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Phrasebooks and the travails and traumas of translations

by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books, Opinions

By Vikas Datta,

An essential attribute of humanity, languages serve the purpose of communication, but given their sheer multiplicity and variations, they are more liable to create barriers to understanding, than paving the way towards it. Though human ingenuity evolved translation to bridge the gap, this didn’t entirely solve the problem, given the differences in syntax, idiom and connotation. How does literature deal with this linguistic phenomenon?

While translations into English may help some astute detectives ascertain the real identity of their mystical clients or suspects (Sherlock Holmes in “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Adventure of the Red Circle”), these more frequently make for uproarious humour — and incredulous disbelief.

An important source is guidebooks for the lay language learner or tourist, even if from a different age and not updated for decades altogether — or having been compiled by someone rather incapable.

An early example I recall was most likely from British reporter and author Trevor Fishlock’s travelogue “India File” (1987), where he tells us about coming across a Raj-era Hindustani phrasebook for newly-arrived British visitors. In this, he tells us, he found that the Indian equivalent of “Hark, our postillion has just been struck by lightning” (which he encountered in a book for travellers to Norway) was “Look, our ostler has been eaten by a tiger”. (Ostler being the man employed to look after horses.)

Among other gems he found in this were “Your cuirass (the armour piece protecting the torso) is dirty” and “He will be hanged tomorrow morning”.

But these were not a one-off. I have a manual for learning Pushto — compiled by a British Army surgeon-cum-Political Officer somewhere in the mid-19th century, but even well into the 21st century, apparently the only English primer available.

Henry Walter Bellew’s “A Grammar of the Pukkhto Or Pukshto Language” (1867) has examples of phrases, and dialogues, where you can learn to ask, “What has become of my sword? I don’t see it. I put in under the bed before I went to sleep” (“Tura mi tsa shwa? Na e winam. Chi la udah na wum, ma e tar kata landi ikkhi da”) or even “Don’t shoot at the people, fire your matchlocks above their heads”.

Then there is G.G. Rogers’ “Colloquial Nepali”, whose 2006 reprint’s cover page says that it “is not run-of-the-mill tourist handbook. It teaches you how to communicate with anyone, anywhere in Nepal”. I happened to pick it up before leaving for an assignment in Kathmandu when the protests against then King Gyanendra were picking pace — thankfully, I forgot it to pack it.

For, in it, sample phrases, mostly in the imperative tone, include “Our soldiers will beat the Japanese”, “Fall in, in lines of 10 men each”, “No 7 Platoon is advancing”, “Has the General Sahab arrived yet?” and so on — understandable when we learn Lt Col Rogers, who wrote the book in 1950, was the Nepali Instructor with the Gurkha Brigade during World War II.

Then there is Pedro Carolino’s “English as She is Spoke” (1883 in English, originally in the 1850s). Fluent only in his tongue, he reportedly compiled this English phrasebook with the help of a Portuguese-French phrasebook and a French-English dictionary, thus presenting what should be “Is the road safe?” as “Is sure the road?” and the like.

We can also find compliments: “This girl have a beauty edge” or maybe “He is valuable his weight’s gold”, as well as puzzlement: “I am confused all yours civilities”, despair: “I dead myself in envy to see her”, and advice: “Take out the live coals with the hand of the cat”, among others.

Carolino’s spirit lived in the Correctly English Society of Shanghai, which produced “How to Correctly English in Hundred Day” (1934), “prepared for the Chinese young man who wishes to served for the foreign firm”.

Jerome K. Jerome also deals with this aspect in his “Three Men on a Bummel” (1900), the lesser-known sequel to his “Three Men in a Boat” (1889), in which the trio are planning a bicycling trip through the (then) German Empire. His friend George picks up a phrase-book intended for German tourists to England and proposes that they use it the other way round on their travels.

Jerome is sceptical, noting “its longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway carriage, among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered lunatics” and he feels “some educated idiot, misunderstanding seven languages, would appear to go about writing these books for the misinformation and false guidance of modern Europe”.

However, they resolve to try it out and hilarity ensues, when they use sentences from it with a coachman, a boot-seller and in a hat shop, but “comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game by two points to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed, threw the book out of the window”.

That’s what we should do with them — if they didn’t offer some of us much merriment.

(Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

—IANS

Stalinist stories: The Soviet Man of Steel’s fictional forays

by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books, Opinions

By Vikas Datta,

There are just a handful of statesmen who have greatly influenced the course of the 20th century — for good or bad. But can we categorise leaders on this moral standard — for the most evil may have done some good, or vice versa. We could try the more tangible measure of success and failure, but how much importance should be given to the means they used? How about their literary presence?

And in as per actual appearance, express or implied, rather than works set in their era, Stalin could win hands-down, against Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Zedong and Nelson Mandela, though he could face some challenge from John F. Kennedy and Vladimir Putin. The Soviet Union’s second — and longest — ruler crops up in a wide range of works in English, spanning political fiction to historical thrillers — a trend which continues even now.

But why is Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), whose 139th birth anniversary falls on Monday, so favoured, given he is not a very positive figure?

Josef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, or Stalin (his revolutionary pseudonym), was insecure, devious, did not take insults lightly, held grudges until he could exact revenge, and was unmoved by the suffering or deaths of his enemies (and their families) and other victims — including his second wife and at least one son.

As a ruler, he caused enormous suffering and nearly wrecked the country. Millions of Soviet citizens died, were killed outright or perished in camps due to crimes, real and imagined. His purges went on decimate top defence personnel, the government (including two secret service chiefs) and even the Communist Party, where almost all the old Bolsheviks were eliminated.

Then Stalin entered into an opportunistic pact with Hitler that began the Second World War, but soon his one-time ally turned on him and overran large parts of Soviet territory.

However, soon the Germans were soon stopped and chased back to Berlin. And the Soviet Union emerged as one of the two superpowers — with nuclear weapons (with information stolen from the West), and a large part of Central and Eastern Europe under its control.

On the other hand, Stalin, could read at an incredible pace, had over 20,000 books — which he had all read as per his notings in them — had an excellent memory, an appreciation of both high and low culture, and could be charismatic when he wanted — as British novelist H.G. Wells and Yugoslav communist (later dissident) Milovan Djilas could attest.

With all this making him a fascinating, though equally repellent, figure, and his literary debut dates from 1940 with Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon”. Set in 1938 during the Great Purge and dealing with the fate of an Old Bolshevik now accused of treason, it doesn’t name either the Soviet regime or its leader, who are just referred to as “the Party” and “Number One”, but the reference is obvious.

More famous depictions include George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (1945), where he is Napoleon. However, the author commends his bravery in staying on in Moscow as the Germans advance, with the scene where Napoleon stays upright during an explosion even as the other animals duck.

Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” or “1984” (1949) is an attack on a totalitarian regime, that could be either Nazi or Stalinist, though it leans toward the latter with the sort of “cult of personality” shown in it. Similarly, “Big Brother”, with his prominent moustache, could be more Stalin than Hitler, who had a toothbrush growth.

Stalin, as himself, is a major player in the Inspector Pekkala series of crime fiction by Sam Eastland, the pseudonym of American academician and novelist Paul Watkins. Starring Pekkala, an uncanny Finn who was once Tsar Nicholas II’s trusted investigator, they seem freed from the Gulag by Stalin, who gets him to work for the regime by heartless manipulation.

In the seven installments from “Eye of the Red Tsar” (2010) to “Berlin Red” (2016), Stalin sometimes appears even benign but rapidly comes back to his scheming, heartless self, once even ordering Pekkala be eliminated after a self-serving denunciation.

A more realistic depiction is in British historian and novelist Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Moscow Trilogy — “Sashenka” (2008), “One Night in Winter” (2013) and “Red Sky at Noon” (2017). Montefiore, who has also written “Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar” (2003) and “Young Stalin” (2007), draws on his knowledge to show Stalin in all his colours — the all-night orgies, the despotic style — but especially his cunning and viciousness — making promises he doesn’t intend to keep, being cryptic in his orders to claim deniability, setting subordinates against each other, and keeping everyone in line by even targetting their families.

There are more, but these should suffice for a good idea of Stalin, who could be said to have done “great things — terrible, yes, but great” as Harry Potter is told when he selects a wand in the start of his adventures.

(Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)

—IANS