Why some Indian idioms are just untranslatable- Times Of India

Joeanna Rebello Fernandes| TNN | Updated: Feb 20, 2017, 12.25 PM IST 
Link- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/why-some-indian-idioms-are-untranslatable/articleshow/57225670.cms

Ever tried to describe the sun playing hide and seek with the hills or the sound of heavy rain? And yes, we do have words for both. Ahead of International Mother Language Day on Tuesday, here's a quick tour of India's idiomatic landscape

To the string of picturesque epithets he has acquired, Rahul Gandhi can add another: Dhakhla Patil. "The English word closest to it is 'scion', but this Marathi word is meant to parody a leader or man of importance," says literary critic G N Devy. The phrase (fittingly, 'little leader') could also be addressed affectionately by mother to son, with a teasing jab at the husband. Alternatively, if she'd rather a direct endearment, she could try ponnum kudam - literally a vessel of gold in Malayalam, but figuratively, a term of affection to signify a precious possession.

"An English translation of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai's classic novel, Chemmeen, translated this term quite literally and caused quite an uproar," recalls K Sachidanandan, the Malayali poet and critic, "But a subsequent translation made do with an English term of endearment like 'darling', I think. Not the same thing."

A translation is not always the spitting image of a language. In fact, a word may often feel it has entered a semantic hall of mirrors when confronted with the distortions of itself in another language. Like the Marathi 'iblis'."It doesn't simply imply someone who is street-smart, but one who can even outsmart a crook by out-strategising him," says Devy , chairman, People's Linguistic Survey of India. There is no equivalent word for it in English, although the Spanish picaro is kindred, he adds.

Nor is there a sister word for bazar basavi, another Marathi term for a woman who will destroy a home and bring a family to ruin, hers or another's, by her want of 'virtue'. The English language doesn't lack in fantastical pejoratives for women (termagant, harpy, vixen), but none that include the woman's demolition drive. Naeka refers to a different feminine wile. The Bengali word signifies a form of coquetry, says translator Arunava Sinha, but not quite that either. "It could suggest coyness, but also a highly affected manner. The meaning of the word is contextual, but it is not easily reducible to one meaning; one could have shades of the other," says Sinha. Another example of a Bengali phrase that doesn't quite cross the Eng lish Channel is hath bhuli ye deva. "It means to lightly run one's fingertips along another's face or arms," says Sinha. "It's an expression of sympathy or affection, but sounds creepy in English, like you're coming on to a person."

An article in Scientific American suggests that it is the 'untranslatability' of a word in English (or any lin gua franca) that makes it "so potentially intriguing", because it piques our interest about overlooked or undervalued phenomena in non-English speaking cultures. The Rosetta Stone of a culture, language and its 'untranslatables' codify experiences that are fundamental, and often, exclusive to it. India's 860 spoken languages brim with them. The Hindi coinage, jugaad (a low-cost innovation or solution), has already been inducted into Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary , such is its currency. Seeing how multilin gualism is the word on the street, who knows, we may soon be on speaking terms with lexical rarities from other Indian languages. Like the word lethi. In Oriya, a ripened mango that has dropped naturally from a tree, lethi is distinct from a mango that has been plucked. Lethi, says linguist Mahendra Kumar Mishra, derives from the onomatopoeic 'lath', to vocalise the sound of something falling lightly.

While away from the orchard, on the horizon, the intermittent sight of the rising or setting sun appearing and disappearing behind close-set hills is best described by lihi-lihi aad, he says.

In Tamil Nadu, if you were invited to a wedding, you wouldn't want to be seated in the very last panthi, the word for a batch of people seated in rows for a meal. The bigger the wedding, the more the batches. And of course the wedding itself wouldn't have materialised without the pen paar, the formal visit paid by the man and his family to the home of the prospective bride to size her up, points out S Ramakrishnan, publisher at Cre-A that specialises in Tamil dictionaries.

In the Kumaoni language, when one remembers another from the very depths of the heart -the word for it is narai, says Shekhar Pathak, former professor of history at Kumaon University , Nainital. It is more than just a 'recollection', which lacks the ringing emotional resonance suggestive of this word.Could the remoteness of the mountains have something to do with it?

"These words are intrinsic to the life and culture of a people. I don't think all words can be translated. They come with their own belief system and worldview," muses Esther Syiem, writer and academic who teaches in Shillong. In cultures where a landscape, an object or an action is central to life, a whole lexicon of associated words spring from it.

Noted linguist Anvita Abbi, says Khasi has 55 words for walking. "When I go to Shillong, I become conscious of my walk," laughs Abbi, who is honorary director of the Centre for Oral and Tribal Languages at Sahitya Akademi. In her paper on Expressive Morphology she lists the different compound words for walking: 'iaid bak bak (to go hurriedly); iaid bran bran (to go very fast); iaid kjik kjik (to walk as if on pins); iaid kthai kthai (to walk well dressed)...'

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"We live in a hilly place and until a few years back we'd walk everywhere," explains Esther Syiem. "People would walk with firewood and goods in their baskets from distant villages to faraway towns and after they'd sold their wares in the market, they'd pick up rocks on the return journey. Because they were worried they'd be blown away. The rocks would then be used to build houses."

Lexical richness signals a finer perception, an alertness to nuance on the part of its speakers. 'Consider the range of perceptive powers of speech of the Naga, Kuki-Chin, Khasi and Meitei communities,' Abbi writes in the same paper. Take Meitei for example: cro cro is the sound of heavy rain. Brek brek is the sound of discontinuous rain accompanied by hail.

New research recommends we chew on new words from across cultures to cultivate not only a deeper empathy for the other, but to enrich and vivify our own experience of the world. "It is not just the perception of the world, but the narration of it that is vital. Having the language to describe or narrate the vicissitudes of life only makes the experience richer," observes Devy.

The view is shared by Tim Lomas, a lecturer in positive psychology from the University of East London, who is developing The Positive Lexicography Project, an online repository of 'untranslatable' words related to well-being from across the world. Lomas believes that articulating these words may bring us to identify positive feelings, and relish them fully. And so it is with a sense of santhushti that this writer wraps up this piece.