A Word Traveller



A Book from Strahov Monastery Library Collection in Prague
written in old Czech, far more complex than its modern dialect

When visiting Prague last week, I got separated from my group by a mini-army of marching schoolgirls – who were presumably on a field trip somewhere. I tried to break through their flow to catch up with the rest of my fellow travelers but it wasn’t easy. Finally a teacher noticed my futile attempts and said something like “Divki, bachte,” adding some other words I didn’t know, but between the Russian and the Ukranian I do understand, I grasped the meaning. She told them to watch where they were going and not walk into me.

I had noticed how words travel when I was ten. From a family trip to Ukraine, I had brought home a long-coveted book I couldn’t find anywhere but a second-hand bookstore in the small town of Evpatoria: The Holy Bible. It wasn’t exactly the original text, but rather a collection of Biblical stories with a social commentary a la the Soviets. In the belligerently atheistic USSR it was the best shot at religious studies I could get. The only problem was the damn book was in Ukrainian.

I wanted to know why the Romans crucified that preaching Jew, so I read it anyway.

Luckily, Ukrainian is as phonetic as Russian, and even though there were some differences in the alphabet, many words had a familiar ring to them. Once I stopped laughing at how funny some of them looked in the Ukrainian spelling, I began to notice grammar trends and guess the meaning of sentences I didn’t understand. By the time I turned the funny Bible’s last page, I not only learn a gamut of rather odd and extraordinary story tales, but, unbeknownst to moi, I taught myself a new tongue. More so, I laid the linguistic foundation for my understanding of all Slavic-based languages.


Another treasure from the Strahov Monastery where
thousands of old books are carefully preserved

Now, Czech looked like Roman-spelled Russian and Ukrainian combined, so I dove into it with a vengeance, trying to figure out the meaning of every street sign, advertisement, and restaurant name. I kept bugging my tour guide to clarify confusing concepts. “Does grad mean city, like in Russian? Oh, it means place? Ok, then what is zahradka – a fenced area? Oh, it means garden?  Wait, now I know where the Russian word vinogradnik (winery) came from – it must mean ‘wine garden’ in Czech.” 
Three years ago, when a Turkish ferry deposited my husband and me on what looked like a god-forsaken piece of land somewhere southwest of Istanbul, we were at a bit of a loss. Somewhere nearby was a train station, but the signs were in Turkish. In the distance I saw the word gar, picked up my bag and headed in that direction. “How do you know it’s there?” my husband asked. “I think gare means Station in French,” I said. “I bet you the Turks adopted the term.” 

Years ago, in Paris, we were looking for an Air Tram to go up from base of the hill at Place St-Pierre to gleaming white Sacre Coeur Basilica on Montmartre (mont means mountain in French, by the way.)  No plaque said Tram, even remotely. However, there was a big arrow that read Funicular, a word that is not necessarily part of an everyday English vocabulary, but long ago had travelled its way into the Russian language. While in Petra, I discovered that khazna, the archaic Russian term for treasury, came from Al-Khazne, which made me wonder if my fellow Russkis adapted their title of a tsar from the Persian shah.

 

A Hungarian street poster. The only word I can understand here
is "festival" which must be now universal in every language

Three days ago in Hungary I stumbled into another amazing discovery: their word konyha (kitchen) sounded similar to the Russian kuhnia – and meanwhile Hungarian is not a Slavic-based language, but rather has its roots in the Ugro-Finn linguistical family. Yet, the culmination of my Eastern European linguistic exploration came when our Budapest guide unveiled the mystery of his city’s name. I knew this beautiful European capital divided by the Danube river consisted of two cities, Buda and Pest, but why did they sounded like the Hindu god and an English term for an annoying person was beyond me. “It’s simple,” my guide explained. “Buda means water like Russian voda, and Pest means oven like Russian pech. Water and a place to make bread was good enough to call it home.”

Have you noticed how far from home words travel?

What's The Word?

Bilingual road signs in Corsica with
the French names crossed out and
the Corsu names showing beneath them.
UNESCO classifies Corsu as a potentially
endangered language. (Photo by skender)

Did you know the plural for “wife” in Spanish is esposas, which also happens to mean handcuffs? Or that in Korea, the word for “sweetheart” is the same as the one for “self” (chagi). What do these examples say about the cultures they hail from, or do they mean anything at all?

I love learning word trivia, particularly when it makes me think about cultural roots, histories, psychology, and etymology. There’s a term for this in the linguistics field, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which basically says your language affects your world view.

Consider what some of these vignettes might say about their cultures:

• Pirahã is an ancient language spoken by an indigenous people who live along a tributary, the Maici River, along the Amazon. Pirahãs themselves number only between 250 and 380 speakers, and it’s believed they’re monolingual. As well, theirs is a “language isolate,” which means it has no known connection to any other living languages.

What’s fascinating is how simple Pirahãs keep things. They have the fewest words to describe kinship than any other culture. The word baíxi represents both mother and father (essentially meaning parent), and they don’t have words to represent any other relatives beyond their immediate siblings. (Talk about a nuclear family!) They use the same word for the numbers one and two, distinguished only by the tone in which the word is spoken; all other numbers are represented as either a few or many. Pirahãs don’t have words for colors either, distinguishing them only as light or dark.

• Aymara, the ancient indigenous language of the Andes (spoken by more than two million in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile), has a unique and rare expression of time. It doesn’t have a future tense but instead represents the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. While that sounds confusing and perhaps impossible, consider expressions in English: “Let’s prepare for what lies before us” or “We face an uncertain future.”

• In Indonesia, verbs never change to express time. Whether it happened before, is happening now, or will happen later, the verb tense remains the same. On the other hand, the Yagua language of Peru uses five verb tenses – one for something that happened within the last few hours, one for the day before, another for something that occurred within the past few weeks, another for an occurrence at least two months ago but less than a couple years, and another for anything that happened longer ago than that.

• Speakers of Japanese and Spanish are thought to base their verb tenses on intent. If you meant to do it, you “pushed” a cup off the table. But if you did it accidentally, “it fell” (so presumably you had nothing to do with it). I’m not sure this is as rare a linguist feature as it might sound. We use a lot of passive voice in English as well, especially when trying to deflect blame. Think of official corporate statements and government speak.

• About a third of the world’s languages have no concept of right or left. Instead, they use directional language (east, west, south, north) for everything. We might lay out a series of photos, for example, from left to right (or as Hebrew speakers might explain it, right to left.) But many cultures would describe them as west to east. One reason is because navigation is so much more important in these cultures than for us. For example, even small children of the Australian aboriginals, the Thaayores, learn early how to find their way around.

• In English, blue describes an overall color. In Russian, there’s no one word encompassing the color but numerous words for shades of it (such as light, very light, dark, navy, steel, etcetera). 

• In fact, many languages do not distinguish between the colors blue and green (such as Thai, Welsh, and the African language, Tswana) or have a single word that can describe either (as in Korean and Chinese). In Vietnamese, both the sky and the leaves of a tree are xanh (pronounced “grue”). They might say “leaf grue” or “ocean grue” to distinguish the shade, but the overall color is still the same. In Japanese, the word for blue (ao) is often used for the word many English speakers would think of as green (such as the color representing “go” on a traffic signal).

• Some languages use gender to describe things, though not consistently across languages. So in German, the word for moon is male and sun female, while French, Spanish, and Hindi use the inverse, with a female moon and a male sun. In other languages, such as Farsi, pronoun articles are gender neutral. Then there are those, such as Danish, where articles can be male, female, or neutral. And curiously, gender-free objects in Danish can take either of two kinds of articles: en (the equivalent of “an” in English) or et (“it”) and den or det (as in “the” or “it”). As one Dane told me, “there’s no rhyme or reason for it—you just have to memorize which one to use.”

Know any other language trivia you can add to the list?

Stone the Crows, I’m Flat Out Like a Lizard Drinking!*

By IINightwolfII

When I send an email to my non-Australian friends, sometimes I think I should include a glossary of terms. It’s common for me to receive a reply with “please explain” asterisks dotted throughout the document. I certainly know what “proper English” is. After all, I’m qualified to teach English as a second language. But when it comes to casual letters or conversations, I let my Aussieness show through and that’s when the fun begins.

In fact, it reminds me of when native Spanish speakers taught me their language and had a ball messing with my head. They’d teach me all sorts of loopy phrases that I innocently learnt and then tried out on their parents. The raised eyebrows and dropped jaws made me realise I’d just made a clanger. Mind you, my friends would be on the floor, rolling around in fits of laughter.

I do get the chance to turn the tables every now and again and yeah, I can see why my Spanish speaking friends found it so much fun. But when it comes to the serious stuff, like my writing, I need to really think about what I want to write and how I need to write it.

My main characters in my novels are Australian. I like putting an Aussie on the world stage as I find their personalities and lyrical way of speaking interesting and fun to play with. But there are some hazards. The last thing I want to do is have my characters sound like Crocodile Dundee. I love that movie and it did do a lot for Australian tourism, but seriously, we don’t speak like that. Nor do we go for a walkabout in the desert. Well, some people do, but it’s not a regular occurrence. I could go on and on about stereotypes, but that’s not this week’s topic so I better move on!

Because I want to dominate the world and have my books available in every country... actually, scrap that. I want to have them available in every galaxy (yes, sarcasm is a major part of being an Aussie), I have to make sure people can actually understand what I’m writing. If I fill the pages with Australian phrases and terms, no one will understand what I’m writing about. But if I don’t add the odd Aussie saying in, then people think my character is English or American. It’s a fine balance and that’s why I’m so thankful for my wonderful critique partners. They read my work with a non-Australian slant, and they’re smart enough to get what the slang means. But every now and then I put in a curly one that leaves them scratching their heads. It’s a constant balancing act and one I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp on—now.

A lot of Australian slang derives from England, and of course there are many phrases and terms we use that are North American. As you know, Australia is a multi-cultural country, so we also have a lot of words that have been adapted from a myriad of nations. We enjoy adopting foreign words and turning them into our own. I do, however, feel for people who grace our shores for the first time, especially those who have English as a second language. Lina wrote a wonderful post about her adventure in learning English and how difficult it was. Throw some Aussie slang and a thick accent in, and you have a recipe for disaster. But rest assured, Aussies are a friendly bunch who are accustomed getting blank looks after we speak, so we’ll find another way to get the message across, even if it means getting out a piece of paper and crayons.

And of course, I couldn’t finish the post without sharing some of my favourite words and sayings. But be aware, some of these haven’t been used for decades. Go on, give them a whirl!

Cactus: something that is dead, e.g. the bloody TV is cactus

Chook: chicken

Cleanskin: A bottle of wine bought without the label on it. Usually bought from companies that have an abundance of a certain vintage of wine.

Coathanger: Sydney Harbour Bridge

Mad as a cut snake: very angry

Dag: technically the yucky bit that hangs off a sheep’s bum, but in Australia a dag is a funny person

Earbashing: nagging

Feral: hippie

Furphy: false or untrue e.g. she’s told the biggest furphy

Grundies: underwear

Mystery bag: a sausage (also called a snag)

Nuff-nuff:  not very intelligent

Rack off: go away (not that polite)

Root rat: someone constantly looking for sex

Screamer: someone who gets drunk easily e.g. “She’s a two pot screamer” refers to someone who gets drunk on two glasses of beer

Show pony: someone who dresses to impress

Tall poppies: successful people 

Tall poppy syndrome: someone who talks badly about those successful people

Woop Woop: invented name for a small, unimportant town e.g. he lives out near Woop Woop

*Oh my, I am very busy

Lost in Translation

St. Jerome, patron saint of translators

Years ago, in graduate school, a professor offered a piece of advice that has remained with me throughout my translation career: “We don’t translate words,” she said. “We translate the ideas behind the words.”

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s easier said than done because it implies that the translator can always identify those sometimes elusive ideas. Any writer who’s ever been in a critique group has probably heard herself say: “But what I meant was…” Right. What we want to express isn’t always what ends up on the page. It’s all too easy to get lost in the words.

People often say that language reflects culture, and the way we express ourselves in our native tongues shows how we think and relate to the world around us. Extrapolated onto the translator’s work, this means that it’s not enough to know grammar and vocabulary. We need to have a thorough understanding of both the source and target cultures to do justice to our text.

As a translator, I like to think that there is no such thing as an untranslatable word, phrase, or concept. Sometimes the ideas behind the words are not immediately apparent and you have to dig deep to understand these notions and find a way to convey them in another language. Often this involves a lot of reflection, discussion with other translators, or asking native speakers, “what does this mean to you?” But in the end, we are all human and can connect on some level, right? Put two people without a common language in a room and they will eventually find some way to communicate, even on a very basic, non-verbal level.

Yet I have to acknowledge that some things do get lost in translation. Not so much the ideas themselves but rather their emotional impact.

Case in point: A few months ago, I translated a short story by the German crime novelist, Nina George. “The Light in the West” (published this month in World Literature Today) tells the tale of an East German man who attempts to flee to the west with his girlfriend, but something goes wrong and he is forced to leave her behind.

The German word that gave me the greatest trouble in the story was a seemingly simple and innocuous one: drüben. On the surface of things, this word means “over there” as in across the room, across the street, or on the other side of a vaguely defined space.

But to any German who lived through the Cold War, drüben also has a very specific and highly emotional connotation. It means “on the other side of the Wall,” that ideological and political barrier that divided a nation, a culture, and entire families.

So how do I convey that emotion to an English-speaking readership, especially those who haven’t a clue what it feels like to grow up in a physically divided country?

The short answer is that I didn’t even try. Drüben occurs three times in the story, and each time I translated it a little differently. Or, more accurately, I didn’t translate the word at all but the meaning behind it, using selected phrasings like “east-west” and “divide.” Not once did I translate it as “over there.”

In the end, the emotional impact of drüben wasn’t entirely lost in translation, thanks to Nina George’s powerful storytelling. You can’t come away from this story without feeling the trauma that crossing this divide exacted on the people who attempted it—and especially on those they left behind.

Do you sometimes translate from another language? What words or emotional connotations get lost in translation?

Off The Beaten Track: Neopolitan Dreams

This week’s Off the Beaten Track contributor is the lovely Phillipa Fioretti. Phillipa was born in Sydney, Australia, and studied humanities, visual arts, and museum studies. She went on to work and exhibit as a printmaker as well as teaching part time at the tertiary level. Phillipa currently writes fiction full time and was selected for participation in the 2008 Hachette Australia/ Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program. Her first novel, The Book of Love, was published by Hachette Australia in April 2010 and the sequel, The Fragment of Dreams, will be released this month.

When I last visited Italy, I stayed in a village in the mountains east of Naples, the village my husband’s family comes from. When the family heard we were off to Naples, they could not understand why and had nothing but bad words to say about the place. If you must go, they said, all we should do was catch the train to Naples, get off and go to Pasticceria Fratelli Attanasio, buy a box of fresh sfogliatelle, and take the next train home – otherwise we would be robbed, kidnapped, insulted, and cheated, and that’s if we were lucky. It was, to them, the city of evil. But then so was the next town as far as they were concerned – in fact, why did we want to leave this village? Despite this display of intense parochialism, we did go to Naples and loved it, flaws included.

Some cities are cleaner, better administrated, and more comfortable but few possess the vitality, beauty, and menace of Naples. Neapolitans live in the moment and with the constant wisp of smoke above Vesuvius as a memento mori it’s not surprising. The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche said ‘build your house on the slopes of Vesuvius,’ and the Neapolitans do. More than half a million people live in the Red Zone on the slopes of the Volcano. But Nietzche meant we should live dangerously, with courage, and if you added ‘flair’ to the list, you’d have a Neapolitan.

Neapolitans are an independent lot and go about their business regardless of the government dictates emanating from Rome. Tourism is a major industry in Italy, a two-edged sword as the country has the burden of maintaining its precious heritage. While exploring the city, I noticed the external walls of the neoclassical church of San Francesco di Paola were scarred with red graffiti, but it didn’t bother me. This was such a Neapolitan act, self defeating maybe, but also just a shade of glorious because of its spirited defiance.

The myths and cultures of the classical world have always exerted a strong pull on me and while walking the streets of old Naples, I feel an undercurrent, an echo of how life must have been two and a half thousand years ago. It’s not just the noise, the bustle, the disregard for authority, and the street life, but the sense that there is still an overwhelming belief in the old gods and superstitions, a continuance of ancient ways, simply reclothed. Naples is the least religious of all Italian cities, and there is probably a multitude of reasons for this, not least of which is the superstitious nature of its inhabitants

My first book, The Book of Love, was set in Rome and Lucca in Tuscany, but when the publishers suggested a sequel, I knew the next book had to be set in Naples – because I wanted to revisit this fabulous place, if only in my mind. But while writing The Fragment of Dreams, I realised I had to go back to Naples and soon, for more of its intoxicating atmosphere.

Phillipa will be giving two workshops at the Sydney Writers Festival on May 16 and 17. For more details, go to http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,2444/task,view_detail/ . She will be launching her new book, The Fragment of Dreams, on May 18 at 5 pm at Berkelouw Books, Stockland Balgowlah, Condamine St, Balgowlah, Sydney. All welcome.

She also will also be attending the RWA conference in Melbourne in August.

For dates and locations of her other talks and book signings, please visit her blog at www.phillipafioretti.com.au

Fresh from The Tulip Ball

Years ago, enamored by photographs of Dutch tulips that smiled at me from every page of my fall planting catalogues, I took a trip to Amsterdam to see the spring beauties in their native city. Imagine my disappointment, when after exploring that vibrant European capital, I didn’t find a single bud! To see the flowers, I took a day-long bus tour deep into Dutch countryside where the plants were being farmed. The endless rainbow fields of tulips disappearing into the horizon were gorgeous, impressive, and picturesque, but coupled with the seven-hour flight from New York, it took too long to get there.

Ottawa was so much closer. Plus it celebrates its tulips with vibrancy, fun, and food. And, as it turned out, it has a Dutch story of its own.

During the Second World War, Ottawa sheltered Dutch Princess Juliana and her daughter, who made the Canadian capital their home. Pregnant again, Princess Juliana was concerned that her second child would not be a Dutch citizen. The city authorities temporarily declared the maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital international territory, and so Princess Margriet was born to no country, thus inheriting her Dutch citizenship from her mother. 

In 1945, when the war ended, the royal family presented 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa to express their gratitude for Canada’s support. Next year, Princess Juliana sent another 20,000 bulbs to create a display for the hospital where her royal infant was born and promised to send a batch every year.

Needless to say, Ottawa became famous for its tulips and, in 1952, the Tulip Festival was born. The Dutch Royal family occasionally graces it with their presence – the very same Princess Margriet returned in 2002 to celebrate its 50^th occurrence. She wasn’t there this year (pity!) but maybe she will return next spring for the festival’s 60^th anniversary.

It may not have been a part of royal tradition, but the festival opens with a Friday night Tulip Ball attended by prominent Canadian figures. In addition to delicious dinner and dancing, it also features a one-of-a-kind fashion show during which models sashay through the hall wearing elaborate tulip gowns created by local artists. Debunking the typical snobbish model stereotype, they are all extremely sweet and will pose for a million pictures afterwards!

I didn’t count, but the festival claims to display nearly a million blooming flowers, thus being the world's largest tulip festival. Not all the buds bloom at once, and quite a few were still shy little buds, but one can’t argue with Mother Nature. The good part is, one doesn’t have to travel far and wide to enjoy the blooms: the bulbs are planted right in downtown Ottawa, in Commissioner’s Park, Major’s Hill Park along the Rideau Canaland on the shores of Dow's Lake.

The festival runs for three weekends in May (May 6–23 this year, http://www.tulipfestival.ca/ ) and includes performances, children’s attractions, food, and many other events. It’s a great off-the-beaten track cultural spring getaway. And it’s entirely open to public, Canadian and otherwise – the Tulip Ball included.

The Comma Cop

That’s what they call me around here, in this wide world of Novel Adventurers.

Yesterday, I pulled a prank on one of them, telling her she’d put a comma out of order in an email to me. I was kidding, but her response surprised me. She gushed apologies, assuming I’d been serious since, well, I guess I can get pretty serious about punctuation.

The other day, I edited the post of another co-blogger who hit back with, “No matter how much I go over my own posts, you always manage to find something. Not just something but a lot of somethings.”

Yep, that’s me, the comma cop. It’s a designation that’s served me and those I edit well through a long publishing career and active participation in fiction critique groups. I’m a stickler for good grammar, spelling, and punctuation, because to me, they are the glue that holds any message together. Even the most interesting message can get lost if its expression is sloppy.

Plus, I love to edit. Making order out of chaos on a written page helps me relax, reminding me that anything can be fixed, made clean and even beautiful. Some people paint as a relaxing outlet. Others go running or meditate. Me, I edit. And I can make a living from it, so it’s definitely win-win.

I’ve edited just about every type of publication out there, yet I find most people, including the most well-educated folks and even other professional writers, repeat the same mistakes time after time. 

Not proofreading one's own work has to be the most common problem. 

Misusing commas and apostrophes (or forgetting to insert them) comes a close second. 

Beginning sentences with vague starts (“this is” or “that was”) makes the reader have to backtrack to figure out what these pronouns refer to. 

Another problem is misplaced modifiers. Take this example—“Though she’s a healthy child, John believes his only daughter is too fragile to spend time outdoors.” As it turns out, “healthy child” modifies John, not the daughter. 

Lack of parallelism occurs a lot too, as in, “We are going out, eating plums, and have a nice time.” 

Misuse of language can be annoying but sometimes it’s fun too. Take the following example found on Wiki:

"King Charles walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off." 

versus

"King Charles walked and talked; half an hour after, his head was cut off."

Am I alone in this? Any other sticklers out there, or do you hate this stuff? Does poor editing hamper your reading enjoyment as it does for me, or do you tend to gloss right over (groan) mistakes?