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.
किसी और को बच्चों कि बोली सुनायी नहीं देती, पर मै सुन सकती हूं।है सुनती हूं जब वो कहती है ‘उठ‘ या ‘ताली’। मै सुनती हूं ‘सीढ़ी’। मै सुनती हूं ‘डोरी’। किसी को भी भरोसा नहीं होता है कि मेरी बच्ची डोरी कहती है, पर मुझे पता है कि वो कहती है। क्योंकि गाडी के दरवाज़े पे बंधी हुइ डोरी उसे बहुत पसंद है और वो कहती है ‘लोली,’ ध्यान लगाकर सुनना पडता है, मै मानती हूं।
महीनों से हम फ़ोन पर लगे हुए हैं। ‘आ डा डा डाह’ बच्ची कहती है। ‘आह डा डी डू डाह’ मै कहती हूं। ऐसे बातचीत करना काफ़ी मुश्किल है और ये करते हुए मुझे पंछी, मछली और बंदरों को दाद देनी पडेगी।ध्व्नीयों के ३-४ टुकडों को तोड मरोडकर, अभी के लिये हम दोनो ज़रूरत के हिसाब से बातचीत कर पाते हैं।
फ़िर भी मेरा सपना है कि मेरी बेटी अचानक से पलटेगी और अपना मुँह खोलकर कुछ बहुत ही अद्भुत, लंबा और समझदारी से भरा, “क्या मै दुकान जा सकती हूं?” जैसा कहेगी। मै जानती हूं उसके अंदर ये बात है। उसके पहले शब्द के उच्चारण के पूर्व ही, पूरे पूरे वाक्य उसके चेहरे पे दिखाई देते थे। बस चालाकी से उन शब्दों को वहा से निकालना है, जैसे मौसम की जानकारी ले रहें हों।
बोलने से ज्यादा रोमांचक और कुछ नहीं है। एक बच्चा आपको ध्यान से देखता है। जब आप कुछ कहते हैं, और आप दोनो के बीच जो गुज़रता है, जब आप उसे वह शब्द दोहराते हुए सुनते हैं, वह केवल प्यार के बदले प्यार होता है। एक नज़रिए का स्पष्ट रूप है वह। एक बच्चे को बोलना सिखाना उसे एक पूरी दुनिया देने जैसा होता है। रसोई घर मे खडे हुए ऊपर ताकती अपनी बेटी को शब्दों के टुकडे खिलाते हुए, मुझे लगता है कि ये उसे खाना खिलाने से भी ज्यादा महत्त्वपूर्ण है। और मै सोचती हूं कि सारे शब्द उच्च दर्जे के पोषण या पोषण का अनुरोध या फ़िर उसका प्रावधान है। सारे शब्द आप और आपकि प्यारि माँ के बीच अस्तित्व में आते हैं।
मेरी ऐसी मान्यता है कि सभी लेखकों कि माँयें मुख्य, गंभीर और बहुत अपेक्षायें रखने वाली माँयें होती है - ये ऐसी औरतें हैं जो कमरे मे आते ही अपने वहां होने का एह्सास करा देती हैं। मै इस मान्यता को हर किताब पठन या सम्मेलन में आज़माती हूं, खाने कि मेज़ पर जारी करके देखती हूं। पिछली बार जब मैने ये किया था, एक लेखक ने जवाब नहीं दिया। वह रोने लगा था।
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.
किसी और को बच्चों कि बोली सुनायी नहीं देती, पर मै सुन सकती हूं।है सुनती हूं जब वो कहती है ‘उठ‘ या ‘ताली’। मै सुनती हूं ‘सीढ़ी’। मै सुनती हूं ‘डोरी’। किसी को भी भरोसा नहीं होता है कि मेरी बच्ची डोरी कहती है, पर मुझे पता है कि वो कहती है। क्योंकि गाडी के दरवाज़े पे बंधी हुइ डोरी उसे बहुत पसंद है और वो कहती है ‘लोली,’ ध्यान लगाकर सुनना पडता है, मै मानती हूं।
महीनों से हम फ़ोन पर लगे हुए हैं। ‘आ डा डा डाह’ बच्ची कहती है। ‘आह डा डी डू डाह’ मै कहती हूं। ऐसे बातचीत करना काफ़ी मुश्किल है और ये करते हुए मुझे पंछी, मछली और बंदरों को दाद देनी पडेगी।ध्व्नीयों के ३-४ टुकडों को तोड मरोडकर, अभी के लिये हम दोनो ज़रूरत के हिसाब से बातचीत कर पाते हैं।
फ़िर भी मेरा सपना है कि मेरी बेटी अचानक से पलटेगी और अपना मुँह खोलकर कुछ बहुत ही अद्भुत, लंबा और समझदारी से भरा, “क्या मै दुकान जा सकती हूं?” जैसा कहेगी। मै जानती हूं उसके अंदर ये बात है। उसके पहले शब्द के उच्चारण के पूर्व ही, पूरे पूरे वाक्य उसके चेहरे पे दिखाई देते थे। बस चालाकी से उन शब्दों को वहा से निकालना है, जैसे मौसम की जानकारी ले रहें हों।
बोलने से ज्यादा रोमांचक और कुछ नहीं है। एक बच्चा आपको ध्यान से देखता है। जब आप कुछ कहते हैं, और आप दोनो के बीच जो गुज़रता है, जब आप उसे वह शब्द दोहराते हुए सुनते हैं, वह केवल प्यार के बदले प्यार होता है। एक नज़रिए का स्पष्ट रूप है वह। एक बच्चे को बोलना सिखाना उसे एक पूरी दुनिया देने जैसा होता है। रसोई घर मे खडे हुए ऊपर ताकती अपनी बेटी को शब्दों के टुकडे खिलाते हुए, मुझे लगता है कि ये उसे खाना खिलाने से भी ज्यादा महत्त्वपूर्ण है। और मै सोचती हूं कि सारे शब्द उच्च दर्जे के पोषण या पोषण का अनुरोध या फ़िर उसका प्रावधान है। सारे शब्द आप और आपकि प्यारि माँ के बीच अस्तित्व में आते हैं।
मेरी ऐसी मान्यता है कि सभी लेखकों कि माँयें मुख्य, गंभीर और बहुत अपेक्षायें रखने वाली माँयें होती है - ये ऐसी औरतें हैं जो कमरे मे आते ही अपने वहां होने का एह्सास करा देती हैं। मै इस मान्यता को हर किताब पठन या सम्मेलन में आज़माती हूं, खाने कि मेज़ पर जारी करके देखती हूं। पिछली बार जब मैने ये किया था, एक लेखक ने जवाब नहीं दिया। वह रोने लगा था।
Translation Commentary
Sushmita Madhusudan Upadhyay
“Speech”, written by Anne Enright, is about motherhood, love for her baby and how the ability to speak and learning how to speak for a baby is a process by which the world is introduced to them. Enright writes a beautiful piece where she maintains the love and devotion she holds for her baby and the wisdom and world knowledge that she wishes to impart. She writes in a crisp, concise manner which lends this prose almost a poetic quality that I have tried to maintain by not lengthening the sentences while maintaining the implied meaning of the text.
Hindi is one of the official languages of India and it is derived from Sanskrit, the script is called Devanagiri. The Hindi language is inherently very gendered and the verb in each sentence denotes the gender. Thus, the first difficulty I faced was in translating the sentence that had the gender neutral word ‘baby’ in it. I had to use ‘बच्चों’ which means plural ‘kids’ in Hindi as opposed to a single baby, but it helped retain the original meaning of the sentence where Enright is talking about babies in general. She signifies this by using ‘the’ before the word baby, making it a common noun and not using a personal pronoun like ‘my’ before it.
The next difficulty was translating ‘up’ and ‘clap’ in Hindi because on my first reading I thought they were just a pair of similar sounding words, hence mentioned together. The problem was, if I translated them as it is in Hindi, they wouldn’t sound similar at all. So, I was looking for rhyming words in Hindi. But on close reading these are the words that kids are taught to learn first or something that they speak first because of the rather frequent usage of the words by their carers or in the rhymes they hear. Therefore, I decided to keep the words and translated them directly as main verbs. I just made one change where I translated “up” as “get up” or “उठ” in Hindi to retain the meaning.
It was interesting when I was thinking of the baby’s babbling sounds and I didn’t think I needed to change the sounds of it because babies sound the same in all languages. So, I have kept the babbling sounds the same as in the English version. As is the case in the English language, there are multiple words that could be used instead of a particular word. But I selected the Hindi words that best described or came as close as possible to the original idea that Enright wanted to convey. I also selected more informal words and not “too pure” words in Hindi language because they would make the reading more formal and dense to get through. I wanted to maintain the ease and the conversational quality that Anne Enright’s writing possesses.
I didn’t just focus on the words but on the meaning, in the context that the writer was using them in. For example, ‘Dear Old Ma’ in English is an expression of love and a term of endearment, but it is not so in the Hindi language. So, I had to maintain the idea by saying ‘आपकि प्यारि माँ’ (your loving mother) in the sentence. I had to make these changes in a couple of places where English idioms or phrases couldn’t be literally translated, so I had to take the idea or meaning implied by the author and form a sentence or use a phrase (idioms or कहावतें as they are called) in Hindi.
There is no capitalization in the Devanagiri script, so the allegorical importance given to the capitalized words in the last paragraph was tricky to translate. What I did was separate the oppressive quality in mothers mentioned by Enright, presented these qualities as separate stressful words and then added the term ‘mother’ at the end of the sentence, just before the dash to completely overwhelm the word with the emotions associated with the aforementioned qualities.
Translating such a brilliant and timeless piece by Enright has been an incredible learning opportunity. It taught me a lot about my own language and culture and the way it is related to English. The text is such that even singular sentences from it could be used as philosophical ideas and it would still be relevant. I have tried to maintain that as much as I could in the Hindi translation.