No one else can hear the baby speak, but I can. I can hear her say ‘up’ and ‘clap’, I hear ‘stairs’. I hear ‘string’. No one believes my baby says ‘string’, but I know she does, because she loves the bit of string that is tied to the door of the car, and she says ‘shing’. You have to listen hard, I admit that.
For months we have been on call and answer. ‘Ah da da dah,’ says the child. ‘Ah dah dee doo dah,’ I say back. This conversation is surprisingly complex, and gives me a new respect for birds, whales and chimpanzees. With three or four syllables, in all their variations, we can say, the two of us, all that we need, for now, to say.
Still, I dream of the baby turning around, and opening her mouth to say something wonderful and long and syntactically amazing like, ‘Can I go to the shops?’ I know it is in there somewhere — before her first word was ever uttered, there were full sentences playing across her face. The trick is getting them out of there — like pulling down the weather.
There is nothing so exciting as speech. A baby looks at your face as you say a word, and whatever passes between you as you hear the word back, is love and love returned. It is the gaze made manifest. Teaching a child to speak is giving them the world. It is better than feeding them, I realise, as I stand beside the kitchen counter, dropping scraps of words to my daughter’s up-tilted face. And I think that all words are sublimated nurture, or a request for nurture, or its provision. All words happen in the space between you and your dear old Ma.
I develop a theory that all writers have Major Mothers, Serious Mothers, sometimes Demanding Mothers — the kind of women you always know when they are in the room. I test this theory any time I am at a reading or conference, I float it across the dinner table. The last time I did this, one of the writers did not answer. He had started to cry.
Anne Enright, ‘Speech’ in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 171-72.
Nikdo jiný neslyší miminko mluvit, jen já. Slyším, jak říká „hop“ a „klap“. Slyším „schod“. Slyším „šňůrka“. Nikdo nevěří, že moje holčička říká „šňůrka“, ale já vím, že to říká, protože má ráda ten kousek šňůrky, co je uvázaný na dveřích auta, a říká „šušu“. Uznávám, že musíte opravdu dobře poslouchat.
Celé měsíce jsme na sebe volaly a odpovídaly si. „A da da da,“ řekne dítě. „A da dý dů da,“ já na to. Je to překvapivě vrstevnatý rozhovor a probouzí ve mně novou úctu k ptákům, velrybám a šimpanzům. Ve třech nebo čtyřech slabikách, ve všech jejich kombinacích si my dvě řekneme všechno, co si zatím říct potřebujeme.
Ale stále sním o tom, že se děťátko otočí, otevře pusu a řekne něco báječného a dlouhého a syntakticky úžasného jako „Můžu jít do obchodu?“ Vím, že to tam někde je – ještě předtím, než řekla své první slovo, jí ve tváři hrály celé věty. Vtip je v tom je odkrýt – jako byste protrhávali oblaka.
Nic není tak vzrušující, jako řeč. Děťátko se na vás dívá, když něco říkáte, a to, co mezi vámi projde, když se vám totéž slovo vrátí, je láska a láska opětovaná. Je to pohled, který se stal zřetelným. Učit dítě mluvit znamená dávat mu svět. Je to lepší, než je krmit, napadá mě, když stojím u kuchyňské linky a do zdvižené tváře své dcery upouštím kousky slov. A myslím, že všechna slova jsou sublimovaná péče, žádost o ni nebo její poskytnutí. Všechna slova se dějí v prostoru mezi vámi a vaší milovanou mámou.
Mám teorii, že všichni spisovatelé mají Silné Matky, Vážné Matky, někdy Náročné Matky – ten typ žen, u kterých vždycky víte, že jsou v místnosti. Na každém veřejném čtení nebo konferenci si tuhle teorii ověřuji, nadhodím ji u stolu při večeři. Když jsem to udělala posledně, jeden ze spisovatelů neodpověděl. Rozplakal se.
No one else can hear the baby speak, but I can. I can hear her say ‘up’ and ‘clap’, I hear ‘stairs’. I hear ‘string’. No one believes my baby says ‘string’, but I know she does, because she loves the bit of string that is tied to the door of the car, and she says ‘shing’. You have to listen hard, I admit that.
For months we have been on call and answer. ‘Ah da da dah,’ says the child. ‘Ah dah dee doo dah,’ I say back. This conversation is surprisingly complex, and gives me a new respect for birds, whales and chimpanzees. With three or four syllables, in all their variations, we can say, the two of us, all that we need, for now, to say.
Still, I dream of the baby turning around, and opening her mouth to say something wonderful and long and syntactically amazing like, ‘Can I go to the shops?’ I know it is in there somewhere — before her first word was ever uttered, there were full sentences playing across her face. The trick is getting them out of there — like pulling down the weather.
There is nothing so exciting as speech. A baby looks at your face as you say a word, and whatever passes between you as you hear the word back, is love and love returned. It is the gaze made manifest. Teaching a child to speak is giving them the world. It is better than feeding them, I realise, as I stand beside the kitchen counter, dropping scraps of words to my daughter’s up-tilted face. And I think that all words are sublimated nurture, or a request for nurture, or its provision. All words happen in the space between you and your dear old Ma.
I develop a theory that all writers have Major Mothers, Serious Mothers, sometimes Demanding Mothers — the kind of women you always know when they are in the room. I test this theory any time I am at a reading or conference, I float it across the dinner table. The last time I did this, one of the writers did not answer. He had started to cry.
Anne Enright, ‘Speech’ in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 171-72.
Nikdo jiný neslyší miminko mluvit, jen já. Slyším, jak říká „hop“ a „klap“. Slyším „schod“. Slyším „šňůrka“. Nikdo nevěří, že moje holčička říká „šňůrka“, ale já vím, že to říká, protože má ráda ten kousek šňůrky, co je uvázaný na dveřích auta, a říká „šušu“. Uznávám, že musíte opravdu dobře poslouchat.
Celé měsíce jsme na sebe volaly a odpovídaly si. „A da da da,“ řekne dítě. „A da dý dů da,“ já na to. Je to překvapivě vrstevnatý rozhovor a probouzí ve mně novou úctu k ptákům, velrybám a šimpanzům. Ve třech nebo čtyřech slabikách, ve všech jejich kombinacích si my dvě řekneme všechno, co si zatím říct potřebujeme.
Ale stále sním o tom, že se děťátko otočí, otevře pusu a řekne něco báječného a dlouhého a syntakticky úžasného jako „Můžu jít do obchodu?“ Vím, že to tam někde je – ještě předtím, než řekla své první slovo, jí ve tváři hrály celé věty. Vtip je v tom je odkrýt – jako byste protrhávali oblaka.
Nic není tak vzrušující, jako řeč. Děťátko se na vás dívá, když něco říkáte, a to, co mezi vámi projde, když se vám totéž slovo vrátí, je láska a láska opětovaná. Je to pohled, který se stal zřetelným. Učit dítě mluvit znamená dávat mu svět. Je to lepší, než je krmit, napadá mě, když stojím u kuchyňské linky a do zdvižené tváře své dcery upouštím kousky slov. A myslím, že všechna slova jsou sublimovaná péče, žádost o ni nebo její poskytnutí. Všechna slova se dějí v prostoru mezi vámi a vaší milovanou mámou.
Mám teorii, že všichni spisovatelé mají Silné Matky, Vážné Matky, někdy Náročné Matky – ten typ žen, u kterých vždycky víte, že jsou v místnosti. Na každém veřejném čtení nebo konferenci si tuhle teorii ověřuji, nadhodím ji u stolu při večeři. Když jsem to udělala posledně, jeden ze spisovatelů neodpověděl. Rozplakal se.
Translation Commentary
Klára Metge
Commentary on the Translation Anne Enright’s short text Speech represents a hidden challenge for translation. Although the translator does not have to deal with difficulties concerning meter, rhymes or specific poetic figures this “poetic essay”, as I have labelled this text for myself during the translation process, uses subtle linguistic means thanks to which Enright succeeds in conveying a sense of fluency and immediacy. The text itself is divided into five paragraphs – the first four give a strong feeling of intimacy between the mother and her child, while the fifth shifts to a more general tone with the narrator pondering on the role of mothers in people’s lives.
During the translation process, one of the main tasks was for me to succeed in keeping this sense of close relationship between a mother and her baby. The original text is written in present tense which I feel might in Czech sometimes seems unnatural and slightly artificial. It is however the choice of this tense that conveys most of the closeness and immediacy contained in the text. My translation thus attempted to preserve this sense of intimacy while at the same time keep the natural flow of the Czech language.
Another question I faced in the process of translation is the theme of the text itself. The title implies that language, words and ways of communication are the central subject matter in Enright’s “essay” and that it will be reflected in the language of the text itself. It focuses on the ability to speak and the way this ability is born, or rather brought to light. Translating the text, I had to truly examine the meaning of every word in the text and to consider its potential further meaning or link to a different part of the text. Another dilemma I faced while translating was the search for Czech equivalents of what the baby says in the first paragraph. The original English version uses four words – “up”, “clap”, “stairs” and “string”. These can be divided into to “groups” – the first one “up” and “clap” and the second one “stairs” and “string”. The words in each pair have a similar aural quality. “Up” and “clap” both end with the plosive /p/ while “stairs” and “string” both start with the letters “st”.
Moreover, all these words have only one syllable. Thus, though they seem unusual in this context (the strangeness of these words is stressed by the mother herself) their utterance does not seem impossible given their shortness and the simplicity of their pronunciation (this simplicity is however disputable as the baby mispronounces the word “string”). Compared to English, Czech has mostly polysyllabic words. Thus, the translation of these four words had to include both their sound similarity, shortness and at the same time preserve their unusuality. In the final translation I kept their original meaning finding Czech equivalents with similar sound qualities and their single syllable in the case of the first three words. I chose “šňůrka” as an equivalent of the word “string”. Due to the choice of a two-syllabic word I had to make the subsequent mispronunciation bigger (and eventually less intelligible) as only a slightly incorrect pronunciation of the word “šňůrka” seems improbable in the speech of a baby. I opted for the two-syllabic “šušu” which copies the sounds /š/ and /u/ of the original word. Moreover, the repetition of the same syllable is reminding of words that are often the first to be uttered by babies, such as “mamma”.