Thursday, July 17, 2008

Part of the struggle in the act of changing the words over is keeping the meaning intact, part is admitting to oneself the thought-change any set of words causes.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Translating from Gujju/hindi to eng?

Sathya

Baby Island said...

It's true, translators through out time have struggled with this and some have lost the meaning entirely. Take a look at the Christian Bible. (if that is not too offensive for me to suggest..)
:)

Anonymous said...

I read your blog back in 2003, the first entry about Feb 23 was very touching. After that I now came back, 4 years later. I read entries for Feb 23 for all these years. May you find peace.

-Milli

austere said...

sathya- a stupendous piece of work from Hindi to Englees, you want to read?


babyisland- such a fine balance...:)


Milli- thank you. Life is all about moving on, no? Come back oftener.

Anonymous said...

Exact.
They are powerful and they change. Itself and the one who uses them. I can not translate "Frevel" - there is too much in it. In the end we have to go back to the images.

Portia said...

A challenge best left to those who have that understanding. And that of the languages themselves of course.

Baby Island's reference to the Bible was exactly what I was thinking of. It's like the game of telephone where the message gets skewed more and more with each person it passes through. For something so many people live by, literally, there are an awful lot of ...unanswered questions. I better not go on about that one:)

austere said...

mago- and if I never read Frevel, get not even an inkling of Frevel, and reading a overall view, an approximation, of it may change my life, then? Isn't reading the abstract better than complete zero, ignorance?

portia- chinese whispers! having the Bible compared to a child's game gives me a moment of thought. What He said in armaic, who knows!

Anonymous said...

Of course - we have to read. I do not think that there is something as complete ignorance - the human being knows, thinks - there is no way out.

Anonymous said...

The fool ate the apple. :)

AmitL said...

I want to read,I want to read.:)both the versions.:)

Baby Island said...

Ah, I love the concept of chinese whispers and I think that it might apply to many of the worlds most upheld religeous writings. As you said who really knows what was originally written?

manuscrypts said...

replaced 'words' with 'worlds'.. still made sense :)

austere said...

manu- good one!

babyisland- :)

mago- he did? when do I get to read your magic-touched version of it?