University of Melbourne linguist, Dr John Mansfield, spent some time working in Darwin recently. With office space at CDU, he gave us a hand with the Living Archive project

One of the unique benefits of Charles Darwin University is being able to work on Aboriginal languages on-campus, with speakers who live right here in Darwin. In August 2018, I invited Murrinhpatha speakers Erica Bangun and Mary-Ann Jongmin to the Northern Institute, to do some translation work.

The team worked on Murrinhpatha materials from the Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages, most of which are solely in Murrinhpatha. They created English translations for all book titles in the collection (all 187 of them!), which makes it much easier for users to search for relevant materials if you don’t know the language. They also translated the full text of two storybooks: “da niminem pardidha” (They stayed at Niminem) and “Da Ngarra Ngerrenenham Thangadi” (The place where I got scared).

If you would like to contribute to the Living Archive project by translating texts or titles, or if you have a story to share about materials in the collection, contact us or send feedback.