Monday, April 9, 2012

Idioms and Translations: language across cultures I

Idioms

As a young child I used to wonder why in the particular English rhyme Johnny urged the rain to ‘ go away’ and why the little child needed the rain to stop in order to play since as for us we thoroughly enjoyed playing in rain -clogged streets were so welcome then! Later, I came to know that in England there is a constant drizzle and the weather puts off the native English person. How different from Indian ‘malhar’ or songs that beckon ‘megha’! So can a text devoted to the invocation of cloud messenger evoke the same joy in an English reader as it does in me? Can any translation overcome this hindrance of having to transfer the cultural charge along with the word?

While cultural gaps such as above perplex an oriental reader; there are others that trouble the occidental reader or translator. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi touch upon it when they discuss William Jones’s translation of the Indian poet Kalidasa’s Shakuntala. They observe that the heroine of the play often breaks into sweat, but since in the translator’s cultural paradigm ladies never ‘sweat’ (horses ‘sweat’, men ‘perspire’ and women ‘glow’). Jones edits out such references that may appear odious or ‘odorous’ to the English reader. They speak of Sir William Jones’s translation and ‘sanitization’ of Sacontala or Shakuntala so that the text became acceptable to the European reader.

A spade is called a spade in some languages and dialects – English and Sanskrit do not allow for such irreverence. The idiolect and irreverence of Haryanvi would lend humour to the flattest piece of writing. It is a zing vernacular. However, a joke told in Haryanvi may not quite have its impact when retold in Hindi that lacks the accent or English that lacks the rough masculine rhythm of the dialect. The images that a word invokes in the mind of a native speaker or listener may not get reinvoked in the mind of a foreign reader for whose benefit the piece of writing was translated.

A book of jokes Wit and Humour of Haryana by Rajbeer Deswal does what Khushwant Singh holds to be the impossible feat of translating anecdotes and jokes from Haryanvi into English.On his website that follows from the book, Deswal elucidates upon the concept of time in Haryana which is many faceted and carries connotations more varied than the Hard Times of Charles Dickens. A snippet from his HARYANA STANDARD TIME would support my argument:


Much is meant than mentioned, when we talk of “Indian Time”. And for Haryanvis, bakhat (time) is an expression not only of hours and minutes but certain situations as well.
There are certain phrases like bakhat parna (distress); bakhat ana (death); mara bakhat (misfortune): bakhat bicharna (a Calculative move); bakhat ka marya (weather-beaten); bakhat ka paji …’


In one of his witty takes Deswal writes, “See you!” can be dangerous in Haryanvi, although it is a farewell note on happy parting.

An excellent attempt at English rendering of Haryanvi anecdote follows where words like ‘upaay’ and ‘goda’ have been used as such with English translation in the brackets. Deswal understands the kick that one gets from listening to the native words. He also replaces ‘andee’ and ‘kasoota’ with ‘non-serious type’ and ‘gorgeous’ but a native Haryanavi would miss the joy packed in those routine words. But even ‘kasoota’ may mean different things in different contexts- it is a malleable word that acts much like an ‘adverb’ that intensifies or modifies any given adjective. It is as easily employed in sincere appreciation as in ironic comment. For example, ‘kassota chhora’ can have great many ramifications.

In the otherwise taboo-ridden and convention-conscious society of Haryana, there does exist a class of slackers, who would look for an “upaay” (a convenient method) to get by the intricacies of the rituals, in matters religious.
The ashes of the dead are consigned in Ganga at Har-kee-Pauri (Haridwar). It is commonly believed that such a ritual will help the departed soul have mukti (salvation) and this practice is an obligation on the part of the kith and kin of the deceased. The person who takes the ashes to Haridwar normally is tempted to sue a few other mythological places like Lakshman Jhoola, Bhemgoda etc.
Once a non-serious type took such ashes and in an anxiety to return home hurriedly, he consigned them into the Yamuna instead of Ganga, the latter being farther away. Back in the village, he was asked by others if he had rightly performed the ritual, and the guilty-conscious fellow emphatically asserted that he did. “Did you see Bheemgoda also”, one asked. In Haryarnvi, Goda is a knee. The defaulter said trying to become actually realistic, “Ram ! Ram ! It was such a gorgeous goda, I had never seen one in my Life.”


Deswal translates ‘upaay’ while retaining the word as ‘a convenient method’. He could have used the literal translation ‘remedy’ but an Indian worshipper knows that Deswal’s phrase connoted the word better while ‘remedy’ is only a denotative meaning. Instead of ‘non-serious type’ replaces the word ‘andee’ better than the single word ‘carefree’.And lets discuss the nuances. In the Rohtak belt this word bears censorious overtones- a behaviour that is not approved of gets the following reprimand: Ghana andee mat pake! A translation of this common chastisement would be ‘Do not act smart!’ but in Bhiwani, a neighbouring district ‘andee’ is close to ‘dandy’, groovy or grand. Now the gap may lead to infinite number of disjunctions in the translations from the source.

An interesting example from Deswal is the reference to his bride by a groom as ‘bua’. Now, ‘bua’ is an aunt. The groom is so upset with the tantrums of his young bride that he addresses her as an old aunt. This evokes a peal of laughter in the native audience though there is nothing particularly humorous about it but in pristine Haryanvi it lends a rustic hilarity which the most suave Indians would share.

Certain puns and jokes are enjoyed only by bilingual people. My little kids are described as ‘hil-arious’ by my brother-in-law not just because of their pranks or comic behavior but because they cannot sit still.

When someone abuses leaving etiquette aside why do they ask you to excuse their French? ‘Excuse my French!’ is another way of apologizing for indiscreet or deliberate use of offensive words. Now this English idiom emphasizes the cultural war between French and the English. The English have been able to have a take on their rivals.

Woe of woes that across India people have abandoned Hindi and adopted English as the lingua franca in its stead. But the worst symptom of hegemony of a foreign language comes across in a phrase like ‘ Hindi ho gai’. When someone is insulted or an embarrassing situation precipitates this pejorative phrase is often used. It seems here that the resistance has given in.

There is another phrase that comes as a corollary to the above- ‘Hindi me samjhaon?’ .Now, this is a warning issued to some pig-headed fellow that kicks and punches will follow where words are not enough. Such use of ‘Hindi’ shows the abysses to which the native language has fallen and the extent of our acceptance of English supremacy.


Idioms, Proverbs an Idiomatic Use of Language

Usually, language differences are considered so glaring that idioms build upon them. For instance, when Hindi-speakers do not understand something they say ‘This is all Arbi Farsi to me’ or in English ‘This is Greek to me’. Now, Arabic and Persian used to wield a lot of clout in the middle ages in India and they still reign in the Middle East; Greek and Latin on the other hand were the reigning languages in the Western part of the world. The equations have changed however, and Greek is a dead language now and Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Hindi have succumbed under the twin impact of English and Westernization.

Think of “Turkeys begging for Christmas’ the English equivalent of the Hindi idiom ‘Aa bail mujhe maar’. We do not eat Turkeys in India and the bovine troubles us more. Than the Turkey is troubled by the English dinners. A squanderer has ‘Champagne on a Beer budget’ in England and a spendthrift in India has ‘amdani athani kharcha rupya’. And the news is that while in England they have stopped drinking scotch we have begun to import it heavily.While in India we make ‘rai ka pahad’ and fuss over petty issues, in England stroms are stirred in teapots or mountains made of molehills. While they make do with ‘icing over the cake’ we have more expensive gratifications with ‘Sone pe suhaga’ and ultimately, being a more serious breed among the homo sapiens we Indians lend a hand in fights with a ‘taali’ but never commit to it wholly as in a tango.I am referring to ‘Taali kabhi ek haath se nahi bajti’ and ‘it takes two to tango’.

There are many parallels that quite antithetically ram home the cultural differences made althemore glaring because of the apparent similarities. You have the proverb ‘ once bitten , twice shy’- ‘doodh ka jala, chaach ko bhi phoonkh phoonkh ke pitta hai’- now the second one shows our love for dairy products and derives from a time when the British fad for tea had not yet caught the Indians. There is ‘Thotha channa baje ghana’ the Haryanvi equivalent of the English ‘empty vessels’ or Hindi ‘ Adh Jal Ghagri Chalkat jai’: all three speak of pretensions an dthe Haryanvi idiom underlines our agrarian culture. In fact, ‘ Jo buo ge wahi kato ge’, ‘chickens come home to roost’, ‘what you shall sow , shall you reap’ – this set hints at the common agrarian basis of all economies and may be to a time when the English had not learnt the use of forks.





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