[নোঙর 2016] Lost in Translation : Audity Binte Tareq

The notion that one could effortlessly weave back and forth from two vastly different languages was an illusion, a disillusionment that lifted as I grew older. It started with the struggle to express myself. I am angry; my entire being reduced to words that were so largely oversimplified that I was barely a five year old. Yet, those were the only words I could communicate to my mother when she probed why I had a sour expression on my face, shackled by a distinct challenge to form the right words, the right words for irritation, or exasperation, or aggravation or being livid with rage. No, in Bengali my emotions were like colours on a monochrome, an absolute scale of blue, red or yellow blind to the thousands, maybe millions of shades, hues and tints that overlapped and interacted to create an endless spectrum. No, in Bengali it was just anger.The overtones and nuances lost in translation, trapped meaninglessly in the obscure folds of my brain. Instead, English had assumed that expansive spectrum, becoming the language of my thought, emotion and soul such that everything I expressed in Bengali were merely projections, ghosts of thoughts, wispy threads bearing shameful semblance to the original. As the complexity of my emotions increased, the wispier and thinner those threads became; until I wondered if they were there at all.

Yet, I could not alienate myself from the language I mouthed my first word in, Ma, one that gave voice to my most intrinsic needs as a child. A language I still clunkily elapse into when I don the heavily ornamented South Asian punjabi suit, dining over daal and naan with cousins, cracking inside jokes that were distinct only to Bengali. These jokes were in snippets of perplexing Bengali words that could not be translated into English without diluting their cultural significance.‘’What is the meaning of the word you used to insult your sister?’’ quizzed my friend. The translation was obvious, ‘’Well, a goat’’. Why a goat, she was greatly confounded. Translating and verbalising it in English, did make goat sound like a misplaced insult. Yet I had been habituated to it.

These words were unwelcome trespassers, intrusions in my consciousness. A small hapless force crusading against the formidable battalion of English words. They lost against insurmountable odds, victims of war that would suffer the fate of suppression; words I would actively bar myself from maybe typing into a text message. However in remarkable streaks of defiance, these words fight back, forcing me to acknowledge how inescapably infused Bengali was with my self-expression.

Therefore, my consciousness had become a warzone constantly struggling to establish a balance. It was like having one foot each on two parallel boats- you may lean on one side but lean too heavily, and risk keeling over. All you can do is straddle between the two, an unmistakable part of each, yet strangely estranged from both. Like a helpless insect I was entrapped in the web of languages until reconciliation presented itself in the most unexpected but poignant manner. As a volunteer for the international debate tournaments, I was assigned to the Indian team; a group of 5 who flitted between fluent English and clunky Hindi. Like me, they were the generation of Indians who were educated in English. It was however, their sense of comfort with inadequate hindi that overwhelmed me. Sheer compulsion led me to ask ‘’Do you ever struggle with the two languages? ‘’
‘’Hindi is an asset–’’
‘’More words to express yourself!’’
‘’It increases sensitivity to language–’’

Their responses dumbfounded me. They had somehow presented two opposing forces as one, an elite force that was ostensibly sensitive to the intricacies of language. Perhaps this sensitivity stemmed from the consciousness that language could vary extraordinarily; each a composite entity with perfect solidarity between all it’s components. When converted to another form, the beauty was squandered. While this awareness led me to be careful with words, it had inadvertently bred the parochial sentiment that fluency in one language came at the expense of the other, that coexistence threatened each other’s beauty. I pit them as adversaries only to realise that battle was eternally ongoing. I sided with English and it’s deadly frontline soldiers while undermining Bengali and it’s stockpile of guerilla tactics. I had eyes only for the inadequacies of my Bengali, English a defence mechanism to smolder away those inadequacies. Blinded by the monomania, I never considered their potential as one massive armada, a fearsome force. I started finding strange comfort in the Bengali I spoke to my mother, interspersed with English.

The realisation was alarmingly simple- bilingualism meant that our native tongue never left our peripheral vision, what was important was to embrace it with all its inadequacies. English may be my first language but it won’t stop me from calling my sister a goat in Bengali.

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Audity Binte Tareq: Writing to her is both profoundly relaxing and cathartic – a means to indulge herself and at the same time make greater sense of the world around her. She is the daughter of Tareq Mohammad Atiqur Rashid (27).