Loss for words

A colleague is babysitting his daughter today, so the little one has come to office. She is one of those types who mind when told to - so she's not touching anything, not talking to anybody, not banging the window panes, not peering into laptops but is largely amusing herself all by herself by running around the office, playing with a small ball, getting lost in the maze of cubicles, and laughing out aloud in joy.

That's when it struck me - there is no word in English for the pure laughter of a child. We have so many in Hindi - किलकारी , अटकेले, खिलखिलाना - but in English, it's just "laughter", plain and simple laughter.

I find myself at a loss for words.

Issues by Oversight

"How did this happen?" - fuming
"The mistake happened by oversight." - sheepish
"How? If there was oversight, it couldn't have happened." - ready to burst
"Eh?" - puzzled
"How-could-it-happen-if-there-was-oversight?" - speaking to a two-year old.
"It happened because of oversight." - trailing off mid-sentence.
"I just don't understand. If someone was overseeing this, it should have been caught and logged as a defect." - back to getting-ready-to-burst.
"Oh! No, no. No one was overseeing. That is why it happened. No one oversaw." - words tumbling out in hurry, now that comprehension has dawned.

How often have we said something that has meant something else to the listener? Oversight to some may mean watchful and responsible care; to others, an inadvertent omission or error. To avoid ambiguity, maybe we need to dumb things down, become verbose, lose a bit of terseness?

I am reminded of the following sentence that I overheard during a long train-journey.

"What! Even after 10 years of marriage, they are not having any issues?"

No, I am not commenting upon their having and holding. I am commenting on issues. Two possible interpretations of the sentence are:

* Even after being married so long, they do not have any children.

* Despite being together for so long, they manage not to have any problems with each other.

Hmm.

And I recall the puzzlement of an American friend of mine.
"How can you speak on a mobile? I love mobiles, but I hang them on my porch."

Of trees and children

Overheard the following conversation (not edited):

"You don't have to fetch the complete child."
"No? But the tree..."
"No no, send me all the children from adoption. I will sort all the children according to the tree."

If you thought someone was rounding up all the Oliver Twists in the world, and lining them against a tree to notch up their heights, you're mistaken.

It's a conversation between two techies.

Translating Tagore

The Sahitya Akademi, in July this year, advertised a literary translation competition in the leading newspapers of the country. The Akademi is celebrating the 50th year of publishing translations through its journals; hence the competition. Entries were invited - translations from Indian languages into English in the genres of poetry, short fiction and oral literature could compete for the following prizes:

• 3 first prizes, one each in Poetry, Fiction and Oral Literature, of Rs.10,000/-


• 3 second prizes, one each in Poetry, Fiction and Oral Literature, of Rs.7,500/-


• 3 third prizes, one each in Poetry, Fiction and Oral Literature, of Rs.5,000/-


• 5 consolation prizes in Poetry, Fiction and Oral Literature, each of Rs.2,500/-


• 50 consolation prizes, of a one-year subscription to the Akademi's bimonthly journal Indian Literature

My entry, Subha, a translation from Bengali into English of a short story of Rabindranath Tagore, won a prize in the last category.

I am thrilled to bits. My entry will actually get published in the Akademi's Indian Literature. Wow!

Experimenting with Indic fonts

This blog post is supposed to display correctly in browsers with IE 7 and above.

Here goes the Bengali text:

আনন্দ ধারা বহিছে ভুবনে

দিন রজনী কত অমৃতরস উতলি যায় অনন্ত
গগনে

পান করে রবি শশী অঞ্জলি ভরিয়া

সদা দীপ্ত রহে অক্ষয় জ্য়োতি

নিত্য় পূর্ণ ধরা জীবনে কিরণে

বসিয়া আছ কেন আপনমনে

স্বার্থনিমগ্ন কী কারণে

চারি দিকে দেখো চাহি হৃদয় প্রসারি

ক্ষুদ্র দু:খ সব তুচ্ছ মানি

প্রেম ভরিয়া লহ শুন্য় জীবনে

And here is the Hindi text:

यह कदंब का पेड़ अगर माँ होता यमुना
तीरे

मैं भी उस पर बैठ कन्हैया बनता धीरे-धीरे

ले देतीं यदि मुझे तुम बांसुरी दो
पैसे वाली

किसी तरह नीची हो जाती यह कदंब की
डाली

तुम्हें नहीं कुछ कहता पर मैं चुपके-चुपके
आता

उस नीची डाली से अम्मा ऊँचे पर चढ़
जाता

वहीं बैठ फिर बड़े मज़े से मैं बांसुरी
बजाता

अम्मा-अम्मा कह वंशी के स्वर में
तुम्हें बुलाता

बहुत बुलाने पर भी माँ मैं जब न उतर
कर आता

माँ तब माँ हृदय तुम्हारा बहुत विकल
हो जाता

तुम आँचल फैला कर अम्मा वहीं पेड़
के नीचे

ईश्‍वर से कुछ विनती करतीं बैठी
आँखें मीचे

तुम्हें ध्यान में लगी देख मैं धीरे-धीरे
आता

और तुम्हारी फैले आँचल के नीचे छिप
जाता

तुम घबराकर आँख खोलतीं पर माँ खुश
हो जाती

जब अपने मुन्ना राजा को अपने गोदी
पातीं

इसी तरह कुछ खेला करते हुम-तुम धीरे-धीरे

यह कदंब का पेड़ अगर माँ होता यमुना
तीरे

Let's see if the stuff displays correctly...I'd apreciate feedback from you folks about the display (correct, total junk, misplaced matras...).

And for any of you who gets new posts in your inbox (you'll notice that I've now removed that option from my blog), I am sorry for the multiple posts that may have landed in your inbox because of the multiple edits that I did to this post.

Political correctness

The age of political correctness. That is the age we live in, I thought, after a conversation with one of my friends. I had remarked that I was thinking of buying a second-hand car.

“A second hand car?” she asked, horrified.

“Yes, why not?” I replied, genuinely puzzled at her reaction. “You know that I’ll begin building my house within the next few months. I can’t afford a new car right now.”

“Yes, but a second-hand car?” she persisted.

Then it became apparent to me that even though both of us were conversing in English, we were not speaking the same language. They don’t call them second-hand cars anymore. They call them pre-owned cars.

Oh well.
As if a change in nomenclature wipes away the fact that the car is, in fact, not new. Whom are we fooling anyway? Show me one "Minutes of the meeting" that says "The Chairperson remarked..." and I'll bet my hat that it was a lady chairing the meeting, not a gentleman.

So, next time when my manual has a sentence like "The user must enter a password" and my French translator sends back a perfect sentence like "Le utilisateur doit taper un mot de passe" should I lose my sleep over the fact that the French version is gender-insensitive?
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