Innu Words Used in English Text - Translations
Atik - Caribou
Mashk - Bear
Namesh - Fish
Nika - Mommy
Nikaui - My Mother
Nishk - Goose
Nukum - Grandmother
Nuta - Daddy
Nutaui - My father
Pakueshekan - Bannock
The Innu dictionary can be located on the internet. There they give the pronunciations of both the north and southern dialects of the Innu language for different animals and other words. Check it out by hitting the button below.
Translation: Why a Single Innu Word Becomes a full sentence in English
When I flipped to the back pages of NUTAUI’S CAP to use the beautiful Innu-English dictionary, I found something that seemed a bit strange to me—admittedly because I am unfamiliar with the Innu language.
I noticed that it takes an English phrase or even a full sentence to translate a single Innu word.
Some examples I found from the dictionary include words involving protest, arrests, and putting boughs down.
1. The word ishi-anasseuk is translated as “I put down a floor of boughs in a certain way.”
2. The two words ka makunakaniht means “the ones who are arrested” in English (the word ka indicates the past tense).
3. The most important word in this book is nimashkuaitsheu, which translates directly as “s/he holds a stick.” It’s the Innu word for the verb “to protest”.
Since the first time I used the dictionary, I’ve been told that English is so different from Innu that it took a team to translate the story.
Marguerite MacKenzie is a linguist who facilitated the translating team as they worked between two dialects of Innu-Aimun and English to get the story right. She’s worked with Innu and Cree and Naskapi languages for several decades and has been working with the the Innu School Board in Labrador helping to produce books.
When I asked Marguerite about the dictionary in the back of NUTAUI’S CAP, she told me that Innu and English treat verbs differently. To get the concepts that are in the story across, took a team.
“I worked with people who have some experience in translation,” she said.
The team included: Stella Rich, Sebastian Piwas, and Mani Katinen Nuna, with Laurel Anne Hasler, Penash Rich and Stella Rich.
“The process usually started with me breaking up the story into several sentences and sometimes breaking longer English sentences into shorter ones,” she said.
Next, the translators talked about how to get the same concepts across in Innu.
“The Innu language along with Cree and Naskapi, the other Algonquin language in Quebec Labrador, have a very different genius, or way of looking at the world,” she said.
Innu is made up mainly of verbs, she explained. There are no adjectives. You want to describe something as white? You use a verb saying ‘the thing which is being white’.
“The translator and I would spend our time trying to figure out exactly what the English was trying to say and then how could we express that thought, not necessarily literally, but metaphorically—how to translate the images in the words.”
Innu words are made up of small meaningful parts and if you look at the Innu dictionary in the back pages that’s why most verbs are translated by an English sentence. It’s also why there isn’t a direct word-for-word translation structure.
Another little note that interested me: In NUTAUI’S CAP, Marguerite said she learned from the Innu translators she worked with that the word for protest in Innu means “holding a stick up”.
There was no such thing as protesting before the community protests against NATO jets low-level flying over the Innu homeland in Labrador.
“There’s verbs for being resistant to cold, for instance,” she said. “But a resisting political action wasn’t something that was historically in the language—so it was created. That word was created for this situation,” said Marguerite MacKenzie.
NUTAUI’S CAP is translated into two dialects of Innu-aimun, which appear alongside the English. There's a glossary, a map, and a backgrounder to tell more of the Innu's story. It's a co-publication by Mamu Tshishkutamashutau Innu Education and Running the Goat, Books and Broadsides.