เสียงพูด

Translation Commentary

Monthita Rojtinnakorn / มนฑิตา โรจน์ทินกร

The first issue I encountered while translating “Speech” was figuring out how to translate the phrase “the baby” Within the context of the short story; “the baby” refers to the child of the narrator. However, using “the” instead of “my” reduces the intimacy and can be interpreted as establishing a feeling of distance that the narrator has towards her newborn. Due to this nuance, it would not be a good option to translate the baby as “ลูก” (“one’s child” as a noun, “child” as a pronoun) which is how Thai people would call their baby. The word “ลูก” in Thai is different from “เด็ก” (child) even though they both mean “child.” One can call their own child “ลูก” regardless of their age or gender. Meanwhile, “เด็ก” is used for calling a baby or a small child, but the word does not establish a sense of relationship between the speaker and the referenced person. Because “the baby” implies a distance between the mother and her baby as one could read “the baby” and not know that she is talking about her own baby, it would be more suitable to choose “เด็ก” instead of “ลูก” to erase the sense of intimacy. However, the translation also needs to signal that the baby is her own child. This became a serious challenge. I decided to adopt a variety of different translations for “the baby” throughout all my translations of Enright’s works, including “เด็กคนนั้น” (that child), “เด็กของฉัน” (a child of mine), or “เด็กน้อย” (little child).

Some of the baby’s first words are difficult to translate. For example, the word “up” implies that the baby learned it from being told to put her arms up or stand up. These imperative sentences can be shortened to “up” in English, but they would not make sense by themselves in Thai. However, the translation needs to maintain that “up” is a solitary first word that the baby can say. Therefore, it is translated as “ขึ้น” (up) just as it is without regard to its context.

Another problematic word is “string.” I spent time researching what type of “string” this is since it can be translated in several ways in Thai depending on what material it is made of or what it looks like. However, it is still not clear to me what type of string would be “tied to the door of the car” and whether that is related to Irish culture or if it is personal to the narrator. Nothing definite came up in my research. After consulting with the reviewers and colleagues, I decided to adopt the translation “เชือก” (rope) which seems like the most likely option for the string. 

There is, of course, another challenge from translation “shing” which is how the baby mispronounces the word “string.” I tried to imagine what change in consonant would be the most plausible for the baby to adopt. If the consonant “ช” were to be changed into another consonant just like “str” is changed to “sh,” it needs to be a consonant that has the same tone as “ช” due to the fact that Thai is a tonal language, and it would be strange for the baby to mispronounce it in a different tone. I tried thinking of alternative consonants that a baby would pronounce in the same tone as “เชือก” but eventually settled on “เชื่อะ” which maintains the same main consonant “ช”  but leaves out the final consonant “ก” as I considered it is more likely that a baby will mispronounce it in that way.

The final type of challenge is interpreting ambiguous expressions that are the products of the author’s style. The first instance is the phrase “pulling down the weather” which I recently learned that other translators also find taxing to understand its actual meaning. After a period of research, consideration, and discussion with others, I decided to translate it as “พยายามเปลี่ยนแปลงฤดูกาล” (try to change the season) since I think it most fits the context of a difficult attempt to get the baby to say words. Besides, the concept of weather is closely associated with a season, and literature often uses changing the season as a metaphor of something hard or impossible.

The most difficult part to translate in “Speech” is the sentence “And I think that all words are sublimated nurture, or a request for nurture, or its provision.” First of all, it took me a long time to find the right translation for “sublimated.” The verb “to sublimate” has different meanings in psychology and chemistry, and it is not clear which meaning the author intends for this context. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, “to sublimate” means “to divert the expression of (an instinctual desire or impulse) from its unacceptable form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable” in psychology, and “to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state” in chemistry. Since the context refers to nurturing, it renders the first meaning to be more plausible. However, sublimated nurture is not a common concept, as well as “a request for nurture,” and “its provision.” The word “provision” can mean both the act of providing something and the things that are provided as a supply. These ambiguities forced my reviewers and I to have to resort to our own interpretation by focusing on what would make most sense in the overall context. We decided to choose “for me, every word means an indirect way of nurturing, or the request for nurture, or the response to that request” (สำหรับฉันคำพูดทุกคำคือการเลี้ยงดูอุ้มชูในทางอ้อม หรือการร้องขอการเลี้ยงดู หรือการตอบสนองการร้องขอ). 

The following sentence “All words happen in the space between you and your dear old Ma” is another problematic one. The phrase “your dear old Ma,” if translated literally, will become strange in Thai and would not retain the sense of endearment as much as the original phrase. I tried several options and consulted with my reviewers. In the end, we decided on “your most beloved mother” (คุณแม่สุดที่รักของคุณ). This is because we cannot find a suitable way to put the word “old” into the phrase without making it sound negative.

Finally, the phrase “Major Mothers, Serious Mothers, sometimes Demanding Mothers” generated a debate between the reviewer and me. I first interpreted “Major Mothers” as a mother who is strict (คุณแม่โหมดเป๊ะ), just as the word “major” is found in a military context. However, the reviewer thinks that it means she is a great or significant mother, as in the word “major” being “main or primary.” In the end, we decided to adopt the latter meaning (คุณแม่สุดเลิศ) since there is also a category of “demanding mother.” Another noteworthy point is the difference between contemporary Thai expressions and the ones that were used 20 years ago, which was roughly the time the story was published. I initially chose contemporary expressions “คุณแม่โหมดโหด” for Serious Mothers and “คุณแม่โหมดเยอะ” for Demanding Mothers, as I feel the narrator is a modern and progressive woman. Nevertheless, Dr. Carina Chotirawe pointed out that we need to focus on the expressions that sound more commensurable to the time the story was published. Therefore, I adopted her suggestions which are “คุณแม่สุดเคร่ง” for Serious Mothers and “คุณแม่จอมเรียกร้อง” for Demanding Mothers.

Although there are various challenges in translating “Speech,” I have learned many important lessons from it. I also managed to include some satisfactory translations that maintain both the meaning and the poetic features of the original words. For instance, “It is the gaze made manifest” is translated into “มันคือการเปล่งประกาศวาจาด้วยสายตา” which contains both alliteration and assonance just like the original.