (New York, I940), 451.

Oliver La Farge's preface to Theodora Kroeber's The Inland Whale: "She . . .

tives which are at one and the same time thoroughlyauthenticand respectable as literature,is likely to be disappointed. When he exploresthe narratives published before the field methods of Franz Boas were widely employed,he may decide that their style seems more Victorianthan Indian. If he then turns to moderncollectionsbut still avoidspublications intendedonly for the use of scholars, he may find his prospectivereading described,as in the case of Jaime de Angulo's Indian Tales, as suitable fare for both children and adults.' Such a volume will seem about as promisingto him as a movie rated "G" for general audiences. If our readerdares to venturebeyond dust jacketsand back coversto read a preface,he mayfind a commentaboutan authorsimilarto the following one from

A DISCRIMINATING READER, hoping to find collections of American Indian narra-

for ulterior purposes."2

ON THE TRANSLATION OF STYLE IN ORAL NARRATIVE

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while That of muchof the restis apparent, the rawform, only to connoisseurs, in to thosewho undertake retell someof it often achieveonly emasculation."4 of Unless it is true that manyof the oral narratives non-Western peoples have little or no literaryvalue, and that what value they do have is untranslatable, to then somethinghas gone wrong along the way from the oral performance the narrathe close examination a single widely-published of printedpage. Through tive tradition,that of the Zufii Indians,5I hope to show that something has in indeedgone wrong, and to suggestwhat might be done differently the future.
1.

The Zufii narratives collectedby FrankHamilton Cushingin the i88os have more attentionthan any others: "The Beginning of Newness" alwaysattracted has been anthologizedby Astrov and Thompson, "The Poor TurkeyGirl" by Thompsonand Greenway,and "The Cock and the Mouse" by Greenwayand Dundes.6But the apparentattractiveness Cushing'swork is anythingbut a of measureof its reliabilityas a representation Zuiniliterature."The Beginning of of Newness," together with the rest of Cushing's "Outlinesof Zufii Creation Myths,"has long been a problemfor studentsof Zufii culture.Cushinghimself but says that these "outlines"are just that and not directtranslations,7 it is his additions the narratives to thananydeletionswhichhavecausedthe trouble, rather for, as Bunzel has written, the work "containsendless poetic and metaphysical glossing of the basic elements, most of which explanatorymatter probably originatedin Cushing'sown mind."8The "metaphysical glossing" referredto includesstrongovertones monotheism(also found in Stevenson's of work) which reflectthe theoreticalpreoccupations nineteenth-century of anthropologyrather than Zufii belief.
4 Kroeber, 7. 5 In using "Zuiii" rather than "Zuni," I follow the practice of this journal. But the Englishspeaking residents of the Zuiii area, including bilingual Zufiis, use "Zuni" in both spelling and pronunciation. Academics frequently render "Zufii" as "zoonyee" (rather than the Spanish "soonyee"), so that the final result after retaining the fi is still an English corruption of what is already a Spanish corruption of the Keresan corruption of the Zuniis' word for themselves, which is Shiwi. 6 Cushing's translations may be found in Frank Hamilton Cushing, "Zunfi Fetiches," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 2 (I883), I3-19, 21-24; in "Outlines of Zufii Creation Myths," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, I3 (I896), 379-447; in Zufii Folk Tales (New York, 1901; New York, I931); and in Zugi Breadstuff, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, Indian Notes and Monographs, 8 (1920), 20-54, 58-I24, 270-288, 395-5I5. Two additional Cushing interpretations were recorded by men who visited him in the field: John G. Bourke, Diary (unpublished MS in the library of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, i88i), 2565-2585; H. F. C. ten Kate, "A Zufii Folk-Tale," JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, (1917), 496-499. "The Beginning of Newness," from "Outlines 30 of Zuni Creation Myths" (pp. 379-38I), is reprinted in Margot Astrov, The IWinged Serpent (New York, I946), reprinted as American Indian Prose and Poetry (New York, I962), 240-242; and in Stith Thompson, Tales of the North American Indians (Bloomington, Ind., I929, I966), I7-I9. "The Poor Turkey Girl," from Cushing, Zufii Folk Tales (54-64), is reprinted in and in John Greenway, Literature Among the Primitives (Hatboro, Pa., Thompson ( 225-231) is 228-234. "The Cock and the Mouse," from Cushing, Zuni Folk Tales (411-422), I964), reprinted in Greenway, I51-I58, and in Alan Dundes, The Study of Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., I965), 269-276. 7 Cushing, "Outlines of Zufii Creation Myths," 375. 8 Ruth L. Bunzel, "Zufii Origin Myths," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 47 (1932), 547.

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"The Poor Turkey Girl" and "The Cock and the Mouse" are cited by the anthologists as classic examples of the American Indian adaptation of European tales. Cushing relates the history of "The Cock and the Mouse" as follows: he had told an Italian version of it to some Zufiis he had brought to New England; about a year later, back at Zufii, he heard one of these same men tell (in Zufni) a considerably adapted and expanded version which was later published.9 Exciting though the Zufii version may be, it is not clear what the original Italian version used by Cushing was like, for, as Dundes has pointed out, the Zuini version contains some distinctly European motifs which are lacking in the Italian version printed beside it in Cushing's book.10 There are further problems: Cushing necessarily told the story to his Zufii audience in the Zunii language (the three men were monolinguals), and some of the "Zuiii" alterations could well have originated with Cushing in the process of the telling. Moreover, as will be seen in detail shortly, Cushing was given to elaborations when rendering Zuini tales in English, and there is no reason to believe he restrained himself in the present case. Whatever the special problems with "The Beginning of Newness" and "The Cock and the Mouse," the opinion has been widely held that the quality of Cushing's translations is quite good. The novelist Mary Austin is extravagant with her praise, writing that Cushing "is the only American who notably brought to bear on [primitive lore] adequate literary understanding," and that Cushing's is "the best-sustained translation of aboriginal American literature," and, still further, that Cushing made no effort to "popularize" his stories.l Margot Astrov, in the introduction to her anthology, lists Cushing as one of those ethnologists who have best met "the two requirements" of the translator: "linguistic fidelity to the original" (short of strictly literal translation) and the communication of the "cultural matrix" of the original.l2 But Hymes has recently shown how far Astrov has gone wrong in judging the quality of song translations,'3 and in a similar spirit I hope to show here that narrative translations, too, are not always what they seem. Among the more curious things in Cushing's major collection, Zuni Folk Tales, are the oaths used by the characters.Austin cites these as one of the things she admires most and gives "By the delight of death!" as an example;l4 other oaths include "Souls of my ancestors!" "Demons and corpses!" "By the bones of the dead!" "Oh, ye gods!" and "Beloved Powers!"15But the Zufiis have no such oaths; they never make profane use of words denoting death, souls, ancestors, corpses, "Powers," and gods. They do use a goodly number of interjections in tales, such as tisshomahha (dread), hiyahha (fright, female speaking), and ya' 'ana (disgust, male speaking),16 but there is not a single one of these inter9 Cushing, Zuni Folk Tales, 411. 10 Dundes, 274. 11 Cushing, Zuni Folk Tales (I93I), xix-xx, xxvi. 12 Astrov, 5. 13 Dell Hymes, "Some North Pacific Coast Poems: A Problem in Anthropological Philology," American Anthropologist, 67 (1965), 3I6-34I; reprinted in Stony Brook, I-2 (1968), I79-204. 14 Cushing, Zuni Folk Tales, xxviii.
16 The orthography used for these and other Zufii words herein is as follows: vowels should be given their Continental values; double vowels (aa, etc.) are like the long vowels in Greek.

15 Ibid., 134, I82-183.

ON THE TRANSLATION OF STYLE IN ORAL NARRATIVE

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to otherthanthe emotionit is supposed express. jectionswhichhas anydenotation In this case, then, Cushing'stranslations not represent"linguisticfidelity to do matrix"of the tales. the the original,"and, further,they misrepresent "cultural with Cushing'sZuni Folk Tales is that he the most seriousdifficulty Perhaps embroidersthe tales with devices, lines, and even whole passageswhich are clearlyof his own inventionand not mere distortions.Similesare totallylacking in all other translations(and in texts as well), but they aboundin Cushing's tales: for example,a youngman attacked a swarmof mosquitoeswas "crazed by and restlessas a spider on hot ashes,"17 a person outdoorsat night saw a and "light that was red and grew brighterlike the light of a camp fire'sred embers when fanned by the wind of the night-time."18 These passagesmayhave literary meritin English,but theydo not even haveliterary existencein Zuini. Anotherkind of embroidery, so seriousas some of the others,is Cushing's not insertionof explanatory materialfor the benefitof his readers.For example,he begins one tale with a lengthy explanationof the geographicallocation and of whereasa Zuiii narratorwould take his audience's appearance its setting,19 of local geographyfor granted. In another example, Cushing deknowledge scribeshow a suitorate very little when given a meal at a girl's house (which a Zufii narrator would do) but then adds, "You know it is not well or polite to eat much when you go to see a strangegirl,"20again a case in which a Zufii narrator would takehis audience's knowledgefor granted.Of courseit is possible that some of this explanatory materialwas insertedby Zufii narrators Cushfor ing's own benefit, but whatever its origin it does misrepresentnormal Zufni practice. The most distressing all Cushing'sinventionsarehis moralistic of passages.As I have shown in detail elsewhere,the didacticcontent of Zufii tales is usually either implicit or addressedby one tale character another,and it is never adto dressedby the narrator to his audience.21But Cushingbegins one tale directly this way: "Listen,ye youngones and youths,and from what I say drawinference. For behold!the youth of our nationin these recentgenerations have becomeless '22 I relatehad not happened."' In some other cases sturdythan of old; else what he pointsout the moralin the thirdperson,but his tone is still excessively moralistic, as in this examplefrom the end of an Orpheustale: "Butif one shouldlive as long as possible, one should never, in any mannerwhatsoever,remembering this youth'sexperience, becomeenamored Death."23 of It shouldnow be sufficiently clearthatCushingfrequently violatesthe linguistic
Consonants should be pronounced as in English, with the following exceptions: p and t are not aspirated; Ih is like English and h and 1 pronounced simultaneously; double consonants (kk, 11, etc., except that ch becomes cch, Ih llh, and sh ssh) are like those in Italian; and ' is the glottal stop, which, when it follows ch, k, kw, ky, or ts, is pronounced simultaneously with these sounds. Stress is on the first syllable of a word; exceptional words are marked with '. 17 Cushing, Zuni Folk Tales, 6. 18 Ibid., 24. 3. 21 Dennis Tedlock, The Ethnography of Tale-Telling at Zufii, (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, I968), chapter iii. 22 Cushing, Zuni Folk Tales, I85. 23 Ibid., 53
19 Ibid., 20 Ibid.,
203

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which Astrovsets for translators, that a good deal and culturalrequirements and of what Austin calls "color... so delightfullyrendered"(includingthe oaths)24 on looksmorelike Victorian quaintness closeexamination. of The work of MatildaCoxe Stevenson,a contemporary Cushing,avoidshis stylistic embroideries,but her major compendiumof narrativesin The Zuni Indiansis not a translation actualZufii performances rathera descriptive but of in her own words.25 Much of the apparentorderin these materialsis summary her own: she ignores the possibilityof alternateversionsand attemptsto place eachstoryin a chronological her sequencewhich reflects own Westernpreoccupation with historymore than actualZuinipractice.Elsewherein the samevolume, which (though ratherabbreviated)aphowever,she does presentone narrative to be a directtranslation.26 pears Beginning in the second decade of the present centurya veritablearmyof Boasianfield workersdescendedupon Zufii. The first membersof this armyto publish translationsof Zufii narrativeswere Franz Boas himself, Elsie Clews hard on their heels cameRuth L. Bunzel and Parsons,and EdwardL. Handy;27 Ruth Benedict.28 Parsonsand Bunzel publishednative-language texts, and Only onlyBunzelpublishedtextsin anyquantity.29 Members of the Boasian school, at Zufii and elsewhere, typically valued translationsthat were "direct"or "close" or "literal,"publishedwith as few or changesas possible from the sort of English used by interpreters bilingual Thus Parsonscould write, in introducinga collectionwith which she narrators. was particularly are as close to the by pleased,that the tales "interpreted Land Zuini,I think, as it is possible to get in English narrative,"30 when original she showedthese translations A. L. Kroeber,who had trainedher interpreter, to he said, "In readingthem, I can hear LOne can indeed speakingZuiii."31 "hearL-when awkward choicesof Englishwords Zuni," especially speaking are preservedor when Englishwords are organizedaccording Zuniigrammar, to as in these passages:"The strapsthe man carriedwood with, in the other room
24

Spanish LORE, 35 (1922), 62-98. Elsie Clews Parsons and Franz Boas, "Spanish Tales from Laguna and Zufii, New Mexico," JOURNAL AMERICAN OF FOLKLORE, (1920), 47-72. Elsie Clews 33 Parsons, "Notes on Zufii, Part II," Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, 4 OF 302-327; "Pueblo-Indian Folk-Tales, Probably of Spanish Provenience," JOURNAL (1917), OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, (19I8), 216-255; "The Origin Myth of Zufii," JOURNAL AMERICAN 31 FOLKLORE, (I923), 135-162; "The Scalp Ceremonial of Zufii," Memoirs of the American 36 OF FOLKLORE, Anthropological Association, 31 (1924), 28-34; "Zufii Tales," JOURNAL AMERICAN FOLKLORE, 31 43 (I930), i-58. Edward L. Handy, "Zufii Tales," JOURNALOF AMERICAN (1918), 45I-47I. 28 Ruth L. Bunzel, "Zufii Origin Myths"; "Zufii Katchinas," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 47 (1932), 837-I086 (narratives are scattered throughout this work); Zuni Texts, Publications of the American Ethnological Society, I5 (I933). Ruth Benedict, Zuni Mythology, Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, 21 (1935). 29 Parsons, "Zuii Tales" (texts are given for only two of these narratives); Bunzel, "Zuni Origin Myths" and Zuni Texts. 30 Parsons, "Zuii Tales, " 2. 31 Ibid., 2 (quoted by Parsons).

25 Matilda Coxe Stevenson, "The Zufii Indians," Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 23 (I904), 23-61. 26 Ibid., 135-I37. 27 Franz Boas, "Tales of FOLKProvenience from Zufii," JOURNALOF AMERICAN

Ibid., xxviii.

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he would hang up," "This way you were going to do to me," and, incredibly, "Thenone of his legs he threwup."32 The literalismin most other translations Zuininarratives, of including those of Boas and Benedict,does not reachthe absurdextremesof Parsons.Benedict followed the usual practiceof her contemporaries asking her informantsto in but give "literal"translations, it was her stated intentionto smooth out "their inadequateEnglish" in her published verisions.33She did indeed eliminate obvious grammatical remainincluding a choperrors,but stylisticinadequacies piness and lack of grammatical complexitycommonto much of the work of this like period. Zufii narrators, many others, frequentlykeep a story in motion by combiningstringsof clausesinto long sentences,and by joining these sentences with parallelism. one would neverknow this from readingBenedict's But translation:
Her eyes were almost shut. She was skin and bones. She was too weak to sit up and she scratched herself all the time. He jumped up. He ran to the house of Pekwin's son. His wife was just as old. She had gray hair and was bent double. The two young men were angry. They would not talk to their wives. They drove them away. The two old women went off leaning on their canes. They were too weak to travel. There was no rain. The people were hungry.34

Such a disasterprobablyresultsnot only from informantEnglish, but also from the stops and startsof the dictationprocessand from a tendencyto treat parallelisms as not worth preservingin print. But whatevertheir sources,Benedict's distortionsare not purely the result of dictation:Bunzel's translations,which were based on dictatedZuniiratherthan dictatedEnglish, have a very different character:
They laid the deer down side by side. They laid them down side by side and they made the boy sit down beside them. After they had made him sit down they gave the deer smoke. After they had given them smoke they sprinkled prayer meal on them. After they had sprinkledprayer meal on them the people came in.35

Probablyas a resultof dictation,the parallelismhere (A, AB, BC, CD, DE) is more mechanical than the parallelismin my own tape-recorded Zuniinarratives, and the sentencelength (as elsewherein Bunzel'swork) fails to reachthe extremespossible in uninterrupted narration. Despite these flaws the text translations of Bunzel displaythe qualitiesof oral performance betterthan any of the otherZufiiworkof this period. Aside from their frequentlack of parallelism,the narratives the Boasian of school tend to be condensations what a performerwould tell in a normal, of situation.A. L. Kroeber,Demetracapoulou DuBois, and Gladys and spontaneous Reichard,all of whom recognized this problem in their own collections of American Indian narratives,place most of the blame on the tediousnessof dictation the consequent and absence a responsive of nativeaudience.36 Substantiat32 Ibid., 6, 30. 33 Benedict, vol. I, xxxviii. 34 Ibid., vol. I, 219. 35 Bunzel, Zuni Texts, 109.
36

Records,

A. L. Kroeber, "A Mohave Historical Epic," University of California Anthropological

I

(I95I),

I33; D. Demetracapoulou and Cora DuBois, "A Study of Wintu Mythology,"

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in ing their view is the fact that the narratives my own Zuinicollection,related in all instances at leasta smallnativeaudience takendownby taperecorder, to and twicethe length of the narratives Benedict's in collection.37 averagenearly After the 1930s, collectionof AmericanIndian narratives went into a rapid decline. Texts and translations(other than Zuini ones) continued to appear sporadically,but many of these later collections, such as Jacob's Clackamas ChinookTexts,38 were delayedreportsof field work done duringthe mainperiod of Boasianactivityratherthan reportsof anythingnew. In the Zuinicase, the of thirty yearswhich separatedthe appearance Benedict'sZuni Mythology (in of 1935) from the beginningof my own field work saw the publication only one minor collectionof fresh narratives.39 there Generallyinsteadof fresh materials appearedanalyticaltreatmentsof old ones that reflectedthe two main currents in modern narrativetheory: Bert Kaplan in "Psychological Themes in Zunii Mythologyand ZuniiTAT's" sees Zufii myths as possible projectionsof "the in repressedunconscious processesof the id,"40while ClaudeLevi-Strauss "The StructuralStudy of Myth" finds Zuini myths (among others) exhibiting the in Hegelian dialectic,which he believesto be a substratum all humanthought.4
II.

content While advancesmay have been made in the analysisof oral narrative the turn has since the I930S, the artof translation seen no substantial gains since shouldimprovethis situation,but its full possiof the century. The tape recorder field instrubilities have yet to be exploited.It has been a practical and accurate ment for only a short time, and the theoreticalinterestsof many of its users (or potential users) are centered on "content"which they presume enjoys a certainindependencefrom the fine points of "style"and translation. John L. concern Fischer,for example,saysthat in sociopsychological analysisthe primary "is with the semanticsof folktale; with the messageor 'tale picture'which can be transmitted the codes of variouslanguages,or by variousequivalentconby holds a similarview, though his in structions a single language."42 Levi-Strauss analyticalinterestsdiffer from those of Fischer: "The mythicalvalue particular
of the myth remains preserved, even through the worst translation. .... Its sub-

FOLKLORE, (1932), 400; Gladys A. Reichard, "An Analysis of 45 JOURNALOF AMERICAN Coeur d' Alene Indian Myths," Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, 4I (i947), 5. 37Tedlock, "The Ethnography of Tale-Telling in Zunii," 279-330; "Pelt Kid: A Humorous Zufii Tale," Human Mosaic, i (I966), 55-65; "The Boy and the Deer: A Zufii Tale," The Kiva, 33 (I967), 67-79; "The Boy and the Deer: A Narrative Poem of the Zufii Indians," Stony Brook, 5-6 (in press); Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zufi Indians (New York, in press). 38 Melville Jacobs, Clackamas Chinook Texts, Publications of the Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, 8 (Bloomington, Ind., I958) and ii (959). 39 AnnaRisser,"Seven ZufiiFolkTales,"El Palacio, 48 (I94I), 215-226. 40 Bert Kaplan, "Psychological Themes in Zufii Mythology and Zufii TAT's," in The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, ed. Warner Muensterberger and Sydney Axelrod, vol. II (New York, 1962), 255-262. 41 Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," JOURNAL AMERICAN OF FOLKLORE, 68 (1955), 428-444; reprinted in Claude L6vi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Garden City, N. Y., I967) 202-228. 42 John L. Fischer, "The Sociopsychological Analysis of Folktales," Current Anthropology, 4 (1963), 237.

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stance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells."43 Even when a scholar does show interest in the stylistic aspects of narrative traditions there is no guarantee that he will give much thought to translation. Melville Jacobs, for example, though he promises that his analysis of style or form in Clackamas Chinook narratives "will greatly enhance enjoyment" of that literature, offers translations which are typically Boasian in being "almost literal."44Despite the literal translation, the reader does not experience directly the "terseness," which is supposedly one of the principal characteristicsof Clackamas style, for Jacobs has made hundreds of "explanatory" parenthetical insertions to rescue him from that terseness. In some cases the neglect of translation is doubtless related to a belief that style, or at least the better part of it, is simply untranslatable. Franz Boas and A. L. Kroeber, for example, held that style (or "literaryform") was so bound up with the peculiarities of particular languages that it was unlikely to survive translation.45If their view of style is combined with the view that content survives even bad translation, then there is no room at all for an art of translation. It may be that no one scholar has ever held both these views simultaneously in their pure form, but many scholars of the past four generations might as well have done so. Some collectors of American Indian narrativeshave taken issue with the narrow linguistic view of style. Demetracapoulou and Du Bois even go so far as to say that in the Wintu case, given an interpreter or narratorwho is fluent in English, a translation involves no distortion at all.46Jacobs finds in the Clackamascase that all but a very few features of narrative form are independent of the particularities of Clackamas linguistics,47 the implication again being that translation problems should not pose any great difficulty. The Zufii narrative tradition displays more stylistic manipulation in phonology, lexicology, and syntax than Jacobs indicates for the Clackamas, but once more a large part of style lies outside of what is traditionally thought of as linguistics, and I would add that even the linguistic features of Zufii style do not create insurmountable translation problems. On the phonological level, Zufii narrative style involves only two common distortions of normal patterns and both of these also occur in everyday speech, although they are more frequent in narrative. One of the distortions involves a combination of stress shift and vowel lengthening: a tale charactermay start off an ordinary greeting with something like hor nana, "My grandfather," with stress on the first syllable of nana (as is normal), but if the occasion calls for exceptional formality or seriousness, he will shift the stress and lengthen the final vowel as follows: hom nana-. It might be hard to get a similar effect by shifting the stress on "grandfather" in translation, but a syntactic shift to "Grandfather of mine" succeeds, I think, in reproducing the original effect of formality. The other major phonological distortion in Zufii narrative involves a combina43 Levi-Strauss, 430. 44 Melville Jacobs, The Content and Style of an Oral Literature, Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, 26 (I959), 3, 6. 45 Boas, Race, Language, and Culture, 452; A. L. Kroeber, I33. 46 Demetracapoulou and DuBois, 386. 47 Jacobs, The Content and Style of an Oral Literature, 7-8.

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tion of intonation change and vowel lengthening: "Thus they lived on" would ordinarily be intoned as follows, with the lowest pitch at the end:
2 I 3 lesnolh 'aateya'kya

But the length of time involved may be emphasized by shifting the highest pitch to the final syllable and drawing out the final vowel for as much as two or three seconds:
2 I 3

lesnolh 'aateya'kya The same operation may be performed on a verb like 'akya, "he went," to indicate a long distance (but not necessarily a long time). Such forms might be translated as "Thus they lived on and on and on," and "He went and went and went," but in Zufii this sort of repetition usually indicates repeated action rather than drawn out action (or state of being), as in lines like, "And all the people who had come killed the deer, killed the deer, killed the deer." To translate drawn out Zuni verbs as repeated ones would mean collapsing two stylistic devices into one. A more direct translation seems a better solution: "Thus they lived " (in which the o's should be held). This on ," and "He went on rendition may seem strange on the printed page, but comparable lengthening does occur in spoken English, as in, "It's been such a lo-ng time." There are no grammatical differences between everyday speech and formal narrative in Zufii, except for a greater tendency to construct long sentences in the latter. The following, in strict syntactic terms, is a single sentence (each line break indicates only a slight pause): Towayalan 'ahayuut 'aachky'akwap, he'shoktan 'aatoshle 'aachi ky'akwap, 'itiwan'an Ihuwal'ap, Ihuwal'ap, ky'ak'iima Ihuwal'ap, pinnaawan ma.48 kwa'ky'ak'aawina' lesnolh Ihuwalaa 'ullapnap,taknankwayilep,taknankwayilena There is no translation problem here: given as a single English sentence, this runs as follows: had At CornMountainthe two 'ahayuuta theirhome, at He'shoktathe 'aatoshle the two of them had theirhome, at the Middle therewerevillagers, therewerevillagers, at Winds' Placetherewerevillagers,at Ky'ak'iima there were villagers all aroundgoing out to gather wood, and when they went out to gatherwood they did not comehome. This is somewhat cumbersome by the normal standards of written English prose,
48 Tedlock, Tale H-9, personal collection.

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in but such length would not be extraordinary an oral narrator English (unfor less he were readingfrom a writtentext) or for a largenumberof Englishpoets. Most of the remaining"linguistic"manipulationin Zuniistyle involves the choice of lexical items or formulaicphraseswhich would be rare or absent in runs neutraleveryday vocabulary completely speech.As Newmanhas shown,Zunii a continuum from items labelledas slang (penaky'amme)to itemslabelled along as sacred(tewusu), with variousshadingsand a large unnamedneutralcategory excludedfrom in between.49 as Anythingclearlyrecognized slang is systematically is used: 'okyattsik'i, term formalnarratives, at least one slightly substandard but which Zufiis translateas "old lady." A hideous old ogress named 'aatoshle,for this as translating example,may be referredto irreverently 'aatoshle'okyattsik'i; the originaleffectquitewell. as "OldLady'aatoshle" simply preserves do Exceptfor esotericoriginstories,Zufiinarratives not includemanywordsor thatare clearlysacred,but they do includea fair numberof items,mostly phrases which fall betweenthe neutralandthe trulysacred.Amongtheseitems archaisms, are the formulas used to open and close a fictional narrative,son'ahchi and tee which Zufiisnever use except as storyframesand which semkonikya, The opening formula, son'ahchi, declare to be untranslatable. might be they renderedas "Onceupon a time," which is itself a sortof untranslatable formula, but "Onceupon a time" suggestsa children'sfairy tale and is thereforewholly It to inappropriate most Zuni narratives. seems best to leave these framing detheir positionsin an otherwisetranslatednarrative, vices untranslated; together with a note to the effectthat they indicatefiction,should maketheir "meaning" of clear enough. A numberof past translators Zufii narratives, includingBenedict, have chosento omit these formulas,but that is like leaving the coversoff a book. Most prominent among the longer archaicformulas used in narrativesare The usualcontemporary greetingin Zufiiis kesshe,whichhas greetingexchanges. the effectof "Hi," and the replyis the sameor tosh 'iya, "So you'vecome."But a tale character, entering a household other than his own, may say, Horn on
'aatacchu, horn chawe, ko'nato tewanan 'aateyaye? and someone will reply, K'ettsanisshe, ho'naawan cha'le, tosh 'iya, s'iimu. A straightforward translation of

this exchangepreserves stilted qualityand even a touchof its archaicconnotaits tion: "Myfathers,my children,how have you been passingthe days?""Happily, ourchild,so you'vecome,sit down." to in The archaic used by characters serioustalesare difficult transinterjections these are not oaths,but simplygive directexpreslate: as was mentionedearlier, sion to emotions.English interjections having only covertreligious referenceor goodness!"and "Dearme!" sound lackingsuchreference,suchas "Wow!" ."My and ludicrousin the mouth of a heavytale character, those which are archaicin and "I'll be switched!"for "Zounds!" additionsound even worse, "Gadzooks!" in example.Probablymost of the Zuiniinterjections serious contextsshould be notaleft untranslated; even at thatmostof themwould requirelittle explanatory tion, for contextsusuallymake their meaningsfairly clear. When a young man
of Anthropology, ii (1955), 345-354; reprinted in Language in Culture and Society, ed. Dell Hymes (New York, I964), 397-402.

49StanleyNewman, "Vocabulary Levels: Zufii Sacredand Slang Usage," Southwestern Journal

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DENNIS TEDLOCK

who has just been turned into an eagle because his wife failed to demonstrate her love begins his lament with hanahha! or when a father who has just been told that his son plans to exchange bodies with a bloody dead man replies with tisshomahh.a! the reader is not likely to go far astray in judging the feeling tone of these interjections; at least he will not be likely to think them equivalent to "Gosh!" or "Good grief!" Not all archaisms are serious-some are used to embellish humorous tales. It is difficult to place these on Newman's slang-sacred continuum. The fact that they are old should make the terms highly valued, but, in fact, they are employed to make a characterseem foolishly old fashioned rather than serious or scared. They are probably not of slang origin, but hearing these archaic phrases mouthed by foolish characters is somewhat like hearing someone use out-of-date slang. This makes them easier to translate than serious archaisms. A noodle named Pelt Kid, who has just gotten married but knows nothing about sex, suddenly remembers his grandmother's instructions and says, in his hoarse voice, 'a'ana ha'la! Horn to' kwili yalaa teshunholh hakky'akkya, ha'holh shiwaya kwayip yam shuminnkya kwatoky'anaknanna.50The beginning interjection, 'a'ana ha'la! is an archaism rarely heard even in tales, and an archaic term is used for "penis" (shuminne, sandhied and run together with another word in the quotation). The following translation, which takes these archaisms into account, conveys Pelt Kid's ridiculousness well enough: "Golly whizz! You told me to look for two hills, and if it's steamy there I should put my dingie in." The onomatopoeic words in Zuini narratives may be considered a part of linguistic style since they are used more frequently in narratives than in everyday speech, though unlike archaisms they are neutral where the slang-sacred continuum is concerned. Context usually makes the reference of onomatopoeic words obvious enough that it is unnecessary to attempt to translate them, as in this passage (again, each line break represents a slight pause): 'an suwe kululunan pololo n teyatip, (low, hoarsevoice) tuu 'an papawilo' 'ananpololo, wilo' 'ati w teyatikya. (low, hoarsevoice) too Sekwatlo'lii pottikya. Ihiton 'iya. Laky'antolh Lhiton 'ikya,ikyas hish 'isshakwakwa ky'aptom 'el'ikya. His youngerbrotherrolledthe thunder n it began, (low, hoarsevoice) tuu his elderbrotherrolledthe lightning,lightningstruck w it began. (low, hoarsevoice) too Now the cloudsfilled up. Here comesthe rain. The raincame,it came the "isshakwakwa waterreallydid comedown.51
50 Tedlock, "Pelt Kid," (personal collection).

51 Tedlock, Tale H-9.

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as One might render 'isshakwakwa "it splattered"and the thunder sounds as "boom"or "rumble,"but no claritywould be gained and the readerwould not words. enrichedby the Zufni have his experience onomatopoeia of III. have sufferedsomeof While it may be that past translations Zuii narratives what from neglectof the "linguistic" featuresof style discussedabove,they have featuressuch as sufferedmuch more from neglect of "oral"or "paralinguistic" voice quality (tone of voice), loudness,and pausing. Boas wrote long ago that "the form of modernprose is largely determinedby the fact that it is read, not spoken,while primitiveproseis basedon the artof oraldeliveryand is, therefore, He more closely relatedto modernoratorythan to the printedliterarystyle."52 have added, had he not so easily labelled primitivenarrativeas "prose," might thatit is also relatedto thatportionof modernpoetryin which attentionis given oral narto "the art of oral delivery."But Boas and his followers, in translating to writtenproseshortstories, ratives,have treatedthem as if they were equivalent except in caseswhere the originalswere sung or chanted.Jacobshas called for and to a "dramatistic" approach oralnarratives hasmadeextensiveuse of dramatic follow the familiarshortstorypattern,except but terminology,53 his translations of notations voicequality. for occasional from has The presenceof the tape recorder so far failed to wean post-Boasians schemesfor the notation of paralinguistic the short story approach.Systematic but featureshave been proposedrecently,54 such notationis not yet in wide use; and no one seems to have given much though to preservingthese featuresin Yet translations. suchfeaturesare,at leastin the Zuni case,highly "translatable," them withoutmakingthe resultlook as formidable and it is possibleto represent havebeenthereall along, conventions as a symphonic score.The necessary literary but they are to be found in dramaand poetryratherthan in prose.Pausing,as in can two of the narrative by presented, be represented line breaks passagesalready as in writtenpotery;unusualloudnesscan be represented exclamation points, by doubledto representextremeloudness;and unusualsoftness, togetherwith unat usualvoice qualitiesand variousotherfeatures,canbe noted in parentheses the of in plays.The straightforwardness these left-handmargin,as is commonly done in placesminimalbarriers the pathof a potentialreader. procedures The control of volume in Zufninarrativecan be illustratedby a pasticheof twenty of the loudest and softest lines from a story of more than five hundred lines; these twenty lines revealthe skeletonof the story,completewith opening and closing formulasand the momentsof greatestemotion.For the sakeof simhere, I have indicatedthe soft lines with parentheses plifying their presentation thanwith marginalnotes: rather
Son'ahchi!

came (Thelittlebaby out.)

Boas, Race, Language, and Culture, 49I, from an article originally published in 1925. Jacobs, The Content and Style of an Oral Literature, 7. 54 I-I2; reprinted in George L. Trager, "Paralanguage," Studies in Linguistics, I3 (1958), Language in Culture and Society, ed. Dell Hymes, 274-279. Robert E. Pittenger, Charles F. Hockett, and John J. Danehy, The First Five Minutes (Ithaca, N.Y., I960), 194-206.
52

53

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DENNIS TEDLOCK

("Where is the little babycrying?"theysaid.) (He was nursed,the little boywas nursedby the deer.) ("I will go to KichinaVillage, for he is withoutclothing,naked.") (When she got backto her childrentheywere all sleeping.) "He sawa herdof deer! But a little boywas amongthem!" we "Perhaps will catchhim!" Then his deermothertold him everything! "Thatis whatshe did to you, she justdroppedyou !" (The boybecame veryunhappy.) And all the people who had come killed the deer, killed the deer,killed the deer! (And his uncle,dismounting, caughthim.) "Thatis whatyou did andyou aremy realmother!" (He put the quiveron andwent out.) (Therehe died.) This was lived long ago! Lee !55 semkonikya The extremes of loudness and softness overlap in function in that they both draw special attention to a line. The softness of "He was nursed, the little boy was nursed by the deer" seems more appropriate than a loud rendition, and the line about the killing of the deer seems properly loud, but some other lines could have been rendered either way, "But a little boy was among them," for example. The manipulation of voice quality in Zunii narration has a diversity which I have only begun to explore; only a few examples can be given here. One of the narrators represented in my collection delivers the opening lines of his tales, including formulas and the names of the major charactersand the places where they live, with a formality which approaches that of a chant: his stresses are heavier, his enunciation more careful, and his pitch control greater (but not as great as in singing) than they would be in his normal narratingvoice; as he moves into the first events of the story this formality slowly dissolves, over the space of eight or ten lines, until his voice is normal. The only other fully predictable manipulation of voice quality on the part of this same narrator involves the quotation of story characters: the words of the 'ahayuuta (twin boys, the war gods), for example, are usually delivered in a high, raspy voice, and most female characters, except where their speeches are long, are given a tense, tight (but not high) voice. Since a native speaker of English might prefer to render female voices in narratives by raising his pitch, one might "translate" the Zufii "tight" voice into an English "high" one. Neither of these practices is a more objective rendition of the female voice than the other; both represent a selective imitation of the common properties of female speech.56 There are many less conventionalized (and less common) uses of voice quality
55This and all furtherZuni narrative quotationsare from the StonyBrookversionof "The Boy and the Deer." The full storywill appearin translation only, but for the presentexcerptsI have this supplieda parallelZufiitext wherever seemednecessary. 56 Tightness, or "squeeze,"is more common among women than among men, accordingto
Pittenger and others, 202-203.

ON THE TRANSLATION OF STYLE IN ORAL NARRATIVE

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in Zuiiinarratives, examplesof which will sufficehere. When a character two is tryingto pull sometough bladesloose from a yuccaplant,the narrator render may "He pulled" with the strainof someonewho is tryingto speakwhile holding his breathduringgreatexertion.When a passageinvolvesintenseemotion,the narratormay combinethe softness mentionedearlierwith a breakin his voice, as if he felt like weeping. The use of this voice techniqueis exemplifiedin the following passagein which a man is killing three deer who are the foster mother andsiblingsof his nephew: Thethird uncle voicebreaking) his (softly, dropped eldersister his elderbrother hismother. Loudnessand voice qualityare obviouslyworthnoting, but it seemsto me that devices that give shape to Zufni pausing is foremost among the paralinguistic narrative and distinguishit from writtenprose, and the samecould probablybe said of many other oral narrativetraditions.Stravinsky said, "I dislike the has said the samething of writtenprose.The spokenword is never deliveredin the gray masses of boxed-in words we call prose; indeed, accordingto GoldmanEisler, as much as half the time spent in delivering spontaneousdiscourseis devotedto silence, and "pausingis as much a part of the act of speakingas the vocal utteranceof words itself."58 But of all the past anthropological collectors of so-calledprosenarratives, only one, Paul Radin,seemsto have shown any real sensitivity to pausing. For several passages from Winnebago texts he marks pausesof three differentlengths; he also breaksthese passagesinto lines. Here his intentionis unclear:each line breakcoincideswith a pause,but thereare also pauseswithin lines.59Unfortunatelyhe preservesneither pause marksnor line in breaks his translations. In dealingwith the pausesin Zuiii narratives havefound it bestto dividethem I into two types: "ordinary" pauses,represented line breaks,and "long"pauses, by doublespacesbetweenlines. I initiallyspottedpausesonly by ear, by represented severaltimes. An oscillograph runningthroughthe tape of a half-hournarrative of the same tape later revealedthat my "ordinary" pausesran from four-tenths of a second to two seconds,with the averageat three-fourths a second. The of ran from two to three seconds.Some otherlistenermight comeup longer pauses with slightlydifferentboundaries his ordinary long pausesthan I did, or for and he might wantto makemorethantwo distinctions; in anycase,given a reasonbut he couldprobably makefairly consistentnotationswithoutthe aid ably good ear, of an oscillograph. Intonationposes no great problemswhere Zuniipausingis concerned.Except for the special intonationaldevice used to lengthen time or space (discussed
57 Igor Stravinsky, album notes to Symphony of Psalms, Columbia Records 6548. 58 Frieda "Discussionand Further

organ's legato sostenuto, . . . the monster never breathes,"57and he could have

of Language, ed. Eric H. Lenneberg (Cambridge, Mass., I964), 1I8-II9.

Goldman-Eisler,

in Comments," New Directionsin the Study

Journal of American Linguistics, 2 (1949), 42-44, 61-62, I03, I06-I08. I infer from Radin's remarks p. 42 that these pauseswere reconstructed on ratherthan recordedin the field.

59The Cultureof the Winnebago:As Describedby Themselves,Memoirsof the International

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DENNIS TEDLOCK

earlier) and a few other, rarer deviations, Zunii narrative patterns can be covered by a general rule rather than marked for each line: the boundary between one intonation contour and the next is strongly marked where a change of phrase or sentence corresponds with a pause or where a quote begins, and less strongly marked where a change of phrase or sentence occurs within a line or where a pause occurs within a phrase. This pattern seems cose enough to the normal tendencies of an English speaker so as to create no translation problems. As far as the internal details of the contours are concerned, the typical Zufii contour does not happen to be very different from that of a declarative sentence in English, but it should not matter if the two contours were very different: what is important in translation, except for deviations from typical patterns, is the boundaries between contours. The following passage, with silences and intonation contours as indicated above, will serve to illustrate most of the properties of pausing in Zufii narrative ("they" in the first line refers to a herd of deer): Yam telhasshik'uushinayalhtookwin'aawanuwa lesnolh 'aayemakna 'aayemakkya. chimkwat 'iskon 'aateya tom sunnhaptutunaapaniye. koholhIhana 'aateya'kya 'ist 'an Ihuwal'an 'an kyakholh 'imatlhatakky'an 'aana 'aakya. Lhatakky'an 5

'imat paniinas'ist 'uhsilak'ist lesna uhsist lak wi'ky'al'anholh paniina

10

holh'imat k'uushin 'uhsi yalhtookwin ky'alhkonholh yemakna. yalhtan tewuuli

They went backup to their old home on the PrairieDog Hills. Having gone up theywere living thereand comingdown only to drinkin the evening. for sometime They lived on until from the village his uncle went out hunting.Going out hunting he camealong down around Worm Springand from these he went on towards the PrairieDog Hills and cameup nearthe edge of a valleythere. The problems encountered in preserving the original pauses in English are minimal. Occasionally Zufii word order makes the transposition of lines or part of lines desirable, but this can usually be done without serious distortion of the effect of the original: in the above passage no transposition seemed advantageous, except that "down" in line 9 of the translation is a partial rendition of paniinas 5

10

in line 8 of the text, but elsewherein the same story a literal renditionwould

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/ producelines like, "Her clothes/ she bundled,"and "His kinswoman he beat," whichcall for transposition. Where the length of lines is concerned,it would be difficultand foolish to but slavishlyfollow the exactZufii syllablecountsin translation, it is possibleto at least approximate originalcontrasts line length. The importance such the in of an approximation be seen from the fact that the length of lines-or, to look may at it in anotherway, the frequencyof pauses-is the major sourceof apparent variations the rateat whichhumanspeechis delivered.Passages in with shortlines (many pauses) will seem slow, while those with long lines (few pauses) will seem fast.60In the above passage,the narratorrapidlytells of the deer-herd's residenceon the PrairieDog Hills (lines 1-2), then slows down, with suspenseful effect, as the man goes out hunting (lines 4-9), and finallyspeedsup again with the excitementof the man's arrivalat the Prairie Dog Hills (line ii). Preservingsuch patternsin narrativepace obviouslyprecludesthe insertionof materialby the translator: where the any but the smallestbits of "explanatory" right at the backof the head," for example,he will have to settle for something like "macaw in headdress" his translation leavethe restto a note or a picture, and though Cushingmight have done otherwise.And where it is frequentlyunclear which characters responsiblefor quotations,as in Clackamas are (but not Zuini) the narratives, translator may find it best to place the namesof the speakersoutside the mainleft-handmargin,as in a play. One of the most strikingthings aboutthe lines in Zuininarrative that they is are not alwaysdependenton the majorfeaturesof syntax.In the above excerpt some of the pausesdo correspond with changesof phraseor sentence,but five of them (the pausesfollowing lines 4, 5, 6, 9, 10) leavethe hearerhanging,syntactically speaking,thus adding to the suspensealreadynoted for this passage.61 The longer pausesin Zufii storiesoften correspond sentenceboundaries, to but in the presentexcerptthey occurbetweentwo phrasesof the samesentence(after line 3) and in the midst of a phrase (after line io). The first of these pausesis a sort of paragraphmarkerbetween the affairsof the herd and the hunting expedition of the man; its locationwithin a sentencekeeps the listeneron the string in muchthe same way that the placementof a chapterdivisionwithin an episode (insteadof betweenepisodes) keepsthe readerof a novel on the string. With the second of these pausesthe narrator keeps the listener dangling for a moment and then suddentlylets him know, in the first words of the next line, that the hunterhas arrivedat the PrairieDog Hills, wherethe herdis. IV. The treatment oral narrative dramatic of as poetryhas a numberof analytical advantages.Some of the features of oral narrativewhich have been branded on with writtenprosefiction,cannow be un"primitive," the basisof comparisons derstoodas "poetic" instead.It has been said, for example,thatwhile most of our
60 Goldman-Eisler, 120; she adds that the rate of syllable articulation (between pauses), by contrast with the rate of pausing, is almost constant. 61 One-third of the lines produced by my principal Zuni narrator involve this kind of phrase splitting, which is twice the proportion of splitting (or "necessary enjambment") reported for Yugoslav epics, by Albert Lord in The Singer of Tales (New York, I965), 54.

Zufii word lapappowanne means "a headdress of macaw tail-feathers worn up-

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DENNIS TEDLOCK

own prose narrative highly "realistic," is is primitivenarrative full of fantasy:a stone moves about like an animal, an animal speakslike a man, a man jumps through a hoop and becomesa coyote. Yet when we encountergross and unof explaineddistortions realityin Yeats, for example,we areapt to call them not and "primitive" "dream-like" "mystical" to regardthem as highly poetic. or but It is also said that "primitive"narrative,again unlike written prose fiction, with seldom describesemotionalstates.This is true enough, but the comparison is to evoke usuallydoes with emotions prosemissesthe point: what oralnarrative them ratherthan describethem directly,which is preciselywhat we have been of taughtto expect in poetry.In the Zuni case, such descriptions emotionsas do for exist arevery simple, "The boy became/ veryunhappy," example,but evocationsaremyriadandsometimes quitesubtle,asin thispassage:
He went out, having been given the quiver, and wandered around. He was not thinking of killing deer, he just wandered around. In the evening he came home empty-handed.

indicate (to a Zuii, at least) that the person referred to is depressed, and they

and Accordingto both the narrator a memberof his audience,these lines clearly this regarded person'sdeaththreedayslateras a sortof suicide,thoughit was dein scribed the storyas an accident. and manyothers,is repetition,rangingfrom the level of wordsor phrasesto that is At of whole episodes.62 least one of the kinds of repetitionin Zuni narrative
Another distinguishing feature of "primitive" narrative, according to Boas

indeed rare in our own prose (and poetry as well), and that is the linking of two sentences or major clauses by the conversion of the final element of one into the initial element of the next, as in these lines (from the last passage quoted in the came previous section): "His uncle / went out hunting. Going out hunting / he same device is common in epic poetry, as in this Yugoslav along ..." But the enterexample: "And may God too make us merry, / Make us merry and give us this particular kind tainment!"63Unless we want to call epic poetry "primitive," of repetition must be properly understood as "oral" and not "primitive," and the same thing goes for the repeated use of stock formulas in both epic poetry (epithets, for example) and Zuii narrative (greeting exchanges, for example). When it comes to the repetition of whole passages, "primitive" narrative may be compared to epic poetry and also to refrains in songs (from both literate and nonliterate cultures) and in written poetry. Refrains are often varied from one rendition to the next, and the same is true (although in a less structuredway) for the repeated passages in Yugoslav epic, as shown by Lord,64and in Zuii narrative. In the following Zuni passage, a boy's foster mother is quoting to him what he must say when he addresses his real mother, who abandoned him as a baby:
My Sun Father made you pregnant. When you were about to deliver it was to Nearing Waters that you went down to wash. You washed at the bank.
62

63 Lord, 32.

Boas, Race, Language, and Culture, 491-493.

64Ibid., 82.

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But when the boy actuallyconfronts realmotherlaterin the samestory,this is this whatthe narrator him say: has
My Sun Father madeyou pregnant. Whenhe madeyoupregnant you sat in thereandyourbellybeganto growlarge. Yourbellygrewlarge
you you were about to deliver, you had pains in your belly, you were about to give birth to me, you had pains in your belly

you gathered yourclothes andyouwentdownto thebankto wash.

The remainingkinds of repetitionin Zufii narrative of the sort we approvare call "parallelism"(or somethingof the sort) when we find them in our ingly own poetry. A line like, "And all the people who had come killed the deer, killed the deer,killed the deer!"cannothonestlybe calledprimitiveunlesswe call Shakespeare primitivewhen he has Hamlet say, "You cannot,sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly partwithal: except my life, exceptmy life, in involvessimple exceptmy life." And not all of the parallelism Zufii narrative repetition:
Tewuuli kolh nahhayaye. Nahhayap lalholh 'aksik ts'an 'aksh 'allu' 'aye, kwan Iheyaak'ohanna Muusilili Iheya'kwip'an lapappowaye. lesnish 'aawanelap, 'aktsik'i ten Lapappow 'ottsi ho"i 'akshappa. In the valleywas the herdof deer.In the herdof deer therewas a little boy going aroundamongthem,dressedin white. He had bells on andwas wearinga macawheaddress. He was wearinga macawheaddress was handsome, and surelyit was a boy a male a personamongthem. What all this means, simply stated, is that (remarkably enough) there was a human being among the deer, but the narrator chooses to explore the fact in half a dozen different ways. Repetitions and other poetic features of oral narrative have implications even for those who focus on content analysis and choose to ignore "style." The implications for psychological analysis, which is normally based on the content of prose translations, may be illustrated by the following passage, in which a boy has just exposed the woman who secretly abandoned him as a baby (parentheses indicate softer portions): At thatmomenthis mother embraced him (embraced him). His unclegot angry(his unclegot angry). He beat

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DENNIS TEDLOCK

hiskinswoman (he beathiskinswoman). This passagemighthaveappeared a conventional in proserendition(by Benedict, for example) as, "At thatmomenthis motherembraced him. His unclegot angry. He beathis kinswoman," thus havinglost the nuancesand greaterintensitygiven it by the repetition, changesof loudness,andthe frequentpauses. the The complications poetic style have especiallystrongimplications those of for who seek to measurethe social and psychological contentof narrative means by of word-counts."Killed the deer," repeatedthree times in a line quotedabove, of might well have been reducedto a single occurencein the translations the Moreover,it seems crudeto give the same weight to a word like "killed" past. when it is shoutedand when it is renderedflatly.And the indirectexpressionof emotion, as in the case of the depressionand suicide mentionedearlier,would entirely. escapea wordcounter level assumethat Levi-Strauss other structuralists and operatingon an abstract almostany translation will do for their purposes,but poetic subtletieshave a potential for radicallyalteringsurfacemeanings,irony being an obviousexample. The more concretestructural analysisproposedby Hendricks,on the otherhand, does take the "linguistic"aspectof poeticsinto account,since eachbasicelement in his systemconsistsof a single semantic"function"which may be served by or severallower-level"linguistic"(phonological,morphological, syntactic)elements.65 even Hendricksoverlooks"paralinguistic" But matters,thoughit is prewall between "linguiscisely at the level of semanticfunction that the arbitrary for In Zufiinarrative, example,the semantic tics" and "paralinguistics" collapses. functionof markingthe startof a quotationmay be servedby such "linguistic" devicesas a sharpintonationchangeor the words, "The deer spoke to her son," devicesas a pauseor a change but it may also be servedby such "paralinguistic" in voicequality. as The treatment oralnarrative dramatic of poetry,then, clearlypromisesmany rewards.It should also be obvious that there are immediateesthetic analytical is rewards.The apparentlack of literaryvalue in many past translations not a of the originals, caused by the dictationprocess,an reflectionbut a distortion emphasison content,a pervasivedeafnessto oral qualities,and a fixed notionof betweenpoetryand prose. Presentconditions,which combinenew the boundary to with a growingsensitivity verbalartas performed"event" recording techniques ratherthan as fixed "object"on the page, promisethe removalof previousdifof ficulties."Event"orientation, togetherwith an intensifiedappreciation fantasy, has alreadyled modernpoets to recognizea kinshipbetweentheir own work and As the oral art of "primitives." JeromeRothenberg of points out in Technicians with oralperformance, bothmodernandprimitivepoetsareconcerned the Sacred, the both transcend convenboth escapethe confinesof Aristotelianrationalism, tional genre boundariesof written literature,and both sometimesmake use of This forms which requiremaximalinterpolation audiences.66 by stripped-down
65 William 0. Hendricks, "On the Notion 'Beyond the Sentence,'" Linguistics, 37 (I967), 32-35. 66 Jerome Rothenberg, Technicians of the Sacred (Garden City, N. Y., I968), xxii-xxiii.

ON THE TRANSLATION OF STYLE IN ORAL NARRATIVE

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last point recalls the Clackamas "terseness"discussedby Jacobs,and I am reminded of the Zuii who askedme, "When I tell these storiesdo you pictureit, or do youjustwriteit down?" The effortpresentedhere is intendedmore as an experimentthan as the final on and word on the poeticfeaturesof oral narrative theirpresentation the printed I hope it will encourage othersto makefurtherexperiments. page. WesleyanUniversity Middletown,Connecticut