What is Tok Pisin?
Tok pisin is one of the three official languages (others are English and Motu) spoken in Papua New Guinea (PNG). During the second half of the 19th century, copra and sugarcane plantations had been developed in Pacific islands and labour was imported from Melanesia, Malaysia, and China. Such extensive multilingualism obviously resulted called for a lingua franca. Similar situation took place in PNG as well. Kuanua, spoken natively around the important harbour town of Rabaul on the island of New Britain, came under heavy contact influence from English in a 19th-century plantation setting. The result was a creolized form of the language known as Melanesian Pidgin, or Tok Pisin. (based on the information taken from online Encyclopedia Britannica) At present, Tok Pisin is spoken in many places in PNG, and many of those who speak English and Motu as an official language also understand and speak Tok Pisin.
Unique feature of Tok Pisin translation
Vocabulary is very limited in Tok Pisin. That poses challenges for translators. Initially, it used to be a trade language for the purpose of communicating with each other who speak different indigenous languages, so it is very difficult to convey complex thoughts along with every nuance. For example, Tok Pisin word, "kisim" can mean "get", "take", "bring", "receive", "gain", "obtain" or "understand" and so forth. "Amamas" (or hamamas) basically means "happy" in English. "i no amamas" means "unhappy", but can mean "unsatisfied" or even "upset" sometime according to the context and/or settings. "Long" in Tok Pisin is also a word that should be carefully handled especially when translating Tok Pisin into another language because prepositions of English are all translated to "long" in Tok Pisin. That means "kam long" can mean "come to" or "come from" in English. So, you have to determine an appropriate preposition according to the context. No matter what language we work on, our knowledge about people's cultural background and their way of thinking and feelings is very useful information because they certainly reflect over their languages and we have to detect that reflection as we handle languages. But because of limited vocabulary in Tok Pisin, the language itself is not as capable enough to express such complex thoughts and feelings as other languages does. In order to sense such nuance, you have to comprehend what thoughts and feelings are behind the Tok Pisin sentences you work on. We have been fortunate enough to associate with PNG people for quite sometime, which helps us to understand their unique way of thinking and feelings. We can take advantage of such knowledge and experiences in order to provide good quality of translation involving Tok Pisin although it is one of the rare languages and so there are only a few Tok Pisin translation projects around the world.
>>See also "The places we visited...
Transcription
It is apparent that there are not many transcription project of Tok Pisin. However, in case that you have a chance to have a transcription project for Tok Pisin, but you do not have enough experience to do things together with PNG people, the project gives you hard time. As mentioned earlier, many in the country speak Tok Pisin, but they do not have much chance to see the written one. And when they speak Tok Pisin, their Pisin can be influenced by their mother tongues in their pronunciation and accent. (It is reported that there are more than 800 languages in PNG). Therefore, they often tend to write Tok Pisin in a way they pronounce. Give some examples. "Help" in English can be spelled in Tok Pisin "helpim", "helvim"or "halvim" according to the individual's pronounciation. "Many kinds" or "various" in English is usually translated to "kain kain" in Tok Pisin. But some wrote "kaen kaen". That is how, we assume, they pronounce "kain kain". "No ken" is "Don't" in English, but some wrote, "No gen". As you imagine, in that region, people pronounce "g" instead of "k". When engaged in Tok Pisin transcription, the experiences we have with PNG people are indeed helpful.
