Lost in Translation

I wrote a piece in Hindi to amuse myself.  It felt almost magical! especially considering it was my first piece of writing in Hindi ever!
It was about the early 70s and 80s - when TV was precious in India. 


Immediately, the TV shows, the songs and whole memory was like a slide show in my mind. So, it was easy to write in a lighthearted, playful manner with a good dose of nostalgia, humor and rhyming. It is easy to rhyme words in Hindi, often times the same words are repeated twice in a sequence, it also helps to make an impact for example   

Do- Do (twice) Phus-Phus (stuck)  Reh-reh (again)  hus- hus ( laugh). Then there are the rhyming twins, as I would like to call them, as they are in sync with a slight difference, for instance ulta-pulta ( topsy-turvy),  Khana-peena ( Food & drinks), aana-jaana  (coming and going implying visiting) lena-dena ( Give and take implying relationship).

 Trouble started when I tried to convert the piece written in Hindi (phonetically in English ) into the Devanagri – script in Hindi. Google transliterate turned out to be a laborious process as I literally had to transliterate every single word, as there are so many ways of writing one word in Hindi. I only had to click the mouse 800 times to make to select the appropriate sounding word in Hindi. Phew! So, then my article was ready to be seen and read in Hindi.  

I tried to recreate the same magic in English and It felt like I was having a root canal. Of course there is Google Translate , and here are the ………………

Results of Google translate from Hindi to English

[One was kind of eagerness, enthusiasm, finally was able Peeping Peeping watch TV.  Get himself stuck in long queues were seen.  Then woke up luck tended to see the whole picture. Picture it like a debit does something strange, "Give the flowers a gardener "My broken Hui Bina says I live, my anklet lost, injured my lyrics, minus my nano."

The first few days saw everything on TV, News observed, even two twice, in Hindi and in English. Olimpiks you see ... Carl Luyis only four - four medals and gymnastics. Eyes see everything but then we were all torn and tearing ... Serial whether as .. "we the people" s "Yeh that's life" Sunday to Sunday or whatever "Rajani", "It happens." Children play in the street corner was reduced, especially when the pictures were shown Sunday evening. Several times due to lack of time would cut around the picture in the middle. And Brodkasting this issue, I wrote to the Minister of Information that way at least Cut Tan Ik picture to understand the story to come.

TV ghost rode it on the people, was soon all TVs in the home. Meanwhile, people partake in each other became even less. Her uncle and aunt, who often come to visit with the kids used to go home uninvited evening ... all slowly begun to decrease. All of us kids who were playing late at night .. in the holidays was just too close. After all the TV had become a habit

 Kids nowadays are watching less TV ... but XBOX has sneaked into the COMPUTER game ... But the longer he stayed fit reminder of childhood when we have not even had to play nothing happens .. yet fun-filled game we used to play ...... weaver in deep thought]

 So using Google Translate resulted in an untangled web of unintelligible garble with a few unintentionally funny words and sentences, some original (untranslated) words and some readable sentences with their meanings altered or completely transformed. Although Google Translate works fine for simple words and simple sentences.

 I finally ended up re-writing the whole piece in English, all over again. In the process, I learned something very interesting that writing in a different language puts you in a different mood, makes you think and look at things from a different perspective.  Also, one always writes in one’s cultural and colloquial context and then trying to translate culturally specific information and the rhyming words is a Herculean task. It is easy to write about Hindi movies in Hindi as there is and instant connection. However, It is easy to write about technical stuff and philosophy in English because of the vocabulary, and translating that into Hindi would be an absolute nightmare for me.

I have absolute admiration for translators now. As I realize, translation is an art. The translator has to capture the voice, beauty and meaning in one language and transform it to another language. I have always enjoyed and marveled at the short stories written by Leo Tolstoy in English and now I have new-found respect for the translators, who have managed to convey the lyrical beauty, poetry and the profoundness of the beautiful prose in English, although the original in Russian must be even more beautiful.