forkedtongues | Entries tagged with translation to: english

here's an abhang by Sant Tsokhamela. [the more common spelling is Chokhamela, but i'm following my ideology of transcribing rather than transliterating proper nouns and un-translatable words - and 'tsa' to my mind more accurately denotes the Marathi sound which is the pronunciation of the letter commonly Romanised as 'cha'. think of 'tsar' and you'll be pretty close.]

[original Marathi in Devanaagari]
ऊस डोंगा परि रस नोहे डोंगा | काय भूललासी वरलिया रंगा
कमान डोंगी परि तीर नोहे डोंगा | काय भूललासी वरलिया रंगा
नदी डोंगी परि जल नोहे डोंगे | काय भूललासी वरलिया रंगा
चोखा डोंगा परि भाव नोहे डोंगा | काय भूललासी वरलिया रंगा

[transliteration in Roman - long vowels doubled, short ones single]
Oos Dongaa Pari Rasa Nohe Dongaa | Kaaya Bhulalaasi Varaliyaa Rangaa
Kamaan Dongee Pari Teer Nohe Dongaa | Kaaya Bhulalaasi Varaliyaa Rangaa
Nadee Dongee Pari Jala Nohe Donge | Kaaya Bhulalaasi Varaliyaa Rangaa
Tsokhaa Dongaa Pari Bhaav Nohe Dongaa | Kaaya Bhulalaasi Varaliyaa Rangaa

[partial translation in Roman-script Hindi]
gannaa tedhaa hogaa par ras kharaab nahin hai | kyaa bhool gaye ho 'varaliyaa rangaa'
kamaan kuroop hogaa par teer tedhaa nahin hai | kyaa bhool gaye ho 'varaliyaa rangaa'
nadee tedhee-medhi hogee par paani tedhaa nahin hai | kyaa bhool gaye ho 'varaliyaa rangaa'
tsokha badsoorat hogaa par uska bhaav bhrasht nahin hai | kyaa bhool gaye ho 'varaliyaa rangaa'

[partial translation in Roman-script English - the second half of each line has been omitted]
A sugar-cane may be twisted and ugly, but the juice is not, it's still sweet
The quiver may be disfigured and misshapen, but the arrow is still straight and true
A river may be twisting and contorting, but its waters are not so
Tsokha may be grotesque and repulsive, but his mind is not impure

i couldn't find any translations on the Net of the second phrase in each line - "Kaaya Bhulalaasi Varaliyaa Rangaa" - if anyone has any clue how to translate it, please comment. as far as i can tell:

kaaya = what (Hindi: kyaa)

bhoolalaasi = have forgotten (Hindi: bhool gaye ho / bhool gayaa hoon)
rangaa = color-something??

you can hear a modern rendition of it via the 'Music:' link.

Current Music: http://www.raaga.com/play/?id=121269

carthaginians

যদি তোর ডাক শুনে কেউ না আসে তবে একলা চলো রে।
একলা চলো, একলা চলো, একলা চলো, একলা চলো রে॥
যদি কেউ কথা না কয়, ওরে ওরে ও অভাগা,
যদি সবাই থাকে মুখ ফিরায়ে সবাই করে ভয়—
তবে পরান খুলে
ও তুই মুখ ফুটে তোর মনের কথা একলা বলো রে॥
যদি সবাই ফিরে যায়, ওরে ওরে ও অভাগা,
যদি গহন পথে যাবার কালে কেউ ফিরে না চায়—
তবে পথের কাঁটা
ও তুই রক্তমাখা চরণতলে একলা দলো রে॥
যদি আলো না ধরে, ওরে ওরে ও অভাগা,
যদি ঝড়-বাদলে আঁধার রাতে দুয়ার দেয় ঘরে—
তবে বজ্রানলে
আপন বুকের পাঁজর জ্বালিয়ে নিয়ে একলা জ্বলো রে॥

Jodi tor đak shune keu na ashe tôbe êkla chôlo re,
Êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo, êkla chôlo re.
Jodi keu kôtha na kôe, ore ore o ôbhaga,
Jodi shôbai thake mukh firaee shôbai kôre bhôe—
Tôbe pôran khule
O tui mukh fuţe tor moner kôtha êkla bôlo re.
Jodi shôbai fire jae, ore ore o ôbhaga,
Jodi gôhon pôthe jabar kale keu fire na chae—
Tôbe pôther kãţa
O tui rôktomakha chôrontôle êkla dôlo re.
Jodi alo na dhôre, ore ore o ôbhaga,
Jodi jhôŗ-badole ãdhar rate duar dêe ghôre—
Tôbe bojranôle
Apon buker pãjor jalie nie êkla jôlo re.

If they answer not to thy call walk alone,
If they are afraid and cower mutely facing the wall,
O thou unlucky one,
open thy mind and speak out alone.

If they turn away, and desert you when crossing the wilderness,
O thou unlucky one,
trample the thorns under thy tread,
and along the blood-lined track travel alone.

If they do not hold up the light when the night is troubled with storm,
O thou unlucky one,
with the thunder flame of pain ignite thy own heart
and let it burn alone.

carthaginians

translated by Stanisław Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh

Rozmowa z kamieniem

Pukam do drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Chcę wejść do twego wnętrza,
rozejrzeć się dokoła,
nabrać ciebie jak tchu.

- Odejdź - mówi kamień. -
Jestem szczelnie zamknięty.
Nawet rozbite na częsci
będziemy szczelnie zamknięte.
Nawet starte na piasek
nie wpuścimy nikogo.

Pukam do drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Przychodzę z ciekawości czystej.
Życie jest dla niej jedyną okazją.
Zamierzam przejść się po twoim pałacu,
a potem jeszcze zwiedzić liść i krople wody.
Niewiele czasu na to wszystko mam.
Moja śmiertelność powinna Cię wzruszyć.

- Jestem z kamienia - mówi kamień -
i z konieczności muszę zachować powagę.
Odejdź stąd.
Nie mam mięśni śmiechu.

Pukam do drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Słyszałam że są w tobie wielkie puste sale,
nie oglądane, piękne nadaremnie,
gluche, bez echa czyichkolwiek kroków.
Przyznaj, że sam niedużo o tym wiesz.

- Wielkie i puste sale - mówi kamień -
ale w nich miejsca nie ma.
Piękne, być może, ale poza gustem
twoich ubogich zmysłów.
Możesz mnie poznać, nie zaznasz mnie nigdy.
Całą powierzchnią zwracam się ku tobie,
a całym wnętrzem leżę odwrócony.

Pukam do drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Nie szukam w tobie przytułku na wieczność.
Nie jestem nieszczęśliwa.
Nie jestem bezdomna.
Mój świat jest wart powrotu.
Wejdę i wyjdę z pustymi rękami.
A na dowód, że byłam prawdziwie obecna,
nie przedstawię niczego prócz słów,
którym nikt nie da wiary.

- Nie wejdziesz - mówi kamień. -
Brak ci zmysłu udziału.
Nawet wzrok wyostrzony aż do wszechwidzenia
nie przyda ci się na nic bez zmysłu udziału.
Nie wejdziesz, masz zaledwie zamysł tego zmysłu,
ledwie jego zawiązek, wyobraźnię.

Pukam do drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.
Nie mogę czekać dwóch tysięcy wieków
na wejście pod twój dach.

- Jeżeli mi nie wierzysz - mówi kamień -
zwróć się do liścia, powie to, co ja.
Do kropli wody, powie to, co liść.
Na koniec spytaj włosa z własnej głowy.
Śmiech mnie rozpiera, śmiech, olbrzymi śmiech,
którym śmiac się nie umiem.

Pukam do drzwi kamienia.
- To ja, wpuść mnie.

- Nie mam drzwi - mówi kamień

Conversation with a Stone

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look round,
breathe my fill of you."

"Go away," says the stone.
"I'm shut tight.
Even if you break me to pieces,
we'll all still be closed.
You can grind us to sand,
we still won't let you in."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I've come out of pure curiosity.
Only life can quench it.
I mean to stroll through your palace,
then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.
I don't have much time.
My mortality should touch you."

"I'm made of stone," says the stone,
"and must therefore keep a straight face.
Go away.
I don't have the muscles to laugh."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I hear you have great empty halls inside you,
unseen, their beauty in vain,
soundless, not echoing anyone's steps.
Admit you don't know them well yourself."

"Great and empty, true enough," says the stone,
"but there isn't any room.
Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste
of your poor senses.
You may get to know me, but you'll never know me through.
My whole surface is turned toward you,
all my insides turned away."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I don't seek refuge for eternity.
I'm not unhappy.
I'm not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I'll enter and exit empty-handed.

And my proof I was there
will be only words,
which no one will believe."

"You shall not enter," says the stone.
"You lack the sense of taking part.
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,
only its seed, imagination."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I haven't got two thousand centuries,
so let me come under your roof."

"If you don't believe me," says the stone,
"just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.
Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.
And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.
I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,
although I don't know how to laugh."

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in."

"I don't have a door," says the stone.

spiralsheep

I saw this poem by Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska in translation on the (recently linked)

poetree com and thought I'd track down the Polish original because I've read two other translations and neither of them appealed to me at all but this one by Adam Czerniawski made me want to read more. More of her poems can be found, with English and Swedish translations, on the Nobel Prize website amongst many other places.

Dnia 16 maja 1973 roku

Jedna z tych wielu dat,
kóre nie mówią mi już nic.

Dokąd w tym dniu chodziłam.
co robiłam - nie wiem.

Gdyby w pobliżu popełniono zbrodnię
- nie miałabym alibi.

Słońce błysło i zgasło
poza moją uwagą.
Ziemia się obróciła
bez wzmianki w notesie.

( The rest and an English translation. )

noldo

Here is Faiz's own recitation of this poem, courtesy the U. S. Library of Congress.

( urdu text )

( transliteration )

( english translation )

Please drop me a shout if something's grossly wrong with either the spelling or the translation, which is admittedly a hack job.

deepad

I'm writing a bunch of posts about books and languages and literature and so on over at my blog, and while I was talking about the film-maker and lyricist Gulzar, I tried to translate one of his earliest songs. Here's my attempt at it -
( Devanagri lyrics )

( Roman transliteration )

( My translation to English )

The song, picturised on the incomparable Nutan, from the film Bandini:

carthaginians

I got this from here: a full collecton of the Mulaqat (with text fully vowelled and audio too omg!) The page is in Arabic though.

This version was translate by F.E. Johnson, revised by Sheikh Faiz-ullah-bhai, but it was published in 1917 so I don't know how accurate it is *g* Audio here, please listen if it doesn't give you some plugin error.

( Arabic )

( English )

noldo

Listen to this poem. Please. Do. Please. [audio at top of page]

( french text )

( english translation )

I have dropped a couple of particularly challenging puns, they are marked. Suggestions gratefully appreciated. [No, I cannot come up with a pithy rhyming translation of 'reubeu'!] [If you are curious, literal glosses of the lines respectively would be, 'Words in Hebrew like a [popular bit of verlan for 'Arab']', and 'Moldovan words, because they're the most serious'. Both of these seem to have been plays on sound foremost. Not sure how to do that in English.]

taiga13

Jactancia de quietud

Escrituras de luz embisten la sombra, más prodigiosas que meteoros.
La alta ciudad inconocible arrecia sobre el campo.
Seguro de mi vida y de mi muerte, miro los ambiciosos
y quisiera entenderlos.
Su día es ávido como el lazo en el aire.
Su noche es tregua de la ira en el hierro, pronto en acometer.
Hablan de humanidad.
Mi humanidad está en sentir que somos voces de una misma penuria.
Hablan de patria.
Mi patria es un latido de guitarra, unos retratos y una vieja espada,
la oración evidente del sauzal en los atardeceres.
El tiempo está viviéndome.
Más silencioso que mi sombra, cruzo el tropel de su levantada codicia.
Ellos son imprescindibles, únicos, merecedores del mañana.
Mi nombre es alguien y cualquiera.
Paso con lentitud, como quien viene de tan lejos que no espera llegar.

Jorge Luis Borges
Argentina
1925

( English translation )

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: Canada

esperante

समाधी - लेख

रस तो अनंत था, अंजूरी भर ही पिया
जी में वसंत था, एक ही फूल दिया

मिटने के दिन आज मुझको यह सोच है
कैसे बड़े युग में
कैसा छोटा जीवन जिया.

-- भारत भूषण अग्रवाल

( hindi transliteration )

Epitaph

The nectar flowed freely, yet I tasted only a drop
Spring flourished in my heart, yet there bloomed only a flower

On this day of departure it occurs to me
it was a time for such greatness
and yet, I led such a trivial life.

-- Bharat Bhushan Agrawal

~~

Last semester, I took a class on Translation Theory and Practice at my university, and for the 'practice' part of the course our professor insisted that each person in the class translate one poem (from any language, into English) everyday and read it aloud. Poems are the hardest and best ways to understand the joys and pains of translation, he said, and he was right. Reading aloud is of course, the best way to enjoy poetry, and the class discussions that followed would be about the specific problems to each language and to the poem in question. Though mostly we talked about how the cadences and vocabulary of English were often so utterly inadequate for the idioms of Indian languages, and how really we were doing English a favour by leaving some words untranslated, or forcing English into specific-language!rhythms ;)

Our prof has worked on translating poems by the Hindi poet Bharat Bhushan Agrawal (he might have published a book, iirc) and he said 'Samadhi Lekh' had been the greatest thorn in his side. He has it up on a poster in his office, and he offers to students in each batch who are comfortable with Hindi as a challenge. This was my effort for class, and he said it was pretty good, but I'm still not happy with it overall. The effect of its sharp, succinct images and its epic sentiment is so hard to capture in English. Ah, well - I guess the only thing to do is to keep talking to poems like these, and be amazed anew each time.

[thank you to

azuire for making me finally post poem, and

dhobikikutti for typing up all versions of the poem]

noldo

Can't find an English translation of this online, though I may be searching the wrong places; thus, I have put together a quick version based on combination of Albanian dictionary and the author's own French version. Please tell me if anything has been grossly misinterpreted by me.

Edhe kur kujtesa ime e lodhur,
Ashtu si ato tramvajet e pasmesnatës
Vetëm në stacionet kryesore do të ndalojë,
Unë ty s'do të harroj.

Do të kujtoj
Mbrëmjen e heshtur, të pafund të syve të tu,
Dënesën e mbytur, rrëzuar mbi supin tim
Si një dëborë të pashkundshme.

Ndarja erdhi,
Po iki larg prej teje.
Asgjë e jashtëzakonshme,
Veç ndonjë natë
Gishtat e dikujt do pleksen në flokët e tu
Me të largëtit gishtat e mi, me kilometra të gjatë.

( en français )

Even when my memory falters,
like the trams after midnight
who no longer visit any but the major stops --
I will never forget you.

I will remember
the endless and silent twilight of your eyes,
your muted sob light against my shoulder
like a flake of snow.

It's time to be separated.
I will go far from you,
to where nothing is surprising.
But, some other night, the fingers
of another in your hair will find themselves
intertwined with mine, my fingers
millions of kilometres long.

noldo

I apologise in advance for the transliteration.

هدیه

من از نهایت شب حرف می زنم
من از نهایت تاریکی
و از نهایت شب حرف می زنم

اگر به خانه من آمدی
برای من ای مهربان چراغ بیار
و یک دریچه که از آن
به ازدحام کوچه ی خوشبخت بنگرم

( transliteration )

I speak out of the deep of night.
Out of the deep of darkness,
and out of the deep of night I speak.

If you come to my house, friend:
bring me a lamp¹, and a window through which I can look
at the crowd in the happy alley.

- trans. Ahmad Karimi Hakkak

1. I'm not messing with someone else's translation, but why leave out مهربان? I like that being there!

noldo

More winter poetry. In this case, the final two stanzas only of a longer poem. I'm told the line most tél van és csend és hó és halál is terribly famous, and certainly it is the one quotation in Hungarian I can come up with at the drop of a metaphorical hat.

( hungarian text )

( english translation )

troisroyaumes

yumiyoshi translated this short story by the Taiwanese author, San Mao, into English: The Chinese Restaurant in the Middle of the Desert. (The post contains the original along with the English translation.)

I thought the story was hilarious and excellent; hope you all enjoy it too.

azuire

Cecília Meireles was a Brazilian writer and educator, known principally for her poetry. She is considered one of the best poets writing in Portuguese.

( Portuguese )

( English )

Syndicate

Page Summary

November 2018

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 06:14 pm

Forked Tongues

Languages and the Cultures Thereof

Entries tagged with translation to: english

(no subject)

ekla chalo re | rabindranath tagore

Rozmowa z kamieniem | Wisława Szymborska

Poem, Dnia 16 maja 1973 roku by Wisława Szymborska

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Bol ki lab azad hai tere

Mora Gora Ang Layee Le by Gulzar

The Mulaqat of Imru-ul-Quais

Nina Kibuanda, Des Mots/'Words'

Jactancia de quietud, Jorge Luis Borges

Bharat Bhushan Agrawal, 'Samadhi Lekh'

Ismail Kadare, 'Edhe kur kujtesa'/'Même quand mon souvenir'

Forough Farrokhzad, 'هدیه'/'Gift'

Excerpt from Mihály Vörösmarty, 'Előszó'/Prologue

"The Chinese Restaurant in the Middle of the Desert"

Song, Cecília Meireles.

Most Popular Tags

Syndicate

Page Summary

November 2018

Expand Cut Tags