"The Little Prince" in Fifteen Taiwan Indigenous Languages

Among ILRDC's annual research projects, "Edit and Translate Indigenous Texts"（編譯族語讀本）is one that inspires creativity and broadens the scope of as well as deepens the depth of written indigenous languages in Taiwan.

As commonly known, most indigenous languages in the world do not subscribe to a writing tradition, and those that do now have less than a century for a continuous and steady development.

Briefly in Taiwan, Formosan languages from the western plains were put into written form as early as in the 17th century by Dutch missionaries who sought to evangelize the people through translating the Bible, tenets and creeds. This trend was stopped in the 18th and 19th century as native communities were largely ignored by the ruling Qing Government. It was after the Japanese Occupation that educated Formosans started the movement of writing in their own languages with a mixed script of Japanese, Mandarin and Roman letters. Intellects wrote journals; missionaries translated Bibles; teachers compiled teaching materials; and song writers produced beautiful yet sentimental music about the disappearing peoples.

After WWII, Taiwan was reconstructed under the Nationalist Government of ROC. As opportunities arose in the 1980s to improve indigenous rights, activists seized them and initiated changes for the island's indigenous society. One change was the standardization of writing script for indigenous languages in 2005. Now, every publication in indigenous language in whatever form has a criterion to resort to.

ILRDC commenced its first "Edit and Translate Indigenous Texts" in 2014, introducing sixteen pieces of folklore from sixteen peoples and adorned each lore with a illustration.

Amis: Salawan and the Fish
Atayal: The Magic Calling of the Atayal People
Paiwan: Two Brothers and A Mouse
Bunun: Little Biung's Chasing Clouds
Puyuma: The Weeding Association

of the Puyuma Women
Rukai: Young Men that Shoot the Sun
Tsou: Hairy Grandpa
Saisiyat: Boy-Eagle
Tao: The Story of a Big White Goat
Thao: The Stories of Thao People
Kavalan: Migration and Kavalan People
Truku: The Giant Mawi
Sakizaya: The Legend of Floods
Seediq: The Shining White-Rock Mountain
Hla'alua: Taboos of Being Absent from Rituals
Kanakanavu: The Story of Shooting the Sun

For 2015, a new turn was introduced to this research. As there are already many publications in indigenous languages about indigenous world, ILRDC wanted to really test the ability of these age-old languages in a new frontier. How would they fare if the world they encountered was by no means indigenous, full of imagination and totally new? That was when the text The Little Prince was decided to be the challenge for our indigenous language teachers (see list below).

For many months, our translators toiled over the text. There were simply too many big numbers (billions or trillions), new planets (Venus or Mercury), bizarre characters and occurrences! Not only were they out of the common village experience, but none of the teachers themselves had never even thought about such things. As many teachers shared later, that's exactly why they were excited about the challenge.

Translating The Little Prince has obliged them to return to villages, consult elders and sit and review and think hard about the language they consider familiar to them. Translating The Little Prince has open a broken new ground for them as they brought their own language forward to meet the world.

Now, the translations of The Little Prince in fifteen indigenous languages in Taiwan are available in two modes on the website of ILRDC: one presents straightforwardly the indigenous text followed by the Chinese text, and the other (as seen above) is presented in the mode of an illustration book. Readers may read it page by page and even listen to the recording as each translator has also recorded the sentence online.

As the printing costs are high, these translations may yet to see their counterparts in printing for quite some time. However, soon there will be an animation version (or cartoon) of The Little Prince in these Formosan languages. For that is one of our tasks for 2016. I know readers are eagerly anticipating our next move.

I've also been scouting about for the next story to translate. Although The Little Prince generated quite a response last year, some critiques also came to our ears, such as that why not an indigenous story but a white man's fantasy? Yes, why not a story about indigenous characters that will encourage us to continue in the 21st century with a sense of international brotherhood? I am thinking about Sitting Bull of Lakota or Sioux, Chief Joseph of Nez Perce, and Sequoyah of Cherokee.

As I am bringing in their stories to Taiwan's indigenous communities, I certainly hope there will be someone out there telling stories about us. For we are one indigenous spirit under the same sky.