ஆங்கிலமும் அன்னை தமிழும் சங்கமிக்கும் சங்கத் தமிழ் மொழிபெயர்ப்புகள்

கோ. செய்யது அலி பாதுஷா, உதவிப் பேராசிரியர் மற்றும் தேசிய மாணவர் படை இணை அதிகாரி, ஆங்கிலத் துறை,

சதக்கத்துல்லாஹ் அப்பா கல்லூரி, ரஹ்மத் நகர், திருநெல்வேலி.

முன்னுரை:

ஆங்கிலம் வேறு தமிழ் வேறு என்ற காலம் மாரி, மொழிகளையும், இலக்கியங்களையும் ஒப்பிட்டு அவற்றின் கூறுகளை பகுப்பாய்வு செய்து   அவற்றின் சாறுகளை படிப்போருக்கு பக்குவமாய் பகிர்ந்தளிக்கும் காலம் இது.  மொழியழியும்,  தமிழ் அழியும் என்ற கூக்குரல் இனி வேண்டாம்.  ஆக்கம் பெற ஆங்கிலமும் நல் தாக்கம் தர நம் தமிழும்  இணைந்தாச்சு இணைய வழி மொழிபெயர்ப்பு, ஒலி பெயர்ப்பு, எழுத்துப்  பெயர்ப்பு போன்ற ஊடகத்தால்.   

 

பல ஆண்டு பாரம்பரியமிக்க சங்க இலக்கிய  புறநாநூற்று பாடல்கள் பல ஆங்கில மொழிபெயர்ப்பின் வழியே தொடர்ந்து வெளிவந்துகொண்டே இருக்கின்றன அவற்றில் சில இந்தக் கட்டுரையில் பகுப்பாய்வு செய்யப்பட்டு தமிழ் மற்றும் ஆங்கில எடுத்துக்காட்டு  வரைபடம் மற்றும் அட்டவணைகளுடன்  கருத்துரைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளன.

உள்ளுறை:

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF POEM - 349

PURANANURU  POEM: 349.

The King asks for the Chieftain’s daughter in marriage.  With determination he proposes to marry the girl.  At the same time the chieftain who is the ruler of a small region refuses strongly to give his daughter to him.  As a result, the king shows his terrible nature by scraping the sweat off his brow with the blade of his spear.  This has become a matter of contention between the king and chieftain.  Correspondingly there seems to emanate a fierce war between the two.  For all this, the chieftain’s young, attractive and marriageable daughter is considered to be the only reason.  The girl is lovely.  She has sharp teeth with red-lined cool eyes.  Her skin is fair as tender mango leaves.  Such a beautiful woman seems to be a force of destruction by being the cause for creating a hostile situation between the two nations.

            In the poem the woman is compared to a tiny spark.  Sometimes the fire which is sparked by a single tree destroys the entire forest.  Likewise the pretty and charming maiden who has attracted the king may end up becoming the cause of destruction of the very place of her birth due to the chieftain father’s refusal in giving her to the King in marriage. 

            The poem has two striking images.  One describes the natural features of the young girl and the other compares the present warlike situation in the poem to that of an accidental destruction caused by a spark.

Translation of the SL Metaphor – ‘AÃûY’

     The poet describes the attractive bodily features of the charming girl as follows:

   

     vai yeitru arimathar malaikkan amma arivai ‘a brown – complexioned, unmarried young woman with sharp teeth, attractive and red-lined cool eyes’.  In the phrase, the SL attributives namely ûYGÂtñ vai yeitru ‘sharp teeth’, AÃURo arimathar ‘attractive and red-lined’ UûZdLi malaikkan ‘moist eyes’ and AmUô amma ‘a brown – complexioned’  are abstracts.  They are used to qualify the object, AÃûY arivai ‘an unmarried young woman’ in the poem.  Some of the above terms have posed problems to the translators because they are compound words.  Thus, the phrase is in an Abstract + Abstract + Abstract + Abstract + Object structure;   ûYGÂtñ + AÃURo + UûZdLi + AmUô + AÃûY.

In general, the cankam poems are known for their complexly structured expressions.  In this case, the semantically heavy phrases have to be expanded into small sense groups.  Then only it would be feasible for a meaningful rendering.  Here for ease of clarity, the SL compound words can be elaborated as, ûY + GÂtñ, AÃ + URo, UûZ + Li and Am + Uô.  The above adjectival words (abstracts) crystallize the nature and posture of the young woman in the poem.  

Given below is the table that provides the paraphrased text of the compound words and their corresponding translations.

            As the Tamil words viz. ûY vai ‘sharp’, GÂtñ yeitru ‘teeth’ and Li kan ‘eyes’ have been explicitly referred to in the poem, they have not posed any problems to the translators.  Hence they have been contextually translated as ‘sharp’, ‘teeth’ and ‘eyes’ respectively by AKR and PNA whereas the SL words AÃ ari ‘red-lines’, URo mather ‘attractive’, UûZ mazhai ‘moist’, AmUô amma ‘brown as tender mango shoots’ and AÃûY arivai ‘a young unmarried woman’ have been variously translated by AKR, PNA and MLT.

            In the SL, the word, AÃ ari means ‘red lines’.  Perhaps it represents the ‘thin veins’ that crisscross in one’s eyes.  Mostly they are supposed to be red in colour.  As the term, AÃ ari is generically mentioned in the poem, AKR has closely rendered it as ‘streaked with red’.  Perhaps PNA wants to be biologically very precise, so he has rendered AÃ ari as ‘red-veined’.  Notably both the translators have contextually brought out the word, ‘red’ in their transfer.

The word, URo mather means ‘attractive’.  It has been rendered as ‘wanton’ by PNA.  It seems to be a wrong choice.  In the poem the term, URo mather describes  the ‘mesmerizing effect of the woman’s eyes’.   But here ‘wanton’ means ‘a woman who is immoral, glamourous or sexy’ by nature.  The maiden in no way has wantonly made any attempt to tempt the prince’s mood.  She has extraordinary physical features; naturally it has attracted the attention of the king and he wants to marry her.  For reasons unknown AKR has not rendered the word, URo mather. 

Then, the SL word, UûZ mazhai means ‘moist’.  It has been diversely translated as ‘cool’ by AKR and ‘dew-soft’ by PNA.  Both the equivalents refer to the girl’s condition of eyes characterized by the presence of moisture.  Here the TL equivalent, ‘dew-soft’ for UûZ mazhai by PNA does not collocate better. 

Colour Spectrum in the SL and TL

The word, AmUô amma describes the girl’s skin colour.  As such, the word, AmUô amma has to be expanded as Am + Uô amma.  The lexeme, Am am means ‘that’.  It is a demonstrative pronoun and the abstract, Uô ma means ‘brown as the tender mango shoots’.  This way the SL term, AmUô amma has been translated with a lengthy descriptive phrase as ‘skin the color of young mango leaf’ by AKR.  But PNA and MLT in their rendering have mysteriously omitted the important term, AmUô amma which contributes for the meaningful rendering of the SL comparison.

Translating colour terms is somewhat a problem.  Colour terms divide the colour spectrum into various units.  One may be surprised to know that “…. there are between seven and one – half and ten million discernibly different shades of color, but in English even specialists use only about 3, 000 color terms, and people in general use only some eleven basic color words” (Nida, 19: 50).  Let us compare the way the colour spectrum is divided in English and Tamil.      

If we make a comparison, we find that the Tamil term ஊதா / நீலம் utha / neelam is used to refer to that long stretch of the colour spectrum which is subdivided in English by three terms viz. Violet, Indigo and Blue.  Similarly, மஞ்சள் manchal covers what is denoted by two terms viz. Yellow and Orange. 

As words that can capture precisely the minute shades of a colour are unavailable in a language, resorting to ‘compounding’ as in கறுப்பு + நீலம் = கருநீலம், வெள்ளை  +  மஞ்சள்  = வெளிர்மஞ்சள் is attempted.  Sometimes exactness is sought to be achieved by means of reference to typical objects that are characteristic of a colour such as கத்தரிப் பூ வண்ணம் katherip pu vannam ‘violet like the brinjal’s flower’,  இரத்தச் சிவப்பு irathach sivappu ‘red as blood’ and எலுமிச்சை பழ மஞ்சள elumitchai pazha manchal ‘dark yellow as lemon’

In this way in English also certain well-known objects are used to recognize shades of colour as for example, snow-white and milk-white etc. 

Accordingly the SL poet here has used mango leaves to describe the skin colour of the young woman as AmUô AÃûY amma arivai.  As a matter of fact, mango leaves undergo drastic changes. When they sprout, their colour would be pale.  Thus, the leaves could be a mixture of yellow and black which results in the shade of a light brown.  At the later stage, the foliage becomes light green and green.  Finally they turn dark green.  Thus the colour of  tender mango leaves is a combination of Yellow + Brown + Green.  Thus a shade like this tends to create problems for the translator.

Mostly the shade of a pale brown or wheatish brown is the traditional complexion of men and women in South India.  Thus the shade is known as Uô நிறm ma niram ‘the colour of tender mango leaves’. 

It is appreciable on the part of AKR to take into account the SL word, AmUô and to translate it contextually as ‘skin the color of young mango leaf’.  Unjustifiably the meaningful descriptive term has been ignored in the renderings of PNA and MLT.

Stages, Ages and Character of Woman in Tamil Custom

The SL AÃûY arivai ‘a young unmarried woman’ denotes one of seven stages of a woman in Tamil cuture.  The word, AÃûY arivai has three features.  Accordingly its common feature is ‘a person who is a woman’.  Its diagnostic or contrastive feature is ‘a woman who is between the age of Nineteen and Twenty four’ and its supplementary feature is ‘a marriageable woman’.  Thus a translator has to choose an equivalent which is inclusive of all the three features in the Target language.

            As the excessive beauty and young age of the woman is specifically mentioned in the cankam poem, the translator has to bring it out in his translation to the extent possible.  The following lexical sets available in Tamil categorize woman depending upon her age as given below.  It contributes for the present study.

The above classification of woman was made by Nachinarkiniyar in his commentary to cankam literature. 

            The meaning of the word, AÃûY arivai can be observed in relation to its other related terms in Tamil.

Here the AÃûY arivai has been variously translated by AKR, PNA and MLT as ‘this lovely girl’, ‘This maiden’ and ‘the girl’ respectively.

Componential Analysis

            While Chain Analysis and Hierarchical Analysis are adequate to determine the meanings of some sets of words, a third type of analysis viz. Componential Analysis may be needed for dealing with some other set of words that have shared features and contrastive features.

Let us consider the following lexical set:

            Lass, Girl, Maiden, Virgin, Maid, Lady, Lady-in-waiting and Damsel all these words have a common component of: ‘a person who is a human’.  Thus they can be considered a particular type of woman.  If we subject the words for further analysis, we can arrive at their diagnostic or contrastive features.

When we compare the meanings, we find out that all of them share a common component namely ‘a person who is a woman’.  In other words each is a different type of woman.  Each word has a specific diagnostic feature which sets it apart from other words.  For example, A Lass is usually a man’s sweetheart, A Girl is a young female human in contrast to a boy, A Maiden is an unmarried young woman, Virgin is a chaste woman, A Maid is mostly a  young female servant or cleaner and Lady is a grown-up woman of higher class or authority.

A Lady-in-waiting is an adult woman in the household of a queen or princess who attends her as a personal servant, generally considered an honour.  A Damsel is a young woman of noble birth.  A Goddess is a female deity, figuratively a human female honoured or adored as physically attractive or of superior charm and intelligence.

            The situation as regards this lexical set where patterns of inclusion as well as separation exist can be shown as in the Figure given below.

The word ‘human’ is a superordinate term that includes every term in the list and is placed in an inclusive circle.  Every term that surrounds ‘woman’ partakes of being woman in some form and hence the words are shown touching the inner circle.

Here as part of rendering, the choice of equivalent for the SL word, AÃûY arivai as ‘This maiden’ by PNA is quite apt.  It includes all the three features such as ‘a woman’, ‘a young woman’ and ‘an unmarried woman’.  It fits the context whereas AKR’s equivalent, ‘this lovely girl’ and MLT’s ‘the girl’ do not fully cover the semantic map of the Tamil term, AÃûY arivai.

Translation of the Semantically inclusive term – ‘AQeá’

The SL word, AQeá anangu means ‘a godly as well as destructive woman’.  It has three layers of meaning.  Firstly the word, AQeá anangu means ‘a woman’.  Secondly it refers to a person who is assumed to be ‘a godly woman’.  Thirdly the term refers to the possible ‘destructive nature of the woman’.  So a translator has to choose an equivalent which includes all the three meanings. 

Here the AQeá anangu has been rendered differently by the translators.  AKR has transferred it as ‘this goddess’. The word, ‘goddess’ has only two components.  They are ‘a woman’ and ‘a female deity’.  As regards PNA’s equivalent, ‘an angel of destruction’ for AQeá anangu is acceptable.  It has three features.  The word, ‘angel’ usually refers to ‘a woman’.  An ‘angel’ has ‘godly’ qualities and the word ‘destruction’ means the woman to be destructive by nature.  In this way, the equivalent is quite appropriate here.  At the same time the compound word has been simply omitted in MLT’s rendering.

Translation of the SL Simile – ‘UWm Tå ºñ § úTôX’

            The simile taken for a study here reads as:

 UWmTå ºñ§l úTôX

AQeá BÂu, Rôu À\kR FodúL.

maram badu ciru thee pole anangu ayin thaan pirantha oorke ‘as a fire lit up by a tree burning itself completely, the godly woman has destroyed her place of birth’.  The simile has been rendered in three ways by the translators.  The reason is, due to the implicit nature of the comparison in the SL poem.  AKR has taken the tree to be ‘a single tree burning itself’ as well as ‘a single tree burning the whole forest’.

PNA has considered the SL simile as ‘a single tree burning the entire forest’ whereas MLT has rendered the phrase as, ‘a single tree burning itself’ completely.

Here the small spark and the lovely young girl are the points of comparison.  A small spark is beautiful to look at.  But it is highly destructive as highlighted in the poem.  It would even destroy the source from which it develops.  The same way, the girl is elegant by appearance but she may become the cause os destruction of her native place itself.

Overall Analysis of the Translations

            In regard to the overall form, AKR’s rendering is somewhat different from the translations of PNA and MLT.  While AKR has translated the poem phrase by phrase, PNA and MLT have closely followed the SL structure in their transfer.  AKR’s arrangement of tonal groups helps to observe meaning easily.  His effort to bring out clearly the meaning of the colour term, AmUô amma is appreciable.

            At the same time, PNA’s choice of appropriate words for the SL, AÃûY arivai, AQeá anangu are highly commendable.  Contrarily in his attempt to describe the girl’s physical features, his preference of equivalents such as ‘glistening teeth’ for ûYGÂtñ vai yeitru and ‘wanton, dew-soft eyes’ for UûZdLi malaikkan are not relevant to the context.  Of the two words, ‘wanton’ has been discussed in the above analysis, and the adjective ‘glistening’ generally describes eyes of a person for referring to their wet or shining condition, but PNA has used it to describe the teeth of the woman in his rendering.  So, it is wrong choice.

            As regards MLT’s translation, it is observed that the translator has omitted a lot of words and phrases.  For example the SL metaphor, ûYGÂtñ AÃURo UûZdLi AmUôs has been completely ignored in his TL version.  Obviously the SL noun, AQeá anangu has no equivalence in his translation.  Thus, the non-transfer of some of the meaningful words in his rendering may affect the overall concept of the SL poem.

முடிவுரை:

மேலே குறிப்பிட்டுள்ள 4 பகுப்பாய்வுகள் ஆங்கில மொழிபெயர்ப்புகளின் முழுமைத் தன்மையையும், கருத்தாளத்தையும் விரிவாக விளக்குகின்றன இந்தப் பகுப்பாய்வின் நோக்கம்  மொழிபெயர்ப்புகளை குறை கூறுவதற்காக அல்ல மாறாக இது போன்ற நுண் ஆய்வுகள் வருங்காலங்களில் சங்க இலக்கிய ஆங்கில மொழிபெயர்ப்புகளை செம்மையானதாகவும் பொருள் பொதிந்ததாகவும் ஆக்குவதற்கு போதுமானதாக இருக்கும் என கருதலாம்.