The Navajo Nation Museum and Lucasfilm are working together to complete the language translation of Star Wars: A New Hope into the Navajo native language of Diné bizaad.

“May you walk with great power,” or “may you have the power within you.” These are at least two variations of how “may the force be with you” could be translated and understood in the Navajo language, according to Laura Tohe, a fluent Navajo speaker and English professor at Arizona State University.

The precise Navajo language translation of the famous movie phrase matters because Star Wars, the 1977 sci-fi classic film, which has been translated and dubbed into Japanese, French, Spanish and about a dozen other languages, will now be translated into Navajo.

Manuelito Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum who reached out to Lucasfilm Ltd. with the idea, sees the move as entertaining, educational and a way to preserve the Navajo language at a time when fewer tribal members are speaking it.

“That’s the beauty of what we’re doing; we’re teaching Navajo language to anybody who wants to learn the Navajo language,” Wheeler said. “I find that very rewarding and somewhat ironic. We went from a country that wanted to limit our language, to the Navajo language saving our country through Code Talkers, to our language being part of a major motion picture.”

The Navajo are the largest Native American tribe to have federal recognition in the US, but fewer members of the tribe today speak the native language than in years gone by. Estimates indicate there are between 120,000 and 170,000 Navajo speakers today, but since the Second World War the use of English has increased in popularity among the communities.

The Navajo Nation Museum is currently searching for voice actors who can speak Navajo fluently. Their voices will be dubbed over the voices of the original, English-language actors.

The script of Star Wars IV: A New Hope was translated over the course of 36 hours by a group of five native Navajo speakers. But translating a modern science fiction movie script into an ancient Native American language proved to be a challenge.

Many technical terms in the movie do not exist in the Navajo vocabulary. So it was necessary to combine several words in order to construct these terms. And just to ensure that nothing is lost in the translation, viewers will be able to follow the film by reading the English subtitles.

Few films have ever been translated into Native American languages. The animated film Bambi was translated into the Arapaho language, and The Berenstain Bears animated movie was dubbed in the language of the Dakota and Lakota tribes.

Lucasfilm, the creators of the Star Wars saga, have high hopes for the Navajo version. “We are thrilled that the youth of the Navajo Nation will now see [characters in] the film [speaking] in their native tongue,” says Lynne Hale, a spokesperson from Lucasfilm.

Work on the Navajo version of Star Wars should be finished by July 2013. The movie will first be shown at the tribe’s Fourth of July celebration in Arizona. The tribe also plans to take the film to theaters in states with large Navajo populations, such as New Mexico and Utah.

Further information can be obtained from the Navajo Nation Museum website.

By Alex Dupont
Marketing Communications Specialist
Language Translation Inc.

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Translation is the act of rewriting a document, changing it into another language. The original language is called the “source” language. The language into which the source text is translated is called the “target” language.
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