A Grammar of God: Translation, Grammar and Memory in the Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala (1610)
Marlon James Sales
10.4225/03/58e4471343f33
https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/thesis/A_Grammar_of_God_Translation_Grammar_and_Memory_in_the_Arte_y_reglas_de_la_lengua_tagala_1610_/4816921
This
dissertation investigates the translationality of missionary linguistics
through an analysis of the <i>Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala </i>and its role in
the transcultural commemoration of Christianity as a colonial religion in the
early modern Philippines. Published in Castilian in 1610 by the Spanish
Dominican friar Francisco Blancas de San José, the text is the primary model for
many subsequent colonial grammars of Tagalog, the basis of the modern-day
Philippine national language called Filipino. It is argued that beyond its
contributions to a linguistic analysis of Tagalog, the text should be read as a
grammar of God because its prescriptivist tendencies in formulating grammatical
rules also provide modes with which the colonial conceptualizations of divinity
are to be articulated in the indigenous tongue. In both the theoretical and
practical components of this dissertation, translation is considered as a
process inherent in missionary grammatization that serves to commemorate the
problematic equivalences of the colonial encounter. It is through this process
that Tagalog is endowed not only with structures based on the categories of
Latin, but also with historicizing themes that constitute a hybridized pastoral
discourse on colonial Christianity.
2017-04-05 01:23:29
Translation studies
History of translation
Missionary linguistics
Philippines
Tagalog
Hispanic-Filipino
Colonial history
Early modern period
Spanish Philippines
Grammatization