PLAYING WITH LIGHTNING - The Loss Between English to Greek Translations

 

PLAYING WITH LIGHTNING

The Loss Between English to Greek Translations

 

Mark Twain once said, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." It's worth pointing out that the first time I saw this quote, it had the middle part cut out ("The difference between the almost right word and the right word...is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning") which I think has a lot to say about the power of editing, which will also be important for this paper. The two sentences are saying the same thing, but one is faster. Tighter. Smaller. I believe that this is an important aspect of English language, one that can be missed when translated to other European languages which have longer and more specific words. The vagueness may be lost (which one may even argue is worth keeping), but also the important punch of English, which is fit into small, quick words.

Someone as important and genius as Nikos Kazantzakis knew this, reported by Kimon Friar, who helped Kazantzakis translate his epic "Odysseus: A Modern Sequel" poem into English. Speaking specifically about an early passage in the story, after Odysseus had killed the suitors:

 

Two slaves prepared his bath, but when they saw their lord

they shrieked with terror, for his loins and belly steamed,

and thick black blood dripped down from both his murderous palms

 

Kazantzakis used to say to me, pounding his table in rhythm to the meter, tasting and emphasizing each syllable, "And thick black blood dripped down! Ah, if only I had monosyllables!" The Greek language, like all inflected languages, is highly polysyllabic and has practically no monosyllables. I am sure you would like to hear this passage in Kazantzakis' own demotic Greek.

 

Δυὀ δοὐλες συγκερνοὐσαν τὸ νερό, μὰ ώς είδαν τόν αφέντη

μπήξαν φωνή, γιατί ή σγουρή κοιλιά καί τά μεριά του αχνίζαν

καί μαύρα στάζαν αίματα πηχτά κι από τίς δυό του φούχτες

(Friar, pg.13)

 

The English version of the last line has 14 syllables (OR even 12, if you read "drip-ped" as "dript" and "mur-der-ous" as more like "mur-drus", both of which are normal English readings). The Greek line has 19 syllables. Kazantzakis believes – and I agree, and I think Mark Twain would as well – that something can be lost with a stretched out sentence, with extensive syllables. Something in the emotional effect of a particular sentence can be numbed for the reader if the sentence is longer than it could be.

Comedian George Carlin speaks about this when he mentions the change in American language from "shell shock" in World War 1 (two syllables) getting changed by the Vietnam war into "post-traumatic stress disorder" (8 syllables and even a hyphen) to make a point about euphemisms; how they seek to lessen emotional packages by making the words unnecessarily longer. I'd even include the tendency to call the "war" (one syllable) in Vietnam as a "conflict" (two syllables) as further proof.

This paper is intended to show that the English language contains multitudes of seemingly small but surprisingly strong emotional effects in its monosyllabic language. I'll be using the opening lines from three works of literature, two in original English and one originally from French into English. Then attempting to translate them into Greek as accurately as possible, both in actual words and the intended emotional package. Each initial sentence uses small, easy language to express deep emotional effects. Some people wrongly believe that since American words are relatively smaller in size compared to their European counterparts that therefore American thoughts are likewise simplified. This is not true.

The inspiration for this paper came from an older man I met with my father while I was in Greece. After finding out that I wasn't fluent in Greek, he declared (in broken English) that English  is a "simple, ugly language." Since I literally not a month before had just finished Moby Dick, I knew he was absolutely wrong. But I also knew I didn't know enough Greek to convince him otherwise, not being able to express the amazing and horrifying subtleties in that American masterpiece well enough at the time. This paper is my counterargument to him.

 

First Example: Moby Dick, Herman Melville

"Call me Ishmael."

Famous first lines of a famous American novel. The first immediate question is why does Ishmael tell you to Call him Ishmael. Not "My name is Ishmael." Is it laziness? Is he trying to be friendly? Letting us know that there is already an openness between us? Is he being mysterious? Is it not his real name? Does he have something to hide? Some of these questions may be answered in the book, but as I mentioned previously, the initial uncertainty may be intentional.

Three words, 5 syllables. Three of those used by the name, which would be unchanged between translations. "Call me..." So much filled in those two syllables. Each word monosyllabic. Now, the question being, how to translate that into modern Greek?

Όνομα μου είναι Ίσμαελ = "My name is Ishmael." This is accurate for the facts, but misses out on all the possibilities and questions raised by the uncertainty of the request. It doesn't make you want to keep reading. There is no unanswered question that demands a second sentence. It has no effect on the eyes. It's boring.

Καλέστε μου Ίσμαελ = "Call me Ishmael." This is a little better. This is accurate for the verb. Literally, "When you want my attention, make the act of 'calling' Ismael." But it's also an imperative. It's an order. It seems (and feels) like a stronger demand that the original. The mystery is still there, but it comes off as a wall in front of the character. This phrase holds less uncertainty. "You call me Ishmael."

Πηγαίνω από τον Ίσμαελ “I go by Ishmael.” This is the phrase that I would choose. A passing suggestion. It seems harmless, but a moment of investigation would bring up the questions. But that's still 9 syllables, 4 more than the original English. That's four more beats before the small surprise is revealed. That's more time for the brain to work, which we – and Melville, and Kazantzakis – do not want. We want a small package to hide a great surprise. Πάω με Ίσμαελ, is best, since we're trying to save syllables here. Our goal here for this paper is tight, packed, quick words to sneak beyond the brain and hit something else.

 

Second Example: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson

"We were somewhere around Barstow, near the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."

Possibly my favorite opening line in any book I've ever read. Here – in one sentence, 18 words, only five of them with double syllables (none have more than two, 23 syllables in all) – we have your full attention when you start the book. It also tricks you into calm; "somewhere around," "near the edge," "desert." Deserts are quiet, possibly nothing on the Earth is more silent. We have uncertainty about our location "somewhere"; The edge is a vague long line. It certainly is not a point, but they could be anywhere along a line. A line that is made of dust, certainly not a straight line of some kind. Where does Not-Desert end and Desert begin, in any desert? Nothing important seems to be happening. Then suddenly something happens. Something horrible. More Something than you can imagine happening in the middle of nowhere like this. Something you could not have seen coming. The first two sentence fragments make you believe you are at rest, when suddenly by the end you are a lamb to the slaughter. All with using less than two dozen syllables.

How do we recreate this beautiful sudden rocket explosion into modern Greek? I believe it's better to begin by getting the first two fragments put away.

Ήμασταν κάπου γύρω από το Βαρστω, κοντά στην άκρη της ερήμου = An accurate translation, in 21 syllables. You could even delete  από το, bringing the whole thing down to 18 syllables, which would also help. Not much else needs to be done, because nothing is happening, just as planned. There's no emotion to present here, because it's just a calm before the end.

όταν τα ναρκωτικά άρχισαν να πάρουν εμάς = 15 syllables to say “when the drugs they began to take us,” which is somewhat close. With the first 18 syllables, this adds up to 33. With four words that have triple syllables or more. Plus, να πάρουν εμάς is, I think, not as accurate to the original. “To take us” does not mean something as loaded as “to take hold.” You'll also notice that the original in English lacks a pronoun. Drugs could be “taking hold” of anything. Possibly the characters, but not only them. The surroundings, their minds, their eyes, their mouths, their skin, anything. Here we have more of what Ismael was using; we have several possibilities of what could be taken hold of by narcotics. We will need to keep reading.

A possible solution would be Ήμασταν κάπου γύρω Βαρστω, κοντά στην άκρη της ερήμου, όταν τα ναρκωτικά άρχισαν να πιάσιμα όλα – “to catch everything,” but even then we're adding another syllable, ultimately to 35. Unless we would want to drop όλα, which is possible, bringing us to 33. Still, this sentence only works best in English. There would even be more monosyllabic English words to choose from for other things drugs could do instead of “take hold”; hold, drip, stop, drop, grip, clench, snatch, grasp, pound, mess, throw, wail, sound, blast...I could go for dozens more, perhaps a hundred. Even hundreds more if I just wanted to keep it 3 syllables or less, faster to read than πιάσιμα.

 

Third Example: The Stranger, by Albert Camus

“Maman died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I'm not sure.”

For the final sentence, we have a heavy challenge. This is the opening line in my copy of a French work of existential philosophy, a fictional novel with a main character who doesn't care about anything. This first problem is deciding which translation to use. The original French has the sentences as “Today mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.” I was reading the English version, with some slight order change, spelling changes, and pronouns. Someone before me had to make the same kind of decisions that we're talking about here; how to edit, change, translate, and tighten into something very small but still very strong.

Obviously the emotion we want to maintain is the shock of being inside the head of a character who doesn't know (and doesn't care that he doesn't know) when his mother died. The first thing is to decide between “Maman died today” or “Today mother died.” The first version begins positively (most people would be happy to think of their mother), then goes down in mood immediately very sharply with the second word (died), and then again even deeper in recent horror and pain (today). From up high into deep downward. The second version is neutral (today) – happy (mother) – horrible (died). The first feels sad into more sad, the second feels more chaotic, with medium, then up, then down. It feels like a much smaller (3 word, 5 syllable) version of the previous line from “Fear & Loathing...” above; tricked into calm in the first 2/3 before being destroyed from out of nowhere in the last part, but it works in 3 words instead of three sentence fragments.

Just to start somewhere, let's go with the initial tighter version.

“Today mother died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.” 9 words, 14 syllables. The original French had 16 syllables, so we're still dealing with a very tightly packed group of words. If we follow the closest Greek translation we can, while removing any unnecessary articles or pronouns as we've been doing, we still get “Σήμερα μητέρα πέθανε. Ή ίσως χθες, δεν ξέρω.” At maximum efficiency, we may have 8 words – less than English – but still 17 syllables. Even compared across three languages, trying our very best to make everything as simple as possible, English still keeps the highest emotional economy in its words. 14 syllables instead of 17.  Almost 17.5% more efficient than the Greek version, to be exact by the numbers.

Some of these things – different ways of saying the same thing – are things that only the English language can do. Different possibilities. This, I believe, is an important proof of quality for any language. If a language has something unique about it, that means that it has something about it that is irreplaceable when translated into another language. Just as we know things are lost when translated to English, the opposite is also true. If there were any language – French, Greek, German, Japanese, Somali, etc. – that could do better than English at what English tries to do, then one could make an argument that English is a second rate way to communicate. That it is easily replaceable.

I have to say, I believe that is not true.

 

Conclusion

With this paper, I did not intend to prove that English is somehow automatically superior to Greek, or any other language. If that were my goal, I would be just as wrong as that old man in the beginning who thought English was a simple, ugly language. No language on Earth is simple or ugly, because every language will have people who speak it who will have complex and beautiful thoughts they will need to express. Every language requires a master in that language to show of what it is capable. To show its heights and abilities. I only wanted to prove that English is just as capable of creating its own great works of art, as well as expressing those from other languages when placed into English. I believe there is so much that smaller words can do, and I know Kazantzakis believed it as well, which was why he printed so many of his works in the “simple” dialect of demotic Greek. Smaller words with less syllables can make sentences that are more dense, which leads to greater explosions of emotion.

 

 

Bibliography

Camus, Albert – The Stranger, 1989; Vintage

Carlin, George – Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics, 1990 (CD)

Friar, Kimon – The Spiritual Odyssey of Nikos Kazantzakis, 1979; North Central Publishing Company

Melville, Herman – Moby Dick or The Whale, 1996; Reader's Digest Association

Thompson, Hunter S. - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, 2010; Vintage