An Edison Elementary School student in Sioux Falls last week submitted a pair of translations (French and Kirundi) to my effort to raise awareness about the diversity of the urban Midwest by gathering versions of the William Carlos Williams poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” in each of the 140 plus languages spoken in South Dakota’s largest city.
Translators around the world, of all ages and skill levels, are welcome to participate in this public art project designed to build community across boundaries of many sorts—regional, social, economic, generational.
For more information contact me at: muralspeaks@gmail.com.
TRANSLATIONS STILL NEEDED
European: Croatian. African: Acholi, Afar, Akan, Avokaya, Baki, Bari, Bassa, Bhojpuri, Burundi, Creole, Didinga, Erapice, Fulani, Grego, Gurage, Hiadi, Jur, Kabila, Kikiyu, Kisio, Krahn, Krash, Kuku, Lango, Lakoka, Lango, Luganda, Madi, Mai Mai or Bantu, Mandinka, Mawo, Mondari, Moru, Murule, Ndogo, Nubiar, Nuer, Nyambara, Nyangwana, Oduk, Ogoni, Pojulu, Rafica, Ruel, Rwanda, Shilluk, Sholuk, Tekamah, Toknath, Toposa, Wolof or Senegal, Zande. Asian: Azeri, Bhutanese, Cambodian, Cantonese, Dari, Gujarati, Lergdie, Manderine Chinese, Nepali, Oriya. Central and South American: Kiche, Mam, Mayan. North American: Ojibwe or Chippawa, Dakota, Nakota, Navajo, Omaha, Ponca, Winnebago.
COLLECTED TRANSLATIONS
KEY: NSF = language not yet spoken in Sioux Falls; (#) = number of translation versions received so far
European: Albanian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Belarusian, Czech (NSF), Estonian (2), Dutch (NSF), Swedish (NSF), Finnish (NSF), French (5), German (4), Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian (2), Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian (2), Montenegrin (NSF), Polish, Romanian (2), Russian (3), Serbian, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Spanish (3), Slovak, Ukranian.
African: Afrikaans, Amharic (2), Anayuak, Arabic, Dinka, Hausa, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi (2), Kiswahili, Kunama, Lingala, Igbo or Ibo (2), Nyanja, Oromo, Somali, Swahili (2), Tigrinya, Turkish, Xhosa (2: NSF), Zulu.
Asian: Armenian (Hayeren or Armenim), Azerbaijan, Bangla, Chinese, Farsi or Persian, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese (2), Kazakh, Khmer, Korean (4), Kurdish, Lao, Malay (2), Mandarin Chinese, Pashto, Sinhala (NSF), Tagala, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Urdu (2), Vietnamese (2), Zhongwen of China
Central and South American: Castellano of Chile, Portuguese (4), Quechua
North American, 1: English, Lakota
Other (4): Hebrew, American Sign Language, Esperanto, International Phonetic Alphabet
Total number of Sioux Falls languages covered, excluding duplicates: 24 Euro, 19 African, 24 Asian, 3 CSAm, 2 NAm, 4 Other—76 TOTAL
Total number of translations gathered, including duplicates and NSF: 114
Language List Source: Sioux Falls Multi-Cultural Center, based on registrations for driver’s training, programs at the center and additional research.
Ben Miller, author 