-- Arjuna Parakrama
Translation, my back-side neighbour,
Ass my arse, same indifference, Yet
Divided disloyalties in the crack of (post)coloniality.
As if the choice of language-standard-dialect is ever only ours
to make
And keep. Look, now whose keeping whom, and how!
Nothing about much ado, nothing much, no to-do
about it,
Nothing doing, pal, as in the academic style I write:
Translation is the general mode(l) of speech/writing,
Across and within language: something like (mis)translation
At any rate takes place, an excess we must reduce out
To make our meaning stick, and this, if we so wish,
We can see best in/through/by translation in the narrow sense.
At which point you smile indulgently as I scratch
my arse in mid-sentence.
Like Sraffa to Wittgenstein, how do you translate that!
But here it needs no logical form,
For there's nothing like a good quick scratch, or piss in the
garden -
Oh yes, since we're on the subject, kiss my ass as I pick my nose
-
And while you're at it
Try translating all this into limpid civilised (American) English
prose.
Or as we do in Sinhala translations, just leave it out, lest it
pollute
Our culture, traditions, language most of all.
A loose cannon, you say, shaking your head, among
friends,
A pity, such promise wasted. Not you, ensconced globally,
No place in your academic journalese for all this populist whinge,
Eyebrow raised, drink in hand, networking on the run, down
For a quickie conference, some research grant, a meeting
With rural women to brief them on war and peace, and, of course,
To tell them how great they are, now you've put them on the map,
Hurrah.
Let's see you translate this:
"I was born Sinhala, then married a Tamil and now I'm mixed"
-
Aha, "mixed up," you mean, madam. Or mistaken. Or worse
Besides, patronizingly but always polite,
What does it mean to be "born" this or that?
Take me, for instance, you say, pompously, I'm
Only strategically essentialist: US citizenship is merely a legal
f(r)iction
I choose to affect, tenure-tracked for comfort,
All else is parochial, surely, in this late capitalist phase?
Now's the time to drop a name or two, apologetically, of course,
To nuance the argument, rarify the turf.
Like I have done you'll say,
But I write about complicity not so much critique.
Trans-slate for me this more-nuanced-than-thou stance,
Tell me, transliterate, decipher, what-you-will, why
The monolinguality of cosmopolitanism, tongue-twister,
Untranslatable, spills over into para-sites,
Pseudo-scholarship sans the price (some) locals pay.
For the power of that knowledge, the knowledge of this power,
That kills in passing. Feeds our research, stretches foreign funds,
And so on and on.
Then there are the local types who know even less,
Translate, quite literally, through the thin air of their heads,
Producing faeces they mutually admire. Your sneer takes in
Their vulgar nationalisms, my critique, other variations on the
theme,
You who say you are better, parade impeccable
credentials,
Transcribe my ass into your journalese, and then
Gloss (over) the difference it makes to us, to them,
Match cadence, timbre, tone, make it jell, boy, earn your keep,
Anaesthetise violence, trauma, apathy into your post-critical
words.
Anthropologise by other names,
Peddle (travelling) theory by not bearing its burden here
World citizen, scholar, translate this privilege
Into the social cleaving of those beggared by your vantage there.
You publish your words, I did my bit, then, Now
Mine, like the spittle I drool in sleep, accompanied by snores,
Have dribbled away into irrelevance.
_________________________________________________________
Arjuna Parakrama is a critic and social activist
based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
HOME
