April 28, 2002

TRANSLATORS make us hear voices made in languages foreign to our own. It is through them that we listen and learn and our own expression gets enriched. Imagine what the world would have been like without access to the knowledge generated and the literature created in languages other than we know. To give you my own example, being barely functional in two languages and somehow managing a third is the maximum I could achieve. And, some of my favourite works were originally written in at least ten other languages. I don’t speak any of these and, given my limited skills and ability, will never be able to. They have all been read through translations available in English or Urdu.

Urdu has a rich tradition of translation and a lot of it needs to be restored. We owe tremendously to people like Munshi Zakaullah, Munshi Teerath Ram Ferozepuri and Deputy Nazeer Ahmed, who translated the Indian Penal Code, Professor Abid Ali Abid, Meeraji and Zoe Ansari. Saadat Hasan Manto commenced his literary career by translating Victor Hugo and Fyodor Dostoevsky. In more contemporary terms, from Salim-ur-Rahman, Waqar Nasri and Altaf Fatima to Zameer Ahmed, Ajmal Kamal, Dr Arifa Syeda and so many others, the tradition is kept alive. In Sindhi, present-day translators include people like Vali Ram Vallabh and Ibrahim Joyo, who have translated from both literature and social sciences. Whether the number of translations in Pakistani languages is sufficient remains another issue.

Subscribing to rather secular social and political views does not make the text of the Quran or other scriptures less important to my consciousness. They largely define our cultural mileau. I learned to read the Quran in Arabic as many Muslim children do but it made sense to me only when I got to read Maulana Abdul Majid Daryabadi’s English translation. Interestingly, when young, I could never connect with a translation of the Quran in Urdu as much as I could with the English translation by Maulana Daryabadi.

Perhaps it has to do with the idiom used and the quality of translation. Likewise, the Bible came to us after a long journey through Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English and Urdu. Sanskritian scriptures and classics that form the basis of our languages and culture all came to us through translations. We are rooted in languages that we no longer speak.

As we live in countries, we also live in languages. Living in more than one language is like living in more than one country. It expands our linguistic habitat, enhances our experience, increases knowledge and promotes better understanding between cultures and nations. It makes us more reasonable and accomplished individuals and our societies truly positive and enlightened.

The more languages we know the more opportunities come our way and the more interesting we become. I envy my polyglot friends. As far as literary or other expression is concerned we have many examples of poets and writers who are substantially good and at times proficient in languages other than their native tongues.

Linguists and cognitive scientists, like Steven Pinker for instance, are grappling with the idea of ‘mentalese’ for some time now. That is the language of our thought process and common to all human beings. It provides us with basic frames which can be filled by lexical items and syntactic patterns from one or more languages. Dreaming in a language, as it were, is seriously debatable then. We can have more than one first languages or our first language in a certain area or in general can be different from our mother tongue even if we are fluent in our mother tongue.

Being not fluent in the mother tongue or even not knowing the mother tongue is an interesting concept. The linguistic debate enters the realm of ethnicity here or that of social class. It will be interesting to note that where the majority of Pakistanis do not speak Urdu as their mother tongue, more than seventy per cent of those who are literate are literate only in Urdu.

I have been told by a linguist friend about a study conducted in Norway a couple of years ago according to which six new English words are added to the vocabulary of the Norwegian language every day. Languages in general and developing ones, in particular, need support languages. It ought to be recognized officially and by our academia that English has become the support language of Urdu and has replaced Farsi, Arabic and Sanskrit functionally as well as linguistically.

One may not particularly like the language used by our media, especially by the anchors of, say, FM channels, who make an effort to distort Urdu and infuse English words or American slang where it is least needed. However, introducing new terms, words and structures that do not exist from before is a service that needs to be taken forward systematically by the media, academic institutions, scholars and, above all, translators.

Just to give an example, if some word inducted in a language as a proper noun gains currency as a common noun, the introduction can be termed successful. For example, the word muqtadira for authority is only used in the Urdu name for National Language Authority and this word has not been used by any other institution. It is either called authority like in English or idara. Muqtadira, therefore, remains a proper noun referring to Muqtadira-i-Qaumi Zaban.

Here, it will be fair to acknowledge Muqtadira’s immense contribution to many areas of language development and its growing understanding of such issues. On the other hand, using English conjunctions or prepositions in Urdu sentences either reflects insufficient command over the language being spoken or an attempt to associate with the powerful English-speaking elite. Moreover, which words or phrases become a part of the common idiom and which ones fail cannot be prefigured. If we take an example of a good translation, nijkari for privatization became accepted and popular in no time.

Translating lexical items from one language into another, nouns and adjectives for example, is the first step. We increasingly see that the most developed languages creatively borrow the syntactic patterns from other languages. This is the higher level of adaptation and its challenge expands the frontiers of the borrowing language. This has happened in Urdu before from Farsi, English and Indian vernaculars. And, this experimenting with new structures needs to happen continuously without hesitation.

It is all the more important for us now to understand the differences inherent in each and every human society. Imposing a unity on the West, considering it a monolith in the same way it sometimes considers the developing or Muslim world, is neither fair nor advisable. In the present world, if taking on the newer versions of East India Company is necessitated for our dignity and survival, the need to foster human and cultural linkages through civil society institutions originating in the West, like the British Council, Goethe Institut, Amnesty International, Transnational Institute, Prince Claus Foundation and so many others, is equally crucial.

Furthermore, a better appreciation of the issues faced by other developing countries, Muslim or non-Muslim, and their commonalities as well as differences to our situation is required. Translators can play a very important role in recognizing the articulation of sanity and goodwill on either side of the fence as well as making accessible to us the voices of resistance and struggle from all around the world.

A good example from work that has emerged recently in Urdu is literary journal Dunyazaad’s two-volume compendium on Palestine titled Aashiq Min-al-Falastine. Edited by Asif Farrukhi, who himself has done meticulous translations like always, the compendium presents views and writings from a host of Israeli writers and other thinkers of Jewish origin besides Arabs and Pakistanis. More such work is the need of the hour. In addition, a concerted effort for translating academic materials into Urdu will ensure the access of our majority to contemporary knowledge and the power that it brings along.

Harris Khalique has published poetry in Urdu, English and Punjabi and his interests straddle politics, social development, language and culture.

Writer’s email: kasheeri@hotmail.com

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