Indigenous Cultural Translation : A Thick Description of Seediq Bale

Atanarjuat and even Dances With Wolves have been recognized for their use of dialogue in endangered indigenous languages, but the 2011 Taiwanese blockbuster Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, filmed mainly in the endangered indigenous language Seediq, has not received the recognition it deserves. Seediq Bale celebrates the warriors who rebelled against or collaborated with the Japanese in the central Taiwanese hill station of Musha in 1930; this book celebrates the translators, all grandchildren of the rebels and the collaborators, who translated the dialogue in the Mandarin language screenplay into Seediq.

This book is an account of translation in the textual history of the Mandarin language screenplay, tracing how it was adapted into Mandarin from Japanese written and Seediq oral sources and then back-translated into Japanese and Seediq. In the process, the Seediq translation team turned the translation into a work of art, thereby contributing to the artistic achievement of the film. They also manipulated the text, making it a vehicle for Seediq interpretations of the Musha Incident based on the translators’ different understandings of Seediq culture. Their indigenous cultural translations demonstrate how translation may be part of language and culture revitalization projects that articulate alternative indigenous modernities in settler states like Taiwan.