I was on an Indian Airline's flight to New Delhi when I first heard the word. A lilting female voice asked all passengers to ensure that they take all their belongings with them when they 'deplane'. Did I hear that correctly? On my return flight to Kuala Lumpur another female voice also made the same request. That's when I realised that I was acquiring a whole new vocabulary. I am quite familiar with unique Indianisms like 'miscreants absconding', or meetings gettting 'preponed', or how one took an aspirin when one's head was 'paining', or how one could put his or her bags into a car's 'dickey'. But I thought 'deplane' was almost stratoscopically brilliant. The economy and precision of the word excited me.
English is finally becoming more precise, and concise, as it should. Why didn't we think of this before? If one could 'deplane', then we could do the opposite: 'enplane', and the other parts of speech like 'deplaning' and 'enplaning' would, logically, follow.
But why stop there. If we apply the same rules to a car we can have 'encar', 'encarred', 'encarring', 'decar', 'decarred', and 'decarring' (note the two 'r's). And when we go to a bank we can 'enbank' or 'debank' money and we could do it in the past and the continuous tense.
Let me illustrate this with a short story:
"Where is the miscreant?" I asked Sergeant Ishak.
"In the toilet, sir."
"You let him go in there alone?" I tried hard not to make it sound like an admonishment but didn't quite succeed.
"He wanted to do number two, sir!" the Sergeant protested, the pitch of his voice rising a notch, like it did every time he whined. "But don't worry sir, I have locked the door." He smiled, obviously pleased with himself.
"Open that door. Now." I suppose I must have raised my voice a little, if not shouted, judging from the way Sergeant Ishak jumped up instantly, fumbled with the big bundle of keys hooked to his belt and finally opened the door with trembling hands.
The window was ajar. The miscreant had absconded.
"Quick. Get to the car. I know where he's headed."
We ran towards my car because we had no time to summon a squad car. "You drive," I said to Sergeant Ishak, tossing him the ignition keys and encarring on the passenger side. Ishak was the better driver.
The traffic was crazy, but he knew his way. He went through this back alley, and that side alley and through all sorts of housing roads, before enhighwaying towards the airport. Ishak got us to the airport in twenty minutes. I wished he had been quicker. But I could not complain.
"You park the car and look for me at the check-in counter," I shouted over my pounding heart, opening the door and decarring in one quick motion. I cannot let that bastard get away. I knew that there was a flight to Mumbai scheduled to leave in half an hour. I had to catch him before he enplaned or there would be all sorts of problems if I ordered the plane not to derunway. I raced through the departure lounge almost colliding into a train of trolleys, ran into an old man with a red beard on his way to his umrah judging from his clothes, and almost squashed a child that got between my legs, all the while looking around for signs of the miscreant. I was breathless and panting when I got to the information counter.
"Can I help you, sir?" Yes, it was true. They have trained them to be polite.
"Flight AI 216 to Mumbai ... which gate are they enplaning?" I gasped and spluttered.
"C24, sir. But the flight left fifteen minutes ago. It was preponed by half an hour.
"What? How can they ...?"
"I can't answer that, sir. The flight has already left."
I was still sitting on the bench, head on my hands, swearing under my breath, when Ishak sauntered up to me unhurriedly half an hour later. It infuriated me endlessly, but I knew he never walked quickly lest his pants got wrinkled.
"What took you so long?"
"Hee, hee ..." he simpered, with that obligatory scratch of the hair on the back of his neck. "Saya pi' minum." He had gone for a drink. Then he put on his serious face. "Did you catch him, sir?"
I was so angry, all I did was mumble.
"Prepone, sir? Did you say prepone? There is a prepone kiosk on the way to the carpark. I saw it on the way in."
I stared at him in disbelief. I was speechless. For a while I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or kill him on the spot. Then I laughed. "Oh, what the hell," I said, "Where is this free phone? Might as well use it to call home. I don't have much credit left in my mobile."
I saw an ATM on the way to the kiosk and I thought I'd debank some money. The office would have embanked all the salary cheques by now. I will tell my wife not to cook anything tonight. I will take the family out for an expensive Italian dinner. The kids will love that. They love pasta. I cannot let that bastard ruin my day.
(Feel free to continue this story below, but remember to use 'newspeak'.)
Monday, July 30, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
Reading - the good news
After reading about Victoria 'Posh Spice' Beckham's infamous bimboesque pronouncements about how she has never read anything in her entire life, some of us must have though, quite resignedly, "So it is true, the world as we know it is coming to an end," though we always suspected that being dumb was cooler than being smart. And then what more with news of country after country after country reporting declines in readership? (Oh no, not Malaysia, of course! While others may require statistics and surveys to come up with figures, we have the sublime skills to pluck them out of the air. Viola! Was it two books per person per year the last time? I cannot wait for the a new announcement that says it is four, and then sixteen, and then thirty two ...)
But, apparently, all is not lost. Reading is not dying. A study done by the University of Manchester, Trajectories of time spent reading as a primary activity: a comparison of the Netherlands, Norway, France, UK and USA since the 1970s, which focussed 'on reading printed material as a primary activity, and excluding that conducted for the purposes of work or education' indicates that the reverse is actually the truth.
According to the report: '(In Britain the) average time women spent reading a book jumped from two minutes a day in 1975 to eight minutes in 2000. Men's reading time rose from three to five minutes a day.' Still lower than for television, but 'hey'!
As for other countries in the study, the increase was similar in Norway but in French it went up from 10 minutes a day up to 18. Wahhhh! Dey de champion. There was a slight decline in the Netherlands from 13 minutes to 12 (in 1995), while in the US the increase was from five to seven minutes.
Quoting one of the researchers, Dale Southerton, from Manchester's school of social sciences, a BBC report says: "there was a popular perception that people were reading less but all reading had gone up, reading books had gone up the most - and there were 17% more people reading them".
Here is some academic gobbledygook about how the study was conducted (according to the abstract which you can find on the internet): "(The study) examines four commonly held assumptions: that time spent reading has declined in all countries; that book reading has declined to a greater extent than it has for magazines and newspapers; that reading is increasingly concentrated in a small minority of the populations in all countries; and, that there is cross-national convergence of consumer behaviour in the practice of reading."
(Did you understand that? Good, because I didn't. What the hell is 'cross-national convergence' of consumer behaviour?)
Still this (also from the abstract) is interesting: "Generic trends of increased book and declining magazine and newspaper readership mask the differential impact of global consumer cultures in national contexts." Go figure.
Full story: http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/staff/Dale_Southerton/reading.htm
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6285740.stm
Then in another report from India (where else), The Times of India reports that, "Young Indian authors with their contemporary plots and ideas are fast becoming the favourites of readers across age groups …" and "The sale of books in the Indian segment has increased by 30 to 40 per cent in the past four or five years ..."
Other quotes from the report:
"The good news is that it is the youth who is displaying a keener interest in Indian authors ..."
"Out of every 10 books sold on a given day, four are by Indian authors ..." (Have you been to a Malaysian mega bookstore lately, or seen their - highly suspect - bestseller list?)
"Indians are now talking of serious issues tastefully and people are flocking to take a read ..."
"I prefer Indian authors simply because I can relate to the subjects, places, events and most importantly to their characters ..."
Full story: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lucknow_Times/Indians_are_the_write_choice_baby_/articleshow/2189502.cms
But, apparently, all is not lost. Reading is not dying. A study done by the University of Manchester, Trajectories of time spent reading as a primary activity: a comparison of the Netherlands, Norway, France, UK and USA since the 1970s, which focussed 'on reading printed material as a primary activity, and excluding that conducted for the purposes of work or education' indicates that the reverse is actually the truth.
According to the report: '(In Britain the) average time women spent reading a book jumped from two minutes a day in 1975 to eight minutes in 2000. Men's reading time rose from three to five minutes a day.' Still lower than for television, but 'hey'!
As for other countries in the study, the increase was similar in Norway but in French it went up from 10 minutes a day up to 18. Wahhhh! Dey de champion. There was a slight decline in the Netherlands from 13 minutes to 12 (in 1995), while in the US the increase was from five to seven minutes.
Quoting one of the researchers, Dale Southerton, from Manchester's school of social sciences, a BBC report says: "there was a popular perception that people were reading less but all reading had gone up, reading books had gone up the most - and there were 17% more people reading them".
Here is some academic gobbledygook about how the study was conducted (according to the abstract which you can find on the internet): "(The study) examines four commonly held assumptions: that time spent reading has declined in all countries; that book reading has declined to a greater extent than it has for magazines and newspapers; that reading is increasingly concentrated in a small minority of the populations in all countries; and, that there is cross-national convergence of consumer behaviour in the practice of reading."
(Did you understand that? Good, because I didn't. What the hell is 'cross-national convergence' of consumer behaviour?)
Still this (also from the abstract) is interesting: "Generic trends of increased book and declining magazine and newspaper readership mask the differential impact of global consumer cultures in national contexts." Go figure.
Full story: http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/staff/Dale_Southerton/reading.htm
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6285740.stm
Then in another report from India (where else), The Times of India reports that, "Young Indian authors with their contemporary plots and ideas are fast becoming the favourites of readers across age groups …" and "The sale of books in the Indian segment has increased by 30 to 40 per cent in the past four or five years ..."
Other quotes from the report:
"The good news is that it is the youth who is displaying a keener interest in Indian authors ..."
"Out of every 10 books sold on a given day, four are by Indian authors ..." (Have you been to a Malaysian mega bookstore lately, or seen their - highly suspect - bestseller list?)
"Indians are now talking of serious issues tastefully and people are flocking to take a read ..."
"I prefer Indian authors simply because I can relate to the subjects, places, events and most importantly to their characters ..."
Full story: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lucknow_Times/Indians_are_the_write_choice_baby_/articleshow/2189502.cms
Monday, July 02, 2007
Translation trauma
In a recent column in the NST, Translations help broaden our horizons, on Saturday, June 23rd, Dato' Johan Jaafar, wrote about the paucity of translated works in this country when compared to Thailand or Indonesia. He does not say it outright, he is too polite, but the implications are clear: that there is a direct relationship between parochialism amongst Malaysians (simply listen to some of the things our politicians say) and our lack of reading and access to the world. We have become one with the proverbial katak. Literature and writings broaden horizons. That is given. No arguments there. In fact, what is embarrassing is that we should be it in this day. (Hello, look at the calendar, it says 2007.)
Two recent translations into Malay were Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and Jostein Gardner's Sophie's World, both by ITNM. While they are most welcome, they only managed to highlight the problem. I went into their website to find out more about the translators. It says on the website, 'The Malaysian National Institute of Translation (Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia or ITNM) is a limited company established by the government of Malaysia on 14 September 1993. Its share capital is wholly owned by the Ministry of Finance while its administration is managed by the Ministry of Education.' I looked under their 'eCatalogue' link and found that two (2) books were translated and published in 1995, 26 in 1997, 2 in 1998, 14 in 2003, and 20 in 2004. (I suspect the website has not been updated since then, which is not very surprising.) That would make it 62 books in 11 years (5.6 books a year) - the vast majority of them looked like school textbooks. In comparison, the (undated) paper by Saran Kaur Gill of UKM entitled Language Policy And Planning In Higher Education in Malaysia, says that from 1959 to 1995, a period of 39 years, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, translated 374 books (9.6 books a year). (The national Book Trust of India, established in 1957, does 800 a year.)
Both the figures are obviously not grand - in total less than 600 books have been translated (including 160 Saran Kaur Gill quotes for the various universities) in the last 50 years. (How many million ringgit would that be for each book? Anyone have the figures?) No wonder we are so parochial. And how are we supposed to compete with the world, again?
I would, at this point, like to relate a personal experience. I was at a meeting at Dewan Bahasa once. On the way back I decided to pop into the bookshop to see if they still had a Malay translation of (Nobel laureate) Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali by Latiff Mohidin. They did, four copies. I decided to get two because they were only RM6.00 each. So cheap, I thought. But I was in for a surprise. When I went up to the cashier to pay, she told me that there was a discount on 'old' books and she charged me RM1.80 a copy! This was the translation of one of the most important works in modern world literature, by one of Malaysia's most important poets (and painter), and it was being sold like paper lama! I would have gladly paid RM18.00 or RM24.00 for it. And the sadder story is that you will not find a copy of this book in any of our Malaysian bookshops. Talk about a society that does not value its writers or their books. What national culture are we talking about?
I have said it several times and I have said this to the top brass at Dewan: I would love to stock books by Dewan Bahasa at Silverfish Books, but how do I get hold of them? An American customer made this observation: walk into any bookshop in Kuala Lumpur and you see them filled with imported books from the UK and the US. Where are your local books? At the bottom shelf in the back of the shop, if at all. This is a bizarre country.
Comparisons with other countries are always fraught with danger. But Dato Johan's point out: "In Indonesia, by contrast, there are cases of books launched in London or New York being published simultaneously in Bahasa Indonesia. In fact, on the streets of Jakarta translated books are hawked as aggressively as local pulp fiction."
As for promoting Malaysian literature worldwide in translation … don't even get me started on that.
Full story: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/20070623084142/Article/pppull_index_html
Two recent translations into Malay were Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and Jostein Gardner's Sophie's World, both by ITNM. While they are most welcome, they only managed to highlight the problem. I went into their website to find out more about the translators. It says on the website, 'The Malaysian National Institute of Translation (Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia or ITNM) is a limited company established by the government of Malaysia on 14 September 1993. Its share capital is wholly owned by the Ministry of Finance while its administration is managed by the Ministry of Education.' I looked under their 'eCatalogue' link and found that two (2) books were translated and published in 1995, 26 in 1997, 2 in 1998, 14 in 2003, and 20 in 2004. (I suspect the website has not been updated since then, which is not very surprising.) That would make it 62 books in 11 years (5.6 books a year) - the vast majority of them looked like school textbooks. In comparison, the (undated) paper by Saran Kaur Gill of UKM entitled Language Policy And Planning In Higher Education in Malaysia, says that from 1959 to 1995, a period of 39 years, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, translated 374 books (9.6 books a year). (The national Book Trust of India, established in 1957, does 800 a year.)
Both the figures are obviously not grand - in total less than 600 books have been translated (including 160 Saran Kaur Gill quotes for the various universities) in the last 50 years. (How many million ringgit would that be for each book? Anyone have the figures?) No wonder we are so parochial. And how are we supposed to compete with the world, again?
I would, at this point, like to relate a personal experience. I was at a meeting at Dewan Bahasa once. On the way back I decided to pop into the bookshop to see if they still had a Malay translation of (Nobel laureate) Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali by Latiff Mohidin. They did, four copies. I decided to get two because they were only RM6.00 each. So cheap, I thought. But I was in for a surprise. When I went up to the cashier to pay, she told me that there was a discount on 'old' books and she charged me RM1.80 a copy! This was the translation of one of the most important works in modern world literature, by one of Malaysia's most important poets (and painter), and it was being sold like paper lama! I would have gladly paid RM18.00 or RM24.00 for it. And the sadder story is that you will not find a copy of this book in any of our Malaysian bookshops. Talk about a society that does not value its writers or their books. What national culture are we talking about?
I have said it several times and I have said this to the top brass at Dewan: I would love to stock books by Dewan Bahasa at Silverfish Books, but how do I get hold of them? An American customer made this observation: walk into any bookshop in Kuala Lumpur and you see them filled with imported books from the UK and the US. Where are your local books? At the bottom shelf in the back of the shop, if at all. This is a bizarre country.
Comparisons with other countries are always fraught with danger. But Dato Johan's point out: "In Indonesia, by contrast, there are cases of books launched in London or New York being published simultaneously in Bahasa Indonesia. In fact, on the streets of Jakarta translated books are hawked as aggressively as local pulp fiction."
As for promoting Malaysian literature worldwide in translation … don't even get me started on that.
Full story: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/20070623084142/Article/pppull_index_html
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