Lost in translation?

I was fortunate enough to share lunch with a gathering of East Anglian Writers yesterday and we were treated to an inspirational presentation by renowned academic and writer Sandra Smith, whose translation of Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky has received many plaudits. Sandra talked - fascinatingly - about the challenges and responsibilities of translating, especially posthumous works, and about how it is not just about changing French words for English ones. Idiomatic expressions in particular just don't always literally translate, even between European languages, and context can need 'adjusting'. Clearly in Sandra's work, she must also consider historical settings too.

When I asked Sandra what she does when expressions are untranslatable she said that the emotional essence of an expression is what has to be communicated. Sometimes a completely different metaphor needs to be found.

This made me consider what I do when I write reconstructed dialogue generated from an conversation in the Nepali language, for example. In Kathmandu, people talk of pulling another's leg and the first few times I heard this I presumed that it meant something like the English expression - a tease. But this is very far from what is meant.

To appreciate the idea of pulling someone's leg in Nepal, you should to imagine that the target of the leg-pull is up a ladder and you grab them from below and pull them off the ladder so that you can succeed in their place. It isn't a kind, friendly or generous act. When I discovered this translation I wondered how many other 'difficult' expressions I might have misunderstood and used inappropriately. Oh there is so much scope for misunderstanding, and it seems to me that the better you think you understand a culture, the more hot water you can get into.

Idiom (“Don’t call me an idiom”) and idiomatic expressions are one problem area but in addition I face to the challenge of trying to communicate the poetry and syntax of an unfamiliar language, without making anyone sound retarded when I translate it into English.

I strive to get humour into my prose wherever I can but trying to communicate what I personally find hilariously funny, can fall really flat. For example, the Nepali word for aubergine, baanta, is so similar to bhaanta (vomit) that I find them pretty much indistinguishable so when people talk of cooking or eating baanta I'd find it difficult to suppress silly playground giggles. Consequently I'm sure my Nepali friends and acquaintances think I'm a little unhinged. Similarly my son was especially delighted in what he saw as an almost-pun - the word hissab meaning bill rhymes deliciously with pissab, to urinate. More pausing for tittering.


Meanwhile, what I find odd is why my friends think I have a filthy sense of humour.... especially when it is often a case of the pot calling the kettle black.... or a leg-pull, perhaps

Lent bumps

Final division of the university Lent bumps last evening 

The March sunshine enticed us out onto our bicycles and we reached the A14 bridge as the one-minute canon went off for the Lent bumps.

I'd not been that close to the starting cannons before, and it nearly scared the juice out of me.

I hope that the oarsman who was injured during one of the bumps - in a pile up in The Gut presumably - is fully recovered by now.

I'm expecting

It was almost as exciting as an antenatal scan... seeing outline drawings of the cover of the new, northern hemisphere edition of A Glimpse of Eternal Snows. The artist, Neil Gower, had cleverly evoked Tharu designs, as well as lots of other elements of the story. Gratifyingly Bradt Publications listen and are interested in their authors (not all publishers are like this) and responded to my feedback. I asked if the designs could be slightly simplified, to mirror the almost child-like style of Tharu artwork making it look more ‘primitive’, more like the stylised forms we were used to seeing in western Nepal. I eagerly awaited the artist’s reaction to my suggestions (I wondered if he might not like what I said), but he absorbed my ideas and made lots of changes including turning the sunflowers into lollypops. THEN I couldn’t wait to see what this would look like once colour had been added.

I didn't have to wait long. The artist added suitably rich colours, in combinations of green, orange, pink and blue that conjure the vibrancy of the Gangetic Plains. It is finished and I'm delighted.

The crazy thing about publishing - and about anything to do with publishing - is that there are bursts of frenetic activity than total silence, until the next mad phase. Today I sent the tweaked typescript of the book to the lovely Commissioning Editor at Bradt so that an independent editor can go through it and see how it can be further improved. Now I predict that there will be a lull while the new editor gets to work. Meanwhile I continue to slowly sift through photos from our six years living in Nepal and have posted more in my Glimpse photo-gallery. I've organised them so that the order of the pictures follow the chapters of the book.

Comfort and discomfiture

I’m reading Stephen Fry’s The Hippopotamus and each time I pick up the book, I am reminded of the alternative pronunciation used for a while by one of our boys – hippo-pompamous. We must have been saying pompous a lot at that phase of family life.... living as we were amongst expatriates and development ‘experts’.

As so often happens with good writing, I was taken by a passing phrase that made me think: this time, about the origin of a word...

I read, “.. Albert’s skills as a healer... lay in no more than the ability to comfort, to comfort in the proper sense, to make strong, to fortify.”

I pulled out my trusty Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary and confirmed that this is indeed the first definition of comfort, which made me further ponder on how much as a practising doctor I should aspire to comfort my patients.

Then of course – and this is the delight of using a book to check such things rather than an on-line dictionary – my eyes strayed into the adjacent word: comfit. I was surprised to learn that this has a different route. A comfit is a sweet, a sugar-coated almond, which for me puts a different slant on the word discomfiture.

Ah the joy of exploring words....

Jane's messy desk

Mad Reunion

There has just been a significant anniversary of the CROCODILE CAVES OF MADAGASCAR EXPEDITION and t'other weekend six of the original team gathered. Our expedition yielded a clutch of academic papers, a fine spread in BBC Wildlife magazine, a book - Lemurs of the Lost World, and most important of all we also achieved proper protection of the crucial Ankarana Reserve in the north of the island. So what did we talk about most?
Food... We reminisced about the awfulness of rice and bean stew dinners; we spoke of breakfasts of left-over cold boiled rice - topped with sugar or if we were feeling particularly decadent - tutti-fruitti jam, and we recalled the glorious moment (after the dried bananas had run out) when Sally Crook arrived at base camp with Mars chocolate bars for all.

Anne reminded me too of the Puke-bird. I didn't immediately recall the species but it called an increasingly frenetic caw-caw-caw-Caw-CAW and climaxed - unappetisingly - in a sound resembling someone retching. Then story reminded me that we'd been compiling lists of all the animals of the reserve and recorded seven of the fourteen members of the endemic Vangidae family. Rather like Darwin’s finches, each Vanga species has a bill of different size and shape, designed for different feeding strategies. They also seemed to have very different calls. One wolf-whistled. Our puke-bird was a striking black and white bird, the size of a raven, with a long curved slender beak which gave it its common name, the Sicklebilled Vanga. They flew around in disorganised rowdy flocks, often egged on by an attendant Drongo. When at their most excited they broke into paroxysms of caw-caw-caws, followed by a disgusting noise like someone vomiting. If we imitated their call, they became all the more excited and every member of the flock of twenty or so Sicklebills would all start to Caw-caw- caw ... puke! It wasn’t only us that wound them up. One morning a rabble of Sicklebills landed in a tree close to a troop of resting lemurs and an amazing shouting match broke out. The lemurs became terribly agitated and all started grunting frantically and penduluming their tails. The Sicklebills stayed put, so the lemurs let out a shrill volley of ear-piercing shrieks which upset the Sicklebills enough to make them fly away.

Sharing time with people on expeditions, you see people at their best and at their worst (retching for example). Small thoughtfulnesses are long-remembered. Lasting friendships form. So, comfortable in each others company even after years apart, we spent a wonderfully no-airs-or-graces relaxed and enjoyable weekend together. It was a good reunion; well I thought so anyway. It was only sad that the team remain so intrepid that others were away in interesting places. Take a look at Paul's website for example http://www.paul-d-stewart.co.uk/

Taking a break from clinic work in the primary schol at Morondava

The River Cam

I awoke before 7am cosy as a clothes moth in a Cashmere jumper wondering why I’d agreed to this extra – early – outing. By the time I’d sunk some coffee and pedalled my bike to the river though, the crisp new day and cloudless sky had renewed my enthusiasm. At the boathouses, Midsummer Common and the River Cam looked especially lovely. Weeping willows were sprouting new leaves and even last year’s signets were thinking of sex.

Low winter sunshine made the swans look particularly pristine as they glided on a mill-pond-still river. I watched one couple approach each other, wings partly unfurled. They dipped their heads in greeting, then chattered beaks together affectionately, uttering low snoring sounds. They rubbed necks and, separating slightly to touch beaks again, their silhouette described a perfect heart shape.

Earlier in February - before that spring-like feel

This really is perfect time to swing an ‘eight’ onto the water and push out into a tranquil river. It takes a while to slot into the harmony of seven others’ strokes, but once that wordless communication has been achieved, it is like a mediation. We can’t think of anything else. It clears the mind of clutter as we power down to Baits Bite Lock.

The Cam at Baits Bite Lock

BBC coverage already

An interesting news snippet broadcast on BBC Breakfast TV this week http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17094144 discussed book covers. Towards the end of the end of the piece there was a short interview with artist Neil Gower who designed the beautiful new cover of A Glimpse of Eternal Snows, and it showed him in his Sussex studio putting the finishing touches to the artwork.

The book itself will be launched in the autumn by Bradt.