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@anilmc

I have little interest in exploring the topic, but let me give an example of what I'm talking about.

Beginning in the late 1500s, the Sami population in Norway was subjected to a protracted campaign of erasure by sucessive Danish then Swedish then Norwegian governments. It began with accusations of witchcraft, with accompanying trials and executions, and ended with children being removed from their parents, and the imposition of the Norwegian language on the whole nation. The Sami religion was sinful. The Sami culture – singing, music-making, dress, housing, manner of life – was weird. The Sami language was incomprehensible and thus ridiculed and feared.

In the midst of all this violence – methods that have subsequently been defined as genocidal, and admitted as such by recent governments – the Norwegian academic, Just Qvigstad, began to collect Sami folktales and legends. Much of his material was sent to him by other Norwegian teachers, rather than recounted directly by the Sami. He eventually published four volumes of these folk narratives – in Norwegian, rather than in Sami.

These stories were recorded from Sami raconteurs by Norwegians, sent to another Norwegian, then published in Norwegian. (I have yet to determine whether Qvigstad translated everything, or whether his Norwegian middlemen did so before sending the narratives to him.) Qvigstad received all manner of accolades for his work. A number of the Sami raconteurs’ names have been recorded, but at the same time Qvigstad was conducting his work, the state for whom he worked was busy erasing the culture of his object of study.

Now, the stories Qvigstad published are all available to me, a translator of Norwegian. They are as wonderful and delightful as of those of any collection of folklore. I could translate them for an English audience. But doing so would entail removing the tales and legends one degree further from the people they originally belonged to. Translating the tales as uncritically as I have translated Norwegian folktales and legends would mean turning a blind eye to all the injustice and pain the Sami have suffered at the hands of the nation state they (and I) call home. Should I ignore the genocide, just to bring some entertaining stories to the Anglophone world? Or should I rather wait for these stories, which ought to have initially been recorded in Sami languages, to be published by the Sami themselves?

I think you can understand what my conclusion has been.

@folklore