Collaborative Ethnopoetics: The View from the Sibundoy Valley

Abstract

Those of us who transcribe and translate the speech art of indigenous commu­nities in Latin America effect transformations on several fronts: of a spoken source into a written product, of "oral style" into "literary style," of discourse in an isolated or endangered language into discourse in a major world language, ofa culture at the margins to one at the center of world influence and power. In this enterprise we experience the frustrations of all translators, the impossi­bility of lifting and conveying "signifieds" from one language to another, the necessity of creating "signifying instruments" disth1ct from the original medirnn of signification. But we incur additional obligations in an arena that conjoins politics and aesthetics. The translation of verbal art from the world's indigenous enclaves situates us in a setting ofrecuperation, preservation, even advocacy. We become, whelher we like it or not, defenders of neglected or oppressed peoples and traditions.