Translation problems I
Joking with my friends, I said, ‘I was a translation “gofer” – I learned the craft by the time I could walk!’
I left it at that, for to go into detail would have required that I tell them the story of my life. They knew my mother was French, and that I was born and raised in a bilingual household, but none of them knew that, from as far back as I can remember, I assumed the role of interpreter. ‘What are they saying?’ my mother would ask suddenly. ‘What does the man mean?’ ‘What is the lady trying to say?’ So I would translate. ‘What’s so funny about that?’ she might demand. And I would explain.
Or someone would ask me, ‘What’s your mother saying? What does she want?’ And I would translate. My paternal aunt might come to visit us, and I would be the linguistic intermediary between her and my mother. But I faced the most difficult trials in the many encounters between my mother and my paternal grandmother. My grandmother never left her village until she was past the age of seventy, and she spoke in a rural idiom that was difficult to understand – in retrospect I think it was eloquent – studded with proverbs, parables, and quotations from the Qur’an. In my childhood, translating what she said was a real challenge, like decoding a cipher. I had to think about it first, then pass along the easier bits, pouncing on the parts I could manage and summarising the rest in order to fill in the blanks. I settled for the gist, or I improvised something that would fit well enough into the general context. But sometimes she defied such devices. My grandmother might produce one little phrase that I could not understand, even though the words themselves were clear enough. For example, ‘When we visited you after they took away your father, a twelvemonth ago, in Toba . . .’ and I would stop short, perplexed, my mind casting about in a vain attempt to solve the riddle. I knew that ‘a twelvemonth ago’, in my grandmother’s parlance, simply meant ‘last year’, but what on earth was ‘toba’, and what could ‘in toba’ signify? Was it the name of a place where they’d taken my father? Did they make him sit on some kind of brick? But she had said ‘in’ and not ‘on’! I decided it was too much trouble to ask the meaning of ‘toba’, since even a witless three-year-old knew that ‘toba’ meant ‘brick’; nor did I see fit to translate the sentence verbatim for my mother, lest she tell me I was stupid or that my grandmother had gone senile. At the time I knew nothing of the rural custom of using the Coptic names for the months. So I kept quiet. Then, when my mother wanted to know why I didn’t translate my grandmother’s words, imagination came to my rescue. ‘She said that your frock is very pretty. Also, she noticed that your new eyeglasses suit you better than the old ones.’
After the episode of the mourning period, I learned that aphorism about the sieve – which is to say, I learned to strain out those contaminants that would certainly have fouled the waters flowing between the two sides, while at the same time I took care that neither of them should suspect my interference. So if my mother was glowering, I would hold back something my grandmother had said and abridge the rest. If my aunt went on the offensive and severely criticised my mother, the attack would be converted in the translated version into a mild rebuke. If my mother was the aggressor, I would whitewash her comments before passing them along, adding some details of my own: ‘My mother says this with good intentions – that is, affectionately.’ And so on.
Meanwhile, that episode of the mourning period culminated in a family catastrophe that, I realised only two or three years later, could have been avoided, had I not been slavishly exact in transmitting the messages.
The prelude to this episode was our being informed one night in Cairo that my grandfather had died; at dawn on the following day we boarded a train bound for Upper Egypt.
At my grandfather’s house the women wailed, my grandmother, my aunt, and some other women I didn’t know sitting on the floor despite the seats that lined the walls. I asked my aunt, who explained to me that such were the rites of mourning in our part of the world, and I passed this information along to my mother when she asked. She said, ‘But I don’t want to sit on the floor!’ And with that she seated herself on a chair, crossed her legs, and lit a cigarette!
(I can’t omit these details, because they turned up later in the catalogue of my mother’s blunders.)
After the sunset prayer, my mother asked my grandmother, ‘When will supper be served? We haven’t eaten since this morning!’ The translation was no sooner out of my mouth than I realised how outrageous this remark was. I could read it in the face of my grandmother, who kept silent.
I turned to my mother and said, ‘Perhaps that’s the way things are done around here – just like sitting on the floor.’
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No, I’m not hungry.’
‘But they aren’t poor – why don’t they serve supper to their guests? Aren’t we guests?’
‘We’re not guests, Mama – Granny always says to me, “This is your home, Nada, your father’s and grandfather’s house.”’
My grandmother likely told my aunt what the wife of her son had said – whether disapprovingly or with the object of getting her daughter to feed the hungry lady, I don’t know. But my aunt leaned over toward my mother and whispered in her ear, so we got up with her, left the house, and set off to a different house.
‘It’s very odd,’ said my mother to my aunt. ‘You’re not poor, and there are so many guests – you ought to have prepared some food for them, even if it was only sandwiches!’
I translated. My aunt replied, ‘Ours is the largest clan in the whole region. At weddings and other big occasions we provide countless animals to be sacrificed for the feasts!’
I asked, ‘What does “clan” mean?’
‘It means all your kin.’
‘What does “kin” mean?’
‘Oh, pet, my little niece, you’re still a foreigner like your mother. A clan is a family that is thousands strong.’
I translated. But my mother insisted, ‘They should have served some food, since they’re not poor, or else they should have advised us to bring our own food with us!’
I translated, and my aunt replied, ‘Tell her she should be ashamed of herself. It’s unthinkable even to talk about food, and your grandfather not yet cold in his grave!’
I translated. My mother got angry, and my aunt changed her mind about taking us to the home of her mother’s brother for supper. ‘There’s no need to make a scene!’ she said. I translated.
My mother decided she was not going to stay for the three days of mourning after all, if it meant she and her daughter would have to starve to death. We left at dawn the following day.
My aunt swore that her tongue would never again address a word to her brother’s wife, and that she would never set foot in her house for the rest of her life (and she kept this vow). Nor was that the end of the matter, for the grievance was kept alive and it was the first thing my father heard about from his mother, his sister and his cousins when he went to the village after his release. And it was one of the sore points he brought up every time he and my mother quarrelled. During their last row, I told my father it had been my fault. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said sceptically.
‘We left before the three days were up, because of the translation, ya Abu Nada!’
‘What translation?’ So I told him. He laughed, and made peace with my mother.
Their many rows following his release from detention didn’t trouble me, so their decision to separate hit me like a thunderbolt.