Contribution short abstract:

The paper discusses challenges in the process of translation of indegenous poetry of the North. It examines unpublished fluid transaltions cited and circulated in lectures, seminars, conversations and social media images. What lies behind the unwritten translation? How is it related to other attitudes of Unwriting in the contemporary world?

Contribution long abstract:

The paper discusses contexts and challenges in the process of translation and publishing of indigenous poetry of the North based on author’s translation and editing work on poems by Alootook Ipellie, Jalvii Niillas Holmberg, Inger-Mari Aikio and Sara Margrethe Oskal. It examines creation and distribution of Unwritten poetry translations – unpublished but cited and circulated in lectures, seminars and conversations as well as in images in social media translations of indigenous poetry. The focus is on the background and reasons which keep these fluid and variable. What lies behind the unwritten translation? How is it related to other attitudes of Unwriting in the contemporary world? The translation of the poems is also viewed as a multilingual transfer of a multilingual space to another multilingual space. The immanent nature of poetry to forward cultural memory deserves the new Unwritten and the awareness that - as with quantum computers -, the means of proving the multiverse of the memory of the North are changing it at the same time. The awareness of the translation as erasing memory in the act of keeping it demands a very precise picture of the transfer itself. Sociopolitical aspects in the translation process related to personal narratives and heritage contexts, representation and risks for tongueism add to that picture.