Terminology Planning in Aboriginal Australia

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Terminology Planning in Aboriginal AustraliaJakelin Troy a & Michael Walsh ba NSW Aboriginal Languages Research and Resource Centre , Sydney, NSW, 2052,Australiab Linguistics Department , University of Sydney , NSW, AustraliaPublished online: 22 Dec 2008.

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Terminology Planning in AboriginalAustralia

Jakelin TroyNSW Aboriginal Languages Research and Resource Centre, Sydney, NSW 2052,Australia

Michael WalshLinguistics Department, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia

Australia, as far as Aboriginal languages are concerned, is not yet engaged in system-atic language planning exercises. This is in contrast to other parts of the world wherelanguage planning is institutionalised and enforced. In this paper we chronicle some ofthe language planning exercises we have observed, been involved in, or have studied offrom the historical record. Terminology planning will obviously vary according to thelanguage situation under consideration and we claim here that much of the terminol-ogy planning in Aboriginal Australia has been highly localised, ad hoc and much lessinstitutionalised than elsewhere. With 250 Aboriginal languages existing at first signif-icant European contact, it is not so surprising that efforts should be localised. The betterdocumented cases of terminology planning are mostly to be found in northern Austra-lia where the effects of outside contact have been more recent, so that some languagesare still being spoken by children. In recent years, some of the more endangeredlanguages have been in a process of revitalisation. We provide some examples of termi-nology planning from such languages, with a particular emphasis on New South Walesand the Northern Territory. Of particular importance is appropriate consultation withthe owners of these languages.

Keywords: Australia, terminology, Aboriginal languages

IntroductionMost terminology planning in Aboriginal Australia is highly localised and

less institutionalised than that found in other contexts. For example, French (e.g.Frey, 2000) and Hebrew (e.g. Bar-Acher, 1998) each have their own languageacademy and are both languages with a wide geographical spread. One role ofthe language academies is to manage terminology planning even if the speechcommunity chooses to ignore some of their pronouncements (e.g. Hebrew termsfor auto mechanics; Alloni-Fainberg, 1974). Such languages are at one end of alanguage planning spectrum, while we see the languages of Aboriginal Australiaas being towards the other end of the spectrum. This spectrum is characterised bya number of features:

• large speech communities vs, small speech communities;• institutionalised vs. less institutionalised terminology planning;• terminology planning in many domains vs, terminology planning in one or

just a few domains.

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In our view, much of the literature on terminology planning (e.g. Antia, 2000;Cabré, 1999) tends to focus on the more intensively planned end of the spectrumrather than the other. In this paper we will focus on terminology planning whichresides in small speech communities, is less institutionalised, and tends to oper-ate in one or just a few domains.

The Language Situation in Aboriginal AustraliaMost languages in Aboriginal Australia can be regarded as endangered. One

survey (Schmidt, 1990) indicates that of the 250 Indigenous languages spoken atthe first significant contact with Europeans starting in 1788, just 20 can bedescribed as healthy, 70 as weak or dying and 160 as extinct. This last term ishighly problematic as many Indigenous people do not accept such a descriptionfor their languages (see, for example, Thieberger (2002) for one discussion).However, it must be conceded that many languages have few active speakers(McConvell & Thieberger, 2001; Nash, 1998). For languages with relatively fewactive speakers, terminology planning is often fairly recent, ad hoc, and notparticularly extensive. Amery has observed that, ‘There are only a few articleswhich deal with new terminology in Australia’s Indigenous languages’ (2001:180) and apart from his own work refers only to Black (1993), O’Grady (1960) andSimpson (1985). It is among some of what Schmidt has referred to as ‘healthy’languages that more extensive terminology planning has taken place.

Australian Governments and Terminology Planning

Native titleBetween 1990 and June 2004, the Federal Government was assisted in its work

on all matters associated with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by theAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). This body wasunique in the world as an organisation run by its elected arm of ATSICCommissioners to deliver a whole range of services to Indigenous people. Theelected arm received input from regional councils of Indigenous people acrossAustralia, making it much more sensitive to Indigenous community needs.This body managed a large part of the federal budget targeted directly atAustralia’s Indigenous peoples. ATSIC’s administrative arm as well as itselected body were disbanded at the end June 2004. When Troy joined ATSIC in1993, she assumed (focused by her training as a linguist) that as the peak bodyfor all things Indigenous in Australia, ATSIC would have a policy to supportAboriginal languages by preparing literature about government policies andlegislation affecting Indigenous people in their own languages. This was notthe case and she found resistance to the idea that this was in any way necessary.Corporate lawyers even commented that translating legislation affectingIndigenous Australians into their languages was too difficult. ‘Some things justcan’t be translated’, she was told and even worse, ‘They just don’t need to havecomplex laws explained’.

In the newly formed Native Title Unit, Troy was involved in drafting theCommonwealth Native Title Act 1993 and creating literature explaining the Actand its processes. Native title refers to the bundle of rights any Indigenous

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Australian person or community is able to demonstrate that make up their rela-tionship with land. In response to the lawyers’ criticisms of the capacity ofAboriginal languages to find the descriptive processes to explain native title –odd as this is actually an attempt by Westminster law to explain IndigenousAustralian law to the wider Australian public through legislation – shesuggested ATSIC should have her Plain English Guide to the Native Title Act forCommunities translated into 12 Aboriginal languages including two creoles.

This was an opportunity to institute an Aboriginal languages terminologyplanning exercise on behalf of the Federal Government. In 1994, ATSIC commis-sioned the Centre for Aboriginal Languages and Linguistics (CALL) at BatchelorCollege, Darwin, NT, to translate the Guide into 12 Aboriginal languages. Troy’sconcern with the Guide was that, although written in plain English, it was still fullof concepts that need explanation to Aboriginal people for whom English was asecond or third (or subsequent) language (or not one of their languages at all).The translation project aimed not simply to provide translations produced bycompetent translators, but to give students of CALL, studying translation, achance to take the Guide to their own communities and workshop the translation,that is, to engage them directly with their communities in terminology planningin their own languages. In this way, bilingual people from each of the communi-ties who were also educated in or had better access to understanding wider West-ern concepts, such as the law of native title, worked with their communities tounderstand the law of native title as enshrined in the Native Title Act and createterminology to explain it to their communities in their own language and fromtheir own world view. One of the most striking examples of the success of thisproject was that each of the translations the Centre received back was a learningexercise for those working in native title because it gave Aboriginal people achance to explain to those working in the Government what they understoodabout a law that was actually designed to enshrine rights only Aboriginal peoplecould really explain to non-Aboriginal people: a real twist in terminology plan-ning.

For Troy, the most poignant and striking of all the terms used in the transla-tions was the independent decision arrived at by each of the communities andtheir translators that the only word that appropriately equated to the Englishterm ‘native title’ was the term for ‘people’ (their own people or more broadlyIndigenous Australians) in each of their languages. This is not really surprisingas the legal term ‘native title’ refers to the rights Indigenous Australians haverelating to their relationship with land or ‘country’, as it is usually termed whenreferring to Indigenous Australians’ connection to land. It is widely reported inanthropological literature about Australia that Aboriginal people see themselvesas inseparable from the land; the land is literally embodied in them and they inthe land. Therefore, these bundles of native title rights effectively make up thevery essence of an Aboriginal person. Aboriginal people do not ‘own’ land in astrictly Western concept of possession, that can be bought and sold as a papertitle. ‘The land owns them’ is perhaps a more effective way to describe the rela-tionship, and it is an inseparable relationship as the land cannot sell or transfer itspeople. In undertaking this exercise ATSIC was attempting to engage Aboriginalpeople in terminology planning.

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Initiatives in New South WalesAt the federal level and the state or territory level of government in Australia,

each Government makes its own policy and undertakes its own planning forAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. However, any federal policy,particularly that backed by Commonwealth legislation, will impact directly onactions of states and territories to support languages. Very recently, in mid-2004,the NSW State Government took a historic step in creating its NSW AboriginalLanguages Policy (DAA, 2004), which essentially provides an imperative to allareas of government in NSW to support the use, maintenance and revitalisationof NSW Aboriginal languages. Already this policy is supported with astate-established NSW Aboriginal Languages Research and Resource Centre(NSW ALRRC), established as part of the NSW Department of AboriginalAffairs, and the NSW Aboriginal Languages K-10 syllabus created by the Boardof Studies NSW (the education standards setting body in NSW) which will beimplemented in NSW schools from January 2005. Both initiatives are alreadyinstrumental in terminology planning for Aboriginal languages in NSW in thatthey are supporting an increase in activity around those languages. Direct provi-sion of financial support and expert linguistic and teaching advice to communi-ties and individuals will assist them to revitalise and, as a corollary of this,necessarily expand the use of these languages.

Some Examples of Terminology Planning in Aboriginal Australia

Examples from New South WalesIn 1788, when NSW was first ‘settled’, there were around 70 distinct

languages. Fairly recently (Dixon, 1991), it has been reported that there remainedjust a handful of speakers for one language in NSW. In his view there was just onelanguage still active in NSW but, as we will see, this view needs re-examination.In fact, in recent times there has been a tremendous growth in activities concern-ing Aboriginal languages in NSW. For example, in 2003 there were alreadylanguage learning programmes in half a dozen NSW languages and more areunder development, with the following providing some examples. Some moreactivities and developments are set out in Walsh (2003).

GumbaynggirrGary Williams (personal communication) reports that Street Wise Comics

have been adapted for the Gumbaynggirr language spoken on the north coast ofNSW. This provides a challenge in capturing the original language of the comicswithout which their appeal would be diminished. One example is ‘feeling shitty’where ‘shitty’ is handled by guna guna, a reduplicated form of guna ‘shit’.

WiradjuriA term for ‘computer’ was proposed by Stan Grant Sr to a meeting of the coun-

cil of Wiradjuri Elders: ‘lightning brain’ (perhaps modelled on the Kaurna neolo-gism mukarndo ‘computer’ ? muka muka ‘brain’ + karndo ‘lightning’ (Amery, 2000:141)). However, it was rejected by them as being not part of the traditionalculture. This is one example of how terminology planning can be under Indige-nous control.


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WembawembaAboriginal people at Deniliquin in western NSW are working on revitalising

their language and one of the processes they are in engaged in is finding ways todescribe and discuss their world and its resources in their language. Theyworked with Hercus’s Wembawemba dictionary (1992) and produced a list ofplants and animals they use for food and artefact production. They were unableto find the terms for some things so went about creating terminology. For exam-ple, a plant from which they made a honey drink they calqued as literally‘honey drink’, notwithstanding that this does not accord with traditionalmorphosyntactic patterns. Recently, the NSW ALRRC engaged Hercus to workwith the community to assist them to better understand how the languageworks, including the productive processes for creating neologisms. The commu-nity was very receptive to Hercus’s proposals and are working with her to betterunderstand how to undertake terminology planning in their language. The plantfrom which Wembawemba people created a honey drink is a kind of honey-suckle. Hercus was unable to find a word for honeysuckle in the language soadvised the community that it would be best to borrow a word from a closelyrelated language rather than create a new item, as terms for plants tend to be indi-vidual to the plant, not a descriptive term. She suggested warrak ‘banksia’ fromthe Woiwurrung language of Melbourne as this was the closest item in a relatedlanguage that she was able to find.

GamilaraayOther communities are not so receptive to the advice of linguists and prefer to

develop their own ways to use their language knowledge, not necessarily follow-ing strictly the language’s own rules but applying new rules drawn, for example,from their knowledge of English and particularly Aboriginal English. For exam-ple, a Gamilaraay man and an Elder (Tony Lonsdale and Ted Fields, personalcorrespondence, 2000) both conferred on the rules of Gamilaraay as explained byJohn Giacon and Anna Ash at a workshop and concluded that they would preferto use Gamilaraay lexicon and English grammar rather than Gamilaraay gram-mar. The reasoning given was that all Gamilaraay people speak English andmost are now more familiar with English than Gamilaraay and it is too hard tolearn the full system of this language. This response horrifies linguists but is partof the processes for terminology and other language planning that Aboriginalpeople are engaging in while exploring the possibilities for revitalisation of theirlanguages.

While being horrified about the decisions communities might make, linguistsand language educators in schools are also involved in profound exercises oflanguage engineering, including terminology planning, that has implications forthe development of NSW Aboriginal languages for the future. For example,Giacon (personal correspondence, 2004) in teaching Gamilaraay in schools, usesGamilaraay terms for kinship and social relationships between humans butapplies them to the relationships between humans expressed in English. Hisrationale for this terminology planning exercise is that, in his opinion, Aboriginalchildren now relate to other humans in the way that the English language teachesthem to relate to people; therefore it would be confusing to attempt to teach themthe Gamilaraay language system of human relationships. To give just one exam-


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ple, the term walgan traditionally referred to ‘mother-in-law (husband’s mother)’as well as ‘aunt (man’s father’s sister)’. It has now come to be ‘used in the sameway as the English word “aunt”’ (Ash et al., 2003: 137). Traditionally, the femalesiblings of each parent were quite distinct: giluu ‘father’s sister’ and gunidjarr‘mother’s sister’, the latter term also referring to ‘mother’ (Ash et al., 2003: 216). Sothe scope of the English term ‘aunt’ used to be quite dissimilar to that ofGamilaraay but the ‘new’ term, walgan, has adjusted to English usage as has thelanguage teaching programme.

Examples from the Northern Territory

Yolngu economic and political discourseIn the north-east Arnhem Land area of the Northern Territory, the Yolngu

have experienced significant contact with Europeans for just over 100 years. Inrecent times, as contact has become more intense, they have become bewilderedby the Western economic system. Over a number of years, Richard Trudgen andcolleagues associated with an organisation called the Aboriginal Resource andDevelopment Services Inc. (ARDS) have attempted to address this confusion.One example of the difference in the Yolngu world view can be illustrated by amember of the local Aboriginal council in the context of a discussion about thenational deficit: ‘Japan makes a lot of cars and trucks don’t they? Well, they getminerals from us, so they should give vehicles to the Australian Government sothe Government won’t be broke’ (Trudgen, 1995: 17). This suggestion makessense when one realises that most Yolngu at the time believed that Toyotas weremade by the Japanese Government and then imported by the Australian Govern-ment – indeed it was believed that the Australian Government owned all newequipment (Trudgen, 1995: 18–19).

To address these and other confusions, Trudgen and his colleagues decidedthat it would be more effective to use and, if needs be, extend the meaning oftraditional concepts relevant to the economic system:

We spent hundreds of hours in council and other meetings trying to explainhow the western system worked. It finally became clear to me that to teach acommunity of say 400 people a single western concept (e.g., what a contractis) by using only western thinking, concepts and language would take metwo or three life-times. However, if I firstly learnt the people’s own conceptof contract, then the same lesson could be done in minutes, hours, days orweeks, because the people would be learning through their intellectualstructure. Their own dynamic social organisation would then carry thatknowledge and learning forward. (Trudgen, 1995: 35–6)

Part of this initiative has resulted in an ‘operative word list’ (Trudgen, 1995:37–48) which includes such terms as buku-djugu’ ‘verbal contract’ where buku is‘forehead’ and djugu’ is very similar in scope to the English term ‘contract’. In thiscase, the Yolngu term would have been quite a good equivalent translation for‘contract’, but this was not the way the Yolngu had seen it; instead, manyregarded the English term ‘contract’ as the equivalent of ‘making a lot of money’(ARDS, 1994: 38). It was only through terminology planning that a better under-standing of this concept has been reached.


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Yolngu health terminologyIn another context among the Yolngu, Trudgen (2000: 229–31) refers to a work-

shop in which Aboriginal health workers are grappling with a condition referredto as ‘leaking kidneys’. Now the Yolngu language has terms for notions like ‘kid-ney disease’ but this required something more specific and, in particular, oneneeded to know what it is that leaks from the kidneys. In this context, apparently,the Aboriginal health workers had been presented with a black and white draw-ing of a kidney with drops of something coming from it. The Aboriginal healthworkers were not clear what the fluid dripping from the kidney might be. Onesenior Aboriginal health worker thought it might be blood leaking into the urinebut in fact Western medicine asserts it is a protein. But what is a protein? This ledto a discussion of traditional Yolngu food groups which in turn led to an explana-tion: ‘The protein leaks through these fenestrated capillaries when they becomedamaged’ (Trudgen, 2000: 230). Needless to say, this explanation requiredfurther explanation as did the observation that kidneys could be damaged whenthere was a rise in creatinine in the blood. Overall, this is one illustration of howcoming up with a Yolngu equivalent of a term like ‘leaking kidneys’ requires notjust a simple lexical transfer but a lengthy explanation which bridges twocultures. More generally, Trudgen observes:

English is still for them in many ways an uncharted language. By‘uncharted language’ I mean one that has not been fully analysed. ForYolngu this is the case with English, and especially for what they refer to as‘secret’ or ‘hidden’ English [see Martin (1990) for a discussion of this term].This covers the equivalent of what Yolngu call gurrangay matha (intellec-tual language). Many of the English terms that cover commerce, law,economic and medical areas of knowledge have not been linguisticallyanalysed by Yolngu.

And the same is true for Yolngu Matha from the English point of view. Thereare many terms and concepts in Yolngu Matha intellectual language, includ-ing abstract nouns, that have not yet been fully discovered and analysed sothat English speakers can comprehend them. (Trudgen, 2000: 89)

Terminology in legal contexts: Planning in a deliberate mode vs ‘on the fly’As indicated at the start of this paper, in our view there is a spectrum of termi-

nology planning, with languages of Aboriginal Australia at the less formalisedend of the spectrum. Rather than a long-term, institutionalised, and oftennation-wide approach in Aboriginal Australia, it is better to think of terminologyplanning ‘on the fly’. By this we mean that terms are discussed and refined as avery specific need arises, such as in the context of land claim cases in whichAboriginal people seek to regain traditional rights over certain tracts of country.Much less common is the situation when a community decides to work up a set ofsuitable terminology for a specific domain. One such example of this is the devel-opment of legal terminology by the Murrinhpatha people of the Northern Terri-tory. We will discuss this example of a relatively deliberate terminologyplanning situation first and then turn to an example of terminology planning onthe fly in a native title case on Croker Island in the Northern Territory.


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Murrinhpatha legal terminologyAs was the case for the Yolngu, the Murrinhpatha people of the Northern

Territory have found the need to develop specialised terminology in a domainwhich affects them on a day-to-day basis. In the case of the Murrinhpatha, it is thelegal domain that they have focused on in recent years. This project was stillunder development in late 2004, but some of the background can be provided.Central to the project is Dominic McCormack, who is unusual in being a fullyqualified lawyer and also having near native fluency in Murrinhpatha. The latterskill was achieved by being raised at Wadeye (formerly known as Port Keats), themain settlement in which Murrinhpatha is spoken. His parents were teachers atthe local school so he grew up speaking English and Murrinhpatha. Since gain-ing his legal qualifications he has been engaged by the Wadeye Community toact as an interpreter in legal and other contexts. The project to develop legalterminology arose – in part – over the difficulties encountered in interpretingwhere a suitable term may be missing, so that the interpreter must supply adiscursive explanation rather than a direct translation equivalent. The projectalso involves the expertise of Lys Ford, a linguist with extensive experience in thelanguages of the region. They have been working with community memberstowards a set of legal terminology which will eventually be available online, aswell as being published in paper form (p.c. to Walsh from Ford and McCormack).

The Croker Island caseBefore examining this case specifically, it is useful to understand how legal

discussion in such cases is often framed. In discussing a particular native titlecase in the Northern Territory, Evans (2002: 77–8) sets out a useful summary ofhow Indigenous terminology acquires particular relevance in such cases. In thissummary, ‘X’ stands for an English word/expression and ‘N’ stands for itssupposed equivalent in a local Aboriginal language:

A common argument or move employed in such hearings can be schematisedas having the structure:

Barrister: What is your word for [zone X]?

Witness: N.

Barrister: Okay. Now does your country include the N [people]? Domembers of other clans need to ask permission to go into N?

The apparent rationale for this procedure is to move onto the witness’s ownlinguistic ground, as it were, so that answers to questions phrased using theEnglish words act as a stimulus.

Evans goes on to point out the pitfalls in this procedure and sets out a detailedaccount of two terms referring to tracts of the sea (2002: 81–6). It turned out thedifference between the two terms was not satisfactorily resolved:

In a sense this non-closure is predictable. It results from the attempt to inves-tigate a complex semantic domain by unsuitable methods – ethnosemanticsby cross examination. As well, it demonstrates two crucial points for theconduct of Native Title claims – the pitfalls of introducing decontextualisedwords from Indigenous languages into cross examination and the need for


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detailed prior work to be carried out by linguists in the relevant semanticdomains, such as geographical terminology. (Evans, 2002: 86)

There is nothing uncommon about such debates over terminology in legal casesinvolving land and sea rights: what is unusual is the detail in which this case hasbeen reported.

Terminology Planning in the Educational Domain

Bilingual educationBilingual education in Aboriginal Australia has generated a certain amount of

new terminology – mostly in an ad hoc fashion. For instance, Walsh has noticedthe development of the new term yigulu ‘igloo’ in Murrinhpatha which appearsin literacy materials written after viewing a video of Inuit people. More gener-ally, bilingual education has operated across much of northern Australia, espe-cially since the early 1970s. But the progress of delivery and uptake of bilingualeducation has not always run smoothly. (See Hoogenraad (2001) for an accountof Central Australia.)

However, there will have been many instances where new terms have beendeveloped to meet immediate needs in the development of literacy materials. Itwould require a major research effort to investigate the extent of these develop-ments and the extent to which these terms have taken hold in communities.Given the ebb and flow of bilingual education in many communities, we wouldanticipate that there will be terms that have been developed but are not at allwidely known in the community. Instead, these terms lie buried in literacy andother educational materials in a back cupboard of the school if one is lucky.Regrettably, some of these materials were only ever produced locally and inshort print runs and some of them have not survived.

One area in which terms seem to have had a better survival rate is in mathemat-ics. In some instances this is a matter of finding appropriate translation equivalentsfor Western mathematical terms and adopting them. For the Kaurna of theAdelaide area of South Australia, Amery (2000: 143, 2001: 181) used birth-ordernames to develop a base–10 number system, in contrast to most Aboriginallanguages which traditionally employ a base–2 system which can quickly becomeunwieldy and in any case is not compatible with basic Western mathematics.However, the Yolngu of north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory havedeveloped what they refer to as Garma (Living) Maths. The term garma, ‘meetingplace’, reflects this community’s concern that the mathematics they developshould be a meeting place of Western and Yolngu intellectual traditions. At onetime (1985–87) the Yolngu had felt sufficiently alienated from Western mathemat-ics to impose a total ban on its teaching. It is beyond the scope of this paper to givedetails of this hybrid mathematics (Cooke, 1996; Thornton, 1996); suffice it to saythat fundamental concepts like ‘relation’ and ‘recursion’ are captured in a cultur-ally relevant way, particularly through traditional kinship terminology.

Syllabus developmentIn recent years a range of syllabuses has been developed specifically for

Aboriginal languages. Some of these are for specific languages like Arabana.


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Wilson and Hercus (2004) provide specific examples from the language thatillustrate how meaning is extended; for example:

In Arabana the word yuka- ‘to go’ becomes yuki- ‘to make go’, and by avery simple extension this came to include ‘to drove cattle, to drive a car’ . . .A stronger example here might be the shift of meaning from kadnhaardi‘pebble’ to also include ‘money’. (Wilson & Hercus, 2004: 27)

Apart from meaning extension, the syllabus sets out other techniques, like directborrowing, e.g. kurlu from ‘school’, or coinages. It also supplies a range of vocab-ulary for classroom interactions (Wilson & Hercus, 2004: 27–8).

Other syllabuses are generic, for example, the Indigenous Language andCulture Syllabus developed for the Northern Territory, or the AboriginalLanguages K-10 Syllabus developed by the NSW Board of Studies (Board ofStudies NSW, 2003). These cover a wide range of language situations. In the case ofthe Northern Territory, this range includes languages in which intergenerationaltransmission is common through to those which are no longer in active use.Specifically, the Indigenous Languages and Culture component of the NTCurriculum Framework divides into three sections: Culture; Language Mainte-nance; Language Revitalisation (for a full account see NT Department ofEmployment, Education and Training, 2002). Obviously the amount of terminol-ogy will differ across these language situations, but an awareness of terminologyis encouraged as students are invited to identify loan words from English andfrom other Indigenous and non-Indigenous languages. The NSW Syllabus isquite explicit about developing new terminology, particularly when setting outlearning goals for senior students:

• identify gaps in words and expressions in own language and explorelinguistic techniques for addressing these gaps;

• identify techniques other languages have used to address these gaps, e.g.Mäori, Kaurna, Western Apache. (Board of Studies NSW, 2003: 50)

We can expect the development of new terminology in Australian languages asthese syllabuses are implemented in various educational systems. As always, itwill be interesting to see to what extent these efforts are adopted more widelythrough Aboriginal communities.

Bible TranslationAt least parts of the Bible have been translated into many Aboriginal

languages (see Harris, 1990: 829–46 for an overview). The first translation wascarried out by a missionary, Lancelot Edward Threlkeld, with the assistance of anAboriginal man, Biraban, in the Awabakal language spoken in the Newcas-tle–Lake Macquarie area of NSW. The Gospel of Luke was initially completed in1830 in this language. The translation process involved close collaborationbetween Biraban and Threlkeld: ‘Thrice I wrote it, and he and I went through itsentence by sentence, and word for word, while I explained to him carefully themeaning as we proceeded’ (Harris, 1990: 830).

Each translation project has developed new terminology or at least hasextended the scope of existing terms. An interesting example can be found in the


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Western Arrernte language of Central Australia. The Lutheran missionary, CarlStrehlow, worked at the Hermannsburg mission from 1894 until he died in 1922:

A skilled linguist with a lifelong interest in Aboriginal languages andculture, Strehlow found the Aranda (Arrernte) language well able to expresscomplex abstract spiritual concepts . . . Although Carl Strehlow had finishedthe New Testament by his death, it was completely revised by his son, Theo-dore, and published by the Bible Society in 1956 … (Harris, 1990: 836)

In the late 1970s another team of Lutheran missionaries were retranslating theNew Testament. Why? Theodore Strehlow had been raised trilingually inEnglish, German (the language of his parents) and Western Arrernte (thelanguage of his childhood playmates and the Hermannsburg community atlarge). Strehlow had burrowed down into the language to find just the right termto translate the complexities of the Bible, drawing on his own native speakerfluency and the detailed knowledge of senior Aboriginal men. By the late 1970s,many terms used by Strehlow in the scripture translation were either not under-stood at all or only partially remembered. The new Bible translation team neededto devise new terms which would be more widely understood in the currentsociolinguistic context (John Pfitzner, p.c. to Walsh).

Place NamesNames for localities have figured strongly in recent years in terminology plan-

ning for Australian languages. Often this involves the identification of formerAboriginal place names and their reinstatement into a wider domain. This can beachieved through renaming (involving the substitution of an Aboriginal namefor an introduced name), or through dual naming (where an existing introducedname comes to stand side by side with its Aboriginal counterpart) or throughnaming from scratch. Some examples of the last mentioned are provided by theKaurna Kura Yerlo ‘near the sea’ for an Aboriginal community centre located nearthe sea; or Yaitya Warra Wodli ‘Indigenous language place’, a centre for thelanguages of South Australia (Amery, 2001: 166–7).

Over the last few years the process of dual naming has been actively pursuedin NSW. The Geographical Names Board of NSW has played a leading role in thisinitiative, leading, for example, to the dual naming of Dawes Point/Tar-ra (at thesouthern foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge) in 2002. Their policy can be brieflysummarised as follows:

Relying on community involvement, a dual name can be assigned wherethere is strong evidence, in the form of written or oral tradition, of apre-existing Indigenous place name. It should be noted that the dualnaming policy applies to geographical and environmental features, it doesnot apply to suburbs, towns or streets. (GNB, 2004)

In collaboration with the Australian National Placenames Survey and the NSWALRRC, the dual naming of 17 additional localities around Sydney Harbour isbeing finalised in the latter part of 2004.


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Linguistic TerminologyOne domain in which Australian languages have had much more activity in

terminology planning than others is, curiously enough, in the area of linguistics.This emphasis has arisen out of a desire by Aboriginal people to describe theirown languages in their own terms. An important impetus for this aspiration wasthe establishment of the School of Australian Linguistics based for most of its lifeat Batchelor, NT, but with a brief for the whole of Indigenous Australia.

The School of Australian Linguistics (SAL) was an unusual institution thatprovided language and linguistic education to some two thousand speak-ers of about a hundred Australian languages and dialects between 1974 and1989 . . . (Black & Breen, 2001: 161)

SAL was in part triggered by the views of Ken Hale, a linguist who had workedextensively in Australian Aboriginal contexts as well as among Native Americans:

. . . the people who can best decide its [linguistics’] relevance to concerns ofAmerican Indian communities are the members of those communities. Thedistribution of linguistic talent and interest which is to be found in anAmerican Indian community does not necessarily correspond in any wayto the distribution of formal education in the Western sense. If this talent isto flourish and be brought to bear in helping determine the particular rele-vance of the study of language or languages to the communities in which itis located, then ways must be found to enable individuals . . . to receivetraining and accreditation which will enable them to devote their energiesto the study of their own languages. (Hale, 1972: 392–3)

SAL is not the only institution that has addressed these needs but it has had amajor influence and has spawned a good deal of linguistic terminology. One ofthe more striking examples comes from the Warlpiri language of Central Austra-lia. Gavan Breen has kindly passed on some examples which he says were‘devised/compiled at a School of Australian Languages course in the late 1970s’(personal correspondence Breen, 18 October 1995). Consider a term likeyintirdi-yirrarnu yaapukari ‘stem-forming affix’. This is built up from ordinaryWarlpiri words adapted for a new purpose:

• yaapu? ‘part’ [perhaps from English ‘half’, Breen thinks. All but a fewAustralian languages lack fricatives so English ‘f’ is usually replaced with‘p’ or ‘b’, and many Australian languages do not allow final stops and soadd a vowel – rather like Japanese in this respect];

• yaapukari ‘pieces broken from a whole’ ? ‘ending’, ‘prefix’;• yintirdi ‘stem, base of something, e.g. trunk of tree (less, roots, branches,

leaves)’ ? ‘stem of word’.

Other terms include:

• yimi ngarrirninyjaku ‘linguistic rule’;• warruyirrairninyjaku yimi-kirlangu (yimi ngarrirninyjaku) ‘word-order chang-

ing (rule) (e.g. scrambling)’; and


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• nyintanypa-kurlangu yimi ngarrirninyjaku ‘phonological rule’ (e.g. vowelharmony) where the first element nyintanypa ‘segments’ ordinarily refers to‘segments, as of a centipede or grub’.

As with specialised terminology in English, an ordinary term like ‘set’ or ‘group’may take on a specialised meaning within the domain of logic or mathematicsand it is mostly those specialists who will use the terms in a specialised way. (Seealso Walsh (2001) and Yunupingu (1996) for one Indigenous perspective.)

Indigenous Control of Terminology PlanningDuring a major survey of NSW Aboriginal languages (Hosking et al., 2000), the

creation of neologisms was a recurring issue. Some meetings of Aboriginal peoplewere firmly against the idea, some were quite in favour and some meetings weredivided in their opinions. Of those against the idea, some suggested that creating‘new words’ (terms for objects/concepts from the modern world like ‘computer’)was ‘against Aboriginal law’. One point of consensus seemed to be that thereshould be Indigenous control in the process (see also Walsh, 2003: 115).

The Kaurna of the Adelaide area of South Australia is one group that hasembraced quite a range of new terms. Perhaps the acceptance of such terms wasmade easier by the fact that over 100 new terms had been recorded by Germanmissionaries in the first half of the 19th century (Amery, 1993). In recent times neol-ogisms have often arisen in an ad hoc fashion in connection with translation tasks.

Occasionally, new terms have been developed in a more consideredmanner. For instance, in workshops held in November 2000, we set out todevelop words and expressions for use in a variety of situations in whichparents interact with children, including bathing, nappy changing, meal-times, cooking, shopping, etc. Accordingly, we set out to develop terms forsalient items needed, such as ‘soap’, ‘shampoo’, ‘nappy’, ‘microwave’,‘fridge’, ‘newsagent’, ‘bank’, etc . . . Suggestions for these new terms wereput forward by workshop participants and discussed by the group ofKaurna language enthusiasts present until a consensus was reached.(Amery, 2001: 180–1)

Within the recently developed NSW Aboriginal Languages Syllabus K-10(Board of Studies, 2003), the creation of new terms is not merely an area of studybut an activity that students are encouraged to engage in. In this and otherlanguage activities the Syllabus expects that appropriate Aboriginal consultationwill take place (Board of Studies, 2003: 5).

ConclusionIn this brief coverage we have merely sketched some of the activities across

Aboriginal Australia in terminology planning. Because of the range of languagesituations across Australia and the highly localised nature of most activities, afuller coverage would amount to a major research undertaking. Even in thislimited account it can be seen that terminology planning, while taking place inmany locations and across a wide range of domains, has been highly localised, adhoc, and much less institutionalised than might be found elsewhere. Of major


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importance for the satisfactory uptake of these efforts is the sense that thecommunity has ownership of the process.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Jakelin Troy, NSW Aboriginal

Languages Research and Resource Centre, Sydney, NSW 2052 Australia.

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Documents

Terminology Planning in Aboriginal Australia