Reverse the Train

I've written about semantic challenges we've encountered in translation, that is, wrestling with key terms to find the most-promising overlap in word meaning (so that holy might mean more than cleanliness). I've written about paying attention to discourse details such as tracking participants in a story, that is, making sure pronouns refer back to the correct nouns (so that it isn't Jesus sending Pilate to stand before Herod). One area of translation that I haven't written much about is sentence-level grammar! I know, a glaring oversight on my part!

 

As your Middle School Language Arts teachers diligently tried to teach you, sentences are not just made up of a bunch of random words, there are different types of words each of which play different functions in the act of communicating. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases are like train cars hooked together to carry meaningful thought. But most languages don’t allow you to string them together in any haphazard order. If a sentence is a train, the verb is most definitely the engine: without it, you aren't going anywhere. Gmz likes to put their engines right at the front of the sentence, from which position it can pull the rest of the scrolling word train. English most often puts the verb immediately after the subject noun, which also tends to be toward the beginning of the sentence. Why? Maybe because we want to get the most important ideas out on the table before we add all the supporting phrases. Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia) doesn't agree. They like to keep the main point secret as long as possible. In order to do so, they've converted their verb engines to be pushers instead of pullers. Let me explain what I mean with this example:

 

Example sentence:

"Imagine a scrolling marquee on your computer screen using a big font so that you can only see three words at a time."

 

In English word order - the main verb is a command "Imagine" and it sits right up front, pulling the full sentence along. That would be its place in Gmz grammar as well. However, if I translated this sentence into good Amharic and then word-for-word translated it back into English it would read.

 

"At one time three words only that you see big font using on your computer screen marquee scrolling imagine."

 

If you tried to read this scrolling sentence only seeing three words at a time, as the example suggests, you would have to read and retain all of the peripheral information before you final get to the main idea - imagine. And believe me, in long sentences, it is really hard for us English speakers to wait. Ok, so we do it some in our language too, especially in poetry, songs "Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother's house we go," and the speech of little, green, pointy-eared guys with mad light saber skills, "The force is strong with you I see." But it is far from normal in everyday speech.

 

This rainy season (that is, summer for many of you), Worku (one of the translators) and I have been doing some initial drafting of Pauline epistles. In Luke and Acts, the process of initial drafting was done by the translators themselves, which I then checked against the Greek. When I asked the team to begin tackling some of Paul's letters, however, their progress slowed to snail's pace. When I asked them how it was going, they all lamented the confusing grammar of the Amharic text. And I can understand their frustration. Paul wrote long, never-ending sentences that sometimes drag on for 7-8 verses and when Amharic requires that their train engines be pushers not pullers, it becomes very difficult to follow the "train of thought." Worku and I decided to try a crack at it, and so over the 5 weeks, we both learned a lot about how to tackle the texts. Often times, Worku would read the Amharic verse(s) out loud and then I would read the same Amharic words and phrases (while pointing at them on the screen), just in a different order - the order that an English or Gmz speaker would process it. It was fun to see the light bulbs go on for Worku just by the simple changes in order. At one point, I laughed out loud as my finger literally went word for word backwards through the whole sentence, resulting in the perfect Gmz structure. Check out (below) 2 Timothy 3:15b (words separated by hyphens):

 

"from infancy - beginning – in Christ Jesus - through our believing - salvation - in which is found - wisdom - that they give to you - which are able - holy books - you have known."

 

Doesn't make much sense to English speakers does it? BUT Reverse the train and what do you get?

 

"You have known - holy books - which are able - that they give you wisdom - in which is found - salvation through our believing - in Christ Jesus - beginning - from infancy."

 

Much more sensible and with only a few minor tweaks we'd have a good translation. It doesn't always work that nicely, but we found over and over, that scrolling the text backward helps clear up many confusions in the drafting process. Sorry, this post is probably a bit long and boring, but to all you amateur linguists/translators out there – you might find it interesting.