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The official Launch of the brand new 169 page Dictionary of Anatomy (in English and Yolngu matha) was held on Tuesday 7th September at the NT Library. The launch has received fantastic media coverage both locally and nationally with radio, TV and newspaper coverage. Follow the links below to view some of the articles covering the launch. Media Release Dictionary Launch Speeches Below are the transcripts of the speeches delivered at the Launch of The Dictionary of Anatomy, 07/09/10. The speeches are by Maratja Dhamarrandji (ARDS Chairman), Alice Mitchell (ARDS Health Educator) and Dr Marilyn McLellan (ARDS Linguist). 1. Speech delivered by ARDS Chairman, Mr Maratja Dhamarrandji, at the Dictionary Launch, 7/09/2010. "What is ARDS? Who are we? ARDS is a not-for-profit Aboriginal community development organization working with the Yolŋu of North East Arnhem Land under the auspices of the Uniting Church in Australia Northern Synod. We have been doing this work for more than 30 years and have developed considerable expertise in this field. We Yolŋu people of North East Arnhem Land really want to understand more than just surface knowledge in the areas of health, law and economics. The best way to learn these things is through our own language, and this is what ARDS aims to do. This dictionary is all about that. This "Dictionary of Anatomy: Dhäruk Mala ga Mayali' Rumbalpuy" is not just a word list, it describes each body part and its function in both plain English and in Djambarrpuyŋu. As well as that, it gives examples of common medical conditions. We are proud of it, and hope that it will be a great help, not just to Yolŋu people, but to others who can use the plain English for better communication. We are very grateful to those who have helped us financially to make this possible: Maratja Dhamarrandji Chairman ARDS inc.
2. Speech delivered by former Senior Health Educator, Alice Mitchell, at Dictionary Launch, 7/09/2010. "Why do we need a dictionary such as this? Having worked as a remote area nurse and also as a Patient Educator in Royal Darwin Hospital, I have spent quite a bit of time mentoring indigenous language interpreters and health workers, and working with indigenous language speakers to co-create health literacy resources. We need this dictionary because communication in health is vital and I will give a couple of examples showing why. One example: Rheumatic Heart Disease - we have the highest documented rate in world here in the NT. RHD disease kills young indigenous people here each year. 20 year olds, 30 year olds. The rate of deaths of young indigenous people from RHD is an appalling thing in a country such as this where we are so well off that we have even been able to manage well financially in the face of a world economic crisis. RHD is a preventable and controllable disease, if you only know how. From my experience in remote communities as a nurse and as a speaker of one of our indigenous languages, the major barrier to preventing communities getting control of this disease is largely lack of information. Houses and other infrastructure are important but information about this disease is vital. Lack of information is not for want of health people giving information, trying to tell the story, it is just that firstly, the information is generally based in the scientific world view and remote indigenous people tend to have a different world view in their history. And secondly, the information about RHD is usually delivered in English and for many indigenous people this is a second language. To learn how to prevent this disease, one has to understand about the causal bacteria, where these bacteria live and reproduce, and how they do damage to the heart valves. This all involves lengthy discussions about the microscopic world. A second example of why communication in health is vital is the high rate of diabetes and its ‘follow on’ cousin, kidney failure here in the NT. Once again the major barrier is missing information. What is diabetes, how does it affect your body, what do our kidneys do, how does the doctor know my kidneys are failing? I know that indigenous people, ESL speakers, simply do not have this information. So they cannot make informed choices. So, how does this dictionary help? In order for a health professional to explain Rheumatic Heart Disease, such a serious illness, they would ideally use a trained medical interpreter when the patient’s first language is not English. This dictionary enables an interpreter to look up, read explanations in their own language and in plain English and also see supporting illustrations on page 158, about what and where heart valves are, how they keep the blood flowing one way through the heart and the consequences of valves being dysfunctional. They can also look up about white blood cells and see their normal function. They can look up about the effects of diabetes on the kidney on page 34. They can look up to see that insulin is a substance that our pancreas makes on page 109. They can look up insulin on page 77. They can obtain accurate, scientific information in an accessible format in the two languages that they need to be proficient in. They can learn the correct terms needed for interpreting. Previously, when interpreting for this disease, interpreters have been extremely limited because the background language work had not been done. Interpreting is about language. This is the great benefit of taking bilingualism-‘two languages’, seriously. To place this in a more familiar context, if a Japanese or French or Greek person is learning English, they can access a myriad of resources in their own language to assist them in learning English, including bilingual dictionaries. I am at present studying in applied linguistics and I am amazed at the resources available for people of other languages to learn English. Bilingual dictionaries are a vital tool. And we understand that this one is a first in Australia. ... although bilingual education is currently a political hot potato, from the point of view of learning and language, we cannot escape from the fact of bilingualism here in the NT where we have increasing migrant, refugee and indigenous ESL populations. We cannot see ourselves as a monolingual society; English is just one of the languages that people speak. And because English is the functional language of our society, tools such as bilingual dictionaries are needed to facilitate learning. The dictionary is specifically designed to benefit the Yolngu Matha speakers of NE Arnhem Land but it also has applicability to other indigenous groups; either through providing the English text for translation into other languages as well as the illustrations, or through just providing plain English text for non-academic English readers. It may have further applicability as well. Lastly, we are standing here today in our NT Library, and a library is a valued symbol of learning and collective wisdom, collected in writings and increasingly, in other media too. Today we want to add to the collection with this bilingual dictionary of anatomy. We believe that there is a need to create more works such as this dictionary, and we have sketch plans for a legal dictionary underway along the same vein as this one. This is one good step to assist with providing missing information so that indigenous people can participate as equals in our communities. I am just one of the many people who worked on this dictionary and I would like to introduce Dr Mally McLellan the linguist behind this text and the project manager. Mally will discuss some of the surprising and sometimes difficult issues in creating such a comprehensive text as this. " Thankyou Alice Mitchell
3. Speech delivered by ARDS Linguist, Marilyn McLellan, at Dictionary Launch, 7/09/2010. "It's so good to work with a great team – a team of motivated, talented people. And that's what we've had for the development of this dictionary.
Marilyn McLellan Linguist ARDS Inc
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