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Abstract
The idea that 19th-century Europeans and Islanders faced each other across virtually impassable linguistic and cultural boundaries has been a model for Pacific ethnohistory and can, perhaps, be traced in part to the Sapir–Whorf theory of linguistic incommensurability. Based on a case study concerning the translation of the Aneityum [Anejom] bible in Southern Vanuatu in the mid-19th century, the article considers whether the engagement between Islanders and missionaries might be better investigated through the dynamic dialogic model of Bakhtin and Voloshinov: thus speakers and interlocutors on Aneityum actively sought to understand each other through debates and dialogues about the new deity and His place in the spiritual cosmos of the island. The article first discusses the Protestant missionary defence of linguistic parity and commensurability and the formal practices of 19th-century British bible translation; then analyses debates on the new God's efficacy between missionary John Geddie and Nohoat, the foremost sorcerer of the area; and concludes by considering the translation of words particularly important to the Christian faith.
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank the following for their engagement with this paper. Bronwen Douglas first read the earliest versions over ten years ago. Robert Kenny discussed the Sapir–Whorf theory with me. David Wetherell encouraged me to ‘let a little air’ into a paper that had become too dense, and Vicki Luker helped me to untangle the many strands of analysis. The detailed referee reports for the first version were most useful and helpful.
Notes
1 Benjamin Whorf, quoted in E.F.K. Koerner, Linguistic Historiography, Projects and Prospects (Amsterdam 1999), 74. In 1813 German philosopher and translator, Schleiermacher, considered the competing language theories that ‘on the one hand every man is in the power of the language he speaks and all his thinking is a product thereof … on the other hand every free thinking, mentally self-employed human being shapes his own language’ in ‘Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens’ (‘On the Different Methods of Translating’), Extracts in A. Lefevere (ed.), Translation, History, Culture: a sourcebook (London 1992), 145–146. For a contentious discussion on the much debated genealogy of the principle of linguistic relativity, see Koerner's argument for the authority of Vico and Herder on early theories, but the more significant influence of Wilhelm von Humboldt as a result of his applied linguistic work on American Indian languages in the 1820s and 1830s. Koerner, Linguistic Historiography, 61–84.
2 Lefevere, ‘Introduction’, in A. Lefevere, Translation, History, Culture: a sourcebook, 5.
3 George Steiner, ‘Introduction’, in D. Jasper (ed.), Translating Religious Texts: translation, transgression and interpretation (Hampshire 1993), x–xi (emphasis in the original).
4 Jasper, ‘Introduction: the painful business of bridging the gaps’, in idem, Translating Religious Texts, 2.
5 See, e.g, Melenaite Taumoefolau, ‘The translation of Queen Sālote's poetry’, in S. Fenton (ed.), For Better or for Worse (Manchester 2004), 241–73.
6 See in particular Raylene Ramsay, ‘Translation in New Caledonia writing (in) the language of the other: the “Red Virgin”, the missionary, and the ethnographer’, Ibid., 133–70.
7 For a recent analysis of the most important of the structuralist, practice and interactive models of cultural engagement and interaction in the context of Australian anthropology, see F. Merlan, ‘Explorations towards intercultural accounts of socio-cultural reproduction and change’, Oceania, 75 (2005), 167–83.
8 This southern Vanuatu language is now called Anejom. For those interested in the linguistics of Aneityum and southern Vanuatu generally please see J. Lynch's extensive work, including A Grammar of Anejom (Canberra 2000) and The Linguistic History of Southern Vanuatu (Canberra 2001).
9 This analysis draws on the methodology of Bronwen Douglas's seminal piece on interpretations of Christianity on the islands of Tanna, Aneityum and the Isle of Pines: ‘Autonomous and controlled spirits: traditional ritual and early interpretations of Christianity on Tanna, Aneityum and the Isle of Pines in comparative perspective’, The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 98 (1989), 7–48. The other inspiration for this article comes from John Owen's analysis of debates between Maori and missionary in New Zealand, ‘Religious disputation at Whangaroa 1823–7’, The Journal of Pacific History, 79 (1970), 289–304.
10 See, e.g., M. Spriggs, ‘“A school in every district”: the cultural geography of conversion on Aneityum, Southern Vanuatu’, The Journal of Pacific History, 20 (1985), 23–41; Lynch, The Linguistic History of Southern Vanuatu; M. Jolly, ‘“To save the girls for brighter and better lives”: Presbyterian Missions and women in the south of Vanuatu, 1848–1870’, The Journal of Pacific History, 26 (1991), 27–48.
11 D. Munro and A. Thornley (eds), The Covenant Makers (Suva 1996), 45; R.S. Miller (ed.), Misi Gete, John Geddie, Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides (Launceston 1975), 33.
12 For the genealogy of the devising of Pacific orthographies, from Tahitian to Tongan to Fijian, see P. Geraghty, ‘Foreigner talk to exonorm: translation and literacy to Fiji’, in Fenton, For Better or for Worse, 173–5.
13 While Inglis is described in the New Zealand Dictionary of Biography as a ‘practical, highly methodical, if somewhat unimaginative character’, he must have had some linguistic acumen. Despite his short appointment amongst Maori, he was one of five translators for a Maori version of Pilgrim’s Progress published at the direction of Governor George Grey. J. Bunyan, He moemoea. Otira, ko nga korero o te huarahi, e rere atu nei te tangata i tenei ao, a, tapoko noa ano ki tera ao atu;/he kupu whakarite, na Hoani Paniana; He mea whakamaori mai i te reo pakeha, tr. H.T. Kemp, R. Stokes, A. Hamilton, J. Inglis, and J. Duncan Poneke: He mea perehi e Te Toki, ki Weretana, Poneke [Wellington], 1854.
14 J. Inglis, In the New Hebrides, Reminiscences of Missionary Life and Work (Edinburgh 1887), 93. See also Lynch, A Grammar of Anejom, 7.
15 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 107.
16 G. Geddie to Mrs James Waddell, 18 Feb. 1853, in The Letters of Charlotte Geddie and Charlotte Geddie Harrington (Truro 1908), 30.
17 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 107.
18 Presbyterian Messenger, 12 Mar. 1864, 12.
19 M. Hinkson and B. Smith, ‘Introduction: conceptual moves towards an intercultural analysis’, Oceania, 75:3 (2005), 160.
20 For a discussion on the disjunction between missionary experience and the rhetoric of their reports, see N. Erlank, ‘“Civilizing the African”: the Scottish mission to the Xhosa, 1821–64’, in B. Stanley (ed.), Christian Missions and the Enlightenment (Grand Rapids 2001), 150–1.
21 M.M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin 1986), 68–9.
22 See The New Oxford Annotated Bible: revised standard version (Oxford 1973), fn. 1320.
23 S. Bassnet, Translation Studies (London 1991), 46. See, e.g., St Jerome's attempts in the third century to answer the criticism of his new Latin translation of the New Testament. R. Worth, Bible Translations: a history through source documents (Jefferson, North Carolina 1992), 27–41.
24 Islamic scholars were often amazed by Christianity's ready engagement with the vernacular. The result, they believed, was the diffusion or destruction of the divinity of sacred texts, L. Sanneh, Translating the Message: the missionary impact on culture (New York 1989), 29, 218. A. Walls argues that the correct analogy between Islam and Christianity is not the Bible and the Qur’an, but the Qur’an and Christ as the eternal and unchanging word of God. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (New York 2001), 27.
25 J. Inglis, A Dictionary of the Aneityumese Language (London 1882), xxi–xxii.
26 Ibid., 101.
27 A.H. Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Language (London 1880), vol. 1, vi, 101.
28 R. Codrington, ‘The language of a savage people, as shown by a dictionary’, 18. Codrington, Robert Henry, archives, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, GB 0162 MSS PAC s:7.
29 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 100.
30 L. Threlkeld to Sir George Grey, 8 Jul. 1858, in Gunson (ed.), Australian Reminiscences and Papers of L.E. Threlkeld, 1824–1859 (Canberra 1974), 305.
31 N. McArthur, ‘And behold, the plague was begun among the people’, in Gunson, (ed.), The Changing Pacific: essays in honour of H.E. Maude (Melbourne 1978), 273–84.
32 ‘The “Faculty of Faith”: Evangelical missionaries, social anthropologists and the claim for human unity in the nineteenth century’, in B. Douglas and C. Ballard (eds), Foreign Bodies: Oceania and Racial Science 1750 — 1940 (forthcoming).
33 Müller, quoted in R. Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's rediscovery of India and the East 1680–1880 (New York 1984), 2.
34 J. Geddie, letter 25 Dec. 1849, in Miller, Misi Gete, 63.
35 Inglis, A Dictionary of the Aneityumese Language, xxi–xxii.
36 Miller, Misi Gete, 42, 53.
37 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 76.
38 Ibid., 77–81.
39 Ibid., 104.
40 Ibid., 114.
41 Ibid., 90.
42 Ramsay, ‘Translation in New Caledonia’, 150.
43 C.F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 1700–1900 (London 1901), 805. G. Brown, ‘Languages’ in B. Danks (ed.), A Century in the Pacific 1815–1915 (Sydney 1914), 106–7.
44 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 104–6.
45 Ibid., 110.
46 This section draws on Douglas's seminal analysis of the acceptance of Christianity on Aneityum and distinctions between the cosmology of Tanna, Aneityum and the Isle of Pines. It is used here to demonstrate the points of agreement and disagreement between Aneityumese spirits and deities and the Christian God. ‘Autonomous and controlled spirits’.
47 For useful discussions on Leenhardt's insights into translation in New Caledonia, see J. Clifford, Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian world (Berkeley 1982), 74–91; and Ramsay, ‘Translating in New Caledonia’, 150–63.
48 Douglas, ‘Autonomous and controlled spirits’, 11.
49 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 29–30.
50 Douglas demonstrates that this was a crucial distinction between Aneityumese spirits and those on the neighbouring island of Tanna. Tannese aremha (forefathers) were activated through human agency. Disease on Tanna was inevitably the result of human propitiation. By contrast, Aneityumese natmas could act autonomously and did so when they were offended by human actions. Douglas, ‘Autonomous and controlled spirits’, 13, 16.
51 Ibid., 15–26.
52 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 122.
53 A. Weiner, ‘From words to objects to magic: hard words and the boundaries of social interaction’, Man, 18 (1983), 691.
54 L. Lindstrom ‘Charisma and the production of messages on Tanna’, Religion 19 (1989), 382–3. For a more extensive discussion on the ‘consumption’ of knowledge statements on Tanna, see Lindstrom, Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society (Washington 1990), 139–47.
55 Geddie, ‘Journal’, 10 Oct. 1848, 13 Feb. 1854, in Miller, Misi Gete, 38,176. During the measles and dysentery epidemics of 1861 on Tanna, the missionaries were stoned, shouted at and threatened with death if they attempted to speak about the new religion, R. Adams, In the Land of Strangers: a century of European contact with Tanna, 1774–1874 (Canberra 1984), 121.
56 Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin 1986), 69.
57 Gunson, Messengers of Grace: evangelical missionaries in the South Seas (Melbourne 1978), 47–64.
58 Inglis, A Dictionary of the Aneityumese Language, xxxvi.
59 M. Leenhardt, quoted in J. Clifford, Person and Myth, 85.
60 J. Geddie, Journal, 20 Feb. 1851, in Miller, Misi Gete, 89.
61 Miller, Misi Gete, 36.
62 Turner encountered Nohoat while visiting Polynesian teachers in Melanesia in 1845, Nineteen Years in Polynesia (London 1861), 368–9.
63 Geddie, Journel, 4 Feb. 1851, in Miller, Misi Gete, 118.
64 Charlotte Geddie to Mrs James Wadell, 16 Sept. 1851, in Miller, Misi Gete, 101. See Douglas, ‘Autonomous and controlled spirits’, 20.
65 Geddie, Journal, 4 Mar. 1851, in Miller, Misi Gete, 84.
66 Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 75.
67 Geddie, Journal, 10 Jul. 1851, in Miller, Misi Gete, 90.
68 Geddie, Journal, 20 Aug. 1851, in Miller, Misi Gete, 97.
69 Douglas, ‘Autonomous and controlled spirits’, 20.
70 Inglis, A Dictionary of the Aneityumese Language, xiii.
71 Geddie, Journal, 10 Feb. 1848, in Miller, Misi Gete, 37.
72 Ibid., 81.
73 J. Owen, ‘Religious disputation at Whangaroa’, The Journal of Pacific History, 79 (1970), 293.
74 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 103–4.
75 Merlan, ‘Explorations towards intercultural accounts’, 177.
76 Inglis. A Dictionary of the Aneityumese Language, 184.
77 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 31. On this point see also G. Patterson, Missionary Life among the Cannibals (Toronto 1882), 131.
78 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 31.
79 Geddie, Journal, 28 Aug. 1851, in Miller, Misi Gete, 99.
80 Geddie, Journal 1 Oct. 1852, in Miller, Misi Gete, 102.
81 Ibid.
82 Adams, In the Land of Stranger, 8. Lindstrom, Knowledge and Power, 44.
83 Geddie, Journal, 30 Aug. 1852, in Miller, Misi Gete,14.
84 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 97.
85 Geddie, Journal, 10 Feb. 1849, in Miller, Misi Gete, 37.
86 Geddie, Journal, 10 Nov. 1848, in Miller, Misi Gete, 41.
87 Geddie, Journal, 20 Oct. 1850, in Miller, Misi Gete, 79.
88 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 79.
89 Ibid., 81.
90 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 99.
91 See, e.g., R. Hart, ‘Translating the untranslatable: from copula to incommensurable worlds’, in Lydia H. Liu (ed.), Tokens of Exchange: the problem of translation in global circulations (Durham 1999), 52–3.
92 Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 69.
93 Inglis, In the New Hebrides, 122.
94 Geddie, in Miller, Misi Gete, 177.
95 Ibid., 252.