While the specific objective of this project is to translate and publish the Bible in Nawat, the project’s team are also aware of and driven by the fact that its work and product will almost inevitably play a significant role in the larger process of Nawat language recovery.
Some of the ways in which Ne Bibliaj will foreseeably help to further the goal of Nawat language recovery are:
- by adding substantially to the Nawat linguistic and literary corpus, i.e. through the creation of new Nawat language texts and simultaneously enriching Nawat literature;
- by stimulating Nawat language use in a variety of ways: providing something to read (or listen to, when passages are read out to an audience) in Nawat; something to discuss, interpret or recite; something to narrate when Bible stories are retold; something to enact if scenes are dramatized, etc. etc.;
- helping to get Nawat speakers involved in a variety of activities that instrumentalize their language, whether they be pre-publication activities (such as validation processes), activities linked to the project’s progress (such as public presentations of newly translated sections of the Bible) or spin-off activities (e.g. public Bible readings, audio or video recording of segments, broadcasts of these, etc.);
- by reinforcing and/or reactivating a wide range of Nawat’s documented linguistic resources, through the use in the translation of vocabulary, grammatical constructions and other parts of the language, thereby reminding speakers of these elements, keeping them alive and in circulation, and ensuring that new language learners are exposed to them;
- to a very large extent constructing a hitherto lacking model for a Nawat literary language, an important step in a language recovery process whereby the language is made (and demonstrated to be) apt for formal written uses, not only everyday colloquial speech;
- encouraging literacy in the largely illiterate Nawat-speaking population, and indirectly, increasing access to the multiple benefits accruing to literate individuals in the context of an educationally deprived community;
- contributing to the language’s social prestige, presence and visibility in public and private life; encouraging speakers to take pride in their language; helping them to enjoy and rejoice in their language, individually and collectively; and providing a means for them to consolidate and improve their knowledge of their language and transmit it to young semi-speakers and non-speakers through the mediation of texts such as this project generates.
For more information about the Nawat language see the TUSHIK website.
