AustLit

'This study presents and justifies a detailed explication for the Australian Aboriginal Jukurrpa concept ('Dreamtime', 'the Dreaming'), phrased exclusively in simple cross-translatable words. The explication, which is partitioned into multiple sections, depicts a highly ramified and multi-faceted concept, albeit one with great internal coherence. After a short introduction, our paper is organised about successive stages in the evolution of the current explication. We present and discuss four semantic explications, each built on - and, hopefully, improving upon - its predecessor as our understanding of the Jukurrpa concept expanded and came into sharper definition. We focus primarily on Central Australian languages such as Warlpiri, Arrernte and the Western Desert Language (Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra etc.). We do not claim to have necessarily arrived at a full, perfect or correct lexical-semantic analysis, although in principle this is the goal of semantic analysis. Rather our purpose is to share a hermeneutic process and its results. The guiding framework for our process is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to meaning analysis.' (Abstract)

'Although Australia prides itself on being multicultural, many Australians have little awareness of what it means to live in two cultures at once, and of how much there is to learn about other cultural perspectives. Translating Lives is an immensely moving collection of personal stories tracing the experience of twelve people living in Australia who speak more than one language.' - Back cover

Translating Lives 'offers an insight not only into aspects of the Australian migrant experience that have not been addressed before, but also into the cultural perspectives of peoples in the Asia-Pacific region, with contributors who migrated as adults from South and East Asia and the Pacific: China, Singapore, Korea and Fiji' (xx).