พระเจ้า

Translation Commentary

Monthita Rojtinnakorn / มนฑิตา โรจน์ทินกร 

“God” is the first story I translated from the original collection. Due to its central theme of God, it is possible that the majority of Thai audiences who do not have a background knowledge of Christianity, let alone Catholicism, might find it hard to relate to its content. Thus, one of the most significant challenges is to translate into Thai the concept of “Christian God.” In the Thai educational system, except for some non-Buddhist religious schools, Buddhism is commonly taught, and many Thais identify themselves as Buddhist even when they do not practice Buddhism in real life. Making sure that the audiences fully grasp the messages in “God,” which rely significantly on Christian concepts that a divine being exists to govern one’s fate and a figure such as Jesus Christ suffers to redeem the sin of mankind, can be an arduous task in a society that believes in the notion of karma. Nevertheless, Thai Buddhism is also not without an influence of Hinduism and supernatural beliefs, which renders Thais to be familiar with the concept of divine beings. However, these are not necessarily the same type of “god” understood by Christians.

In one example, the original text reads “And who else, but the suffering Christ, could know the suffering that motherhood brings?” The translation omits the word “suffering” from Christ and two reviewers agree with this choice of translation. It would not violate the nature of Thai language if the word “suffering” is included. However, the concept of Jesus Christ’s suffering would require a footnote to explain to those not familiar with the Bible, but would be readily comprehensible to those who know the Chirstian reference. Omitting it makes the Thai translation more concise and does not take away the meaning from those who know what Jesus Christ symbolises.

Pertaining to the issue of religious context, it has also become a concern, similar to what other translators have discovered, to translate “As far as I was concerned being a Catholic was silly, and being a Jew meant so much more washing-up.” The notion of “washing-up” requires a religious understanding of Jewish beliefs. Initially, I struggled to translate this part, but one of my reviewers Dr. Carina Chotirawe suggested a choice of “an occasion/event/case to purify and clean” (เรื่องชะล้างทำความสะอาด). The word “ชะล้าง” in Thai means to clean by washing, but it also carries a connotation of purification which is an important concept in many religions. Thus, the expression is chosen to maximise the religious implications contained in the original.

Language relies heavily on an interpretation through context. It is another challenge to find the balance between maintaining the literal meanings of the text and adding or adjusting words to illustrate the context. One case is “that a part of her was ancient; and that part chose to be there with me at the beginning of something new. I had a wise child.” It can be interpreted from the context that “a wise child” is connected to the idea that “a part of her was ancient.” Therefore, the translation of “wise” cannot be just a description of a clever person. It needs to carry a sense of someone who possesses a wisdom of old age, which, from my interpretation, is a result of being reincarnated through time. I suggested to Dr. Carina Chotirawe that we add “who has been reincarnated” to “a wise child.” However, she suggested that only “I had a wise child,” which is translated in Thai as “my child must be a person of wisdom” (ลูกฉันต้องเป็นผู้ทรงภูมิปัญญาแน่ๆ), is adequate. Adding “who has been reincarnated” might include too much personal interpretation that the original does not wish to explicitly reveal.

Nevertheless, there is also an instance when further explanation is needed for the translation to be understood at all. An example is the last sentences of the first part “Actually, I will resist the tug of it, if you don’t mind. Still, I will resist.” This sentence comes after the narrator has accepted that she needs to “put it all into the hands of a higher power,” but due to these two parts not being clearly connected, it is hard for readers, perhaps not just Thai, to understand what she means by the last sentences. Consequently, they need to be translated as “actually, I will not let everything go according to that power. If you don’t mind, I think I will resist as much as I could” (เอาจริงๆ นะ ฉันจะไม่ปล่อยทุกอย่างไปตามอำนาจนั้นหรอก ถ้าคุณไม่ว่าอะไร ฉันว่ายังไงฉันจะต้านทานมันไว้ให้ถึงที่สุด). This will make Thai readers understand what these sentences mean, albeit at the expense of their literal meanings.

Aside from the issue of context, it cannot be denied that English and Thai possess different natures in various aspects. This requires several adjustments to make the text suitable for Thai readers but also retain its meaning in English. The first problem is the matter of language register. Compared to English, Thai expressions depend significantly on to whom it is being addressed and what relationship the speaker has with those they are referring to in the speech. For example, from interpreting the narrator’s tone and her playful jokes, it could be said that she is addressing the reader in a casual manner. This is the basis on which I selected the language register, rather than employing a more formal and polite tone.

Secondly, Thai has various distinctive personal pronouns that are related to age, relationship, situation, and sometimes gender of the addresser and addressee. In the case of “God,” I had difficulties selecting a pronoun for the narrator’s baby girl as the literal translation of “she” in Thai (เธอ) is not a common pronoun people use for their babies. Many Thais will utilise the gender-neutral word “child” (ลูก) as a pronoun. This is the initial pronoun I selected for the translation. However, as I read other stories from the collection, I came to realise that there is a certain distance between the narrator and her child that is illustrated by her use of “the baby” instead of “my baby” (though in “God” she chooses “my baby”). The word “child” would take away this distance implied in the English version, so I decided to select “she” (เธอ) to keep this connotation. Another reviewer Dr. Ming Panha also pointed out that “she” retains the sense of femininity which he thinks the text highlights. Using “child” will also remove this sense from the translation.

There are also some phrases that need to be altered due to the characteristics of Thai language. The goal is to not produce a translation that appears unnatural in Thai. For instance, a passive voice structure is not a common feature in Thai, so the opening sentence “It was always a mystery to me” is translated as “I have always been curious” (ฉันสงสัยมาตลอด). Furthermore, according to the nature of Thai verbs, the phrase “the suffering that motherhood brings” is also adjusted as “the suffering that (a person who is) a mother feels” (ความเจ็บปวดที่คนเป็นแม่รู้สึก) to fit in with a natural Thai expression. This is because the verb “bring” in Thai (นำมา) is normally used with a subject that is an animate agent. Both “suffering” and “motherhood” are abstract nouns, thus keeping the original expression would make the phrase sound strange in Thai.

Certain sentences are too challenging to keep the same structure and features of the English language, so they are modified. The sentence “they prize and praise the figure of the mother” loses its alliteration as it is difficult to find two Thai verbs that fit the original meaning and also alliterate. The entire sentence is also translated as “giving value and praising the role of mother” (การให้คุณค่าและยกย่องบทบาทของแม่) since “the figure of the mother” does not have a suitable literal translation in Thai. Another challenging sentence is “The mechanisms of fate, the grinding of her days that would lead to one end or another, became urgently opaque to me” which I spent a great amount of time figuring out how to translate and decided to readjust the structure to “suddenly (urgently), I realise I cannot know the mechanism of fate, cannot see her day-to-day living which will lead from one point to another” (ฉับพลันนั้นเองฉันรู้ตัวว่าไม่อาจหยั่งรู้กลไกของโชคชะตา ไม่อาจมองเห็นการดำรงชีวิตแบบวันต่อวันของเธอซึ่งจะนำชีวิตจากจุดหนึ่งไปสู่จุดหนึ่ง). This is mostly due to the fact that the phrase “the grinding of her days,” if translated literally in Thai, would not fit the context, and the phrase “became urgently opaque to me” is the most problematic to find the right literal Thai translation. So I decided to adopt this measure.

Another feature of English that Thai lacks is the use of punctuation to break a sentence. This feature in English allows words to be inserted to the sentence right in the middle of the main clause without interrupting the meaning. However, it is not easily possible in Thai which is a language without punctuation. To exemplify, “I had, I thought, become human in a different and perhaps more radical way” has to be translated as “I thought I had become a new and different kind of human, perhaps in an upside-down way” (ฉันคิดว่าฉันเปลี่ยนเป็นคนใหม่ที่ไม่เหมือนเดิม อาจจะถึงกับพลิกหน้ามือเป็นหลังมือเลยมั้ง). While I am aware that “I thought” is inserted between “I had” and “become” to indicate the narrator’s sense of uncertainty or to make a point that she is not thinking that thought anymore, it is difficult to translate that sense into Thai as it is not possible to add “I thought” between the subject and the verb. The word “radical” also will have a different connotation in Thai, so that is why I chose to translate it as “upside-down.” The lack of punctuation also makes it hard to translate some sentences with inserted phrase/clause and make them sound natural Thai, but omitting the inserted part will change the meaning drastically; thus, the part needs to remain. For example,  adding “— so precious —” (ทำไมช่างน่ารักแบบนี้) in “feeding her in the middle of the night, and at the beginning of the night, and at dawn — so precious — I found myself shrinking in the face of her vast and unknowable future” makes the sentence sound relatively strange in Thai. Nevertheless, “so precious” needs to be included to portray the emerging feeling the narrator has while feeding her baby.

The unfamiliar context and the different characteristics of language makes translating “God” quite challenging, but the experience of doing so is rewarding. I learned a valuable lesson from trying to establish the right balance between truthfully portraying the narrator’s meanings and Irish culture while making sure the translation is comprehensible for Thai readers. The translation also helps me realise the important features of Thai language and culture that I never thought of before as a native speaker.