In most of the world outside the U.S., it exists only in very tiny pockets, if at all. Recently, I saw a map that showed where the language is still spoken. I can’t imagine that this movie will make people more inclined to learn it. My real fear, of course, is that one day Pig Latin will die out. If you don’t master it, you’re at a disadvantage speaking dialogue in which literally every word ends with that sound. To provide the correct lilt to this musical tongue, you must practice the crucial “ay” phoneme, so that you make your sentences sing. (Full disclosure: as a leading Pig Latin linguist and scholar, I was hired as the intimacy coach for “anna-Yay arenina-Kay” ’s love scenes.) Unfortunately, the film’s actors were not up to the challenges of Hummel’s script. He should have stuck to English the results were distressing. Hummel, he compounded his offenses by writing a screenplay of the novel he translated. What interested me even more was the velocity and refraction achieved by looking at a text through these differing lenses.Īs for Mr. As well-informed readers will recall, the work that resulted went on to win many prizes. and the U.K., I then translated the French version into English on my own by simply guessing at the meanings. Wanting to publish the book in both the U.S. When I completed a manuscript that I was happy with, I hired an expert to translate it into French, a language I do not speak. I wrote my first memoir entirely in Pig Latin and never felt so free. In my professional life, I became a writer, but I never forsook my childhood languages-although English, the tongue of the oppressor-parents, was to be avoided. (Nolan’s father did, in fact, wrestle professionally, under the ring name The Genius.) When questioned about opening the novel in this way, Nolan fils said that he felt it was the duty of the translator to convey the spirit of the original rather than hide behind word-for-word literalness-and I would agree. Hummel begins the first chapter ponderously: “ All-yay appy-hay amilies-fay are-yay alike-yay. . . .” Nolan, in contrast, had chosen to leave out that sentence entirely and substitute one about how his “ ad-day” (“dad”) was an “ ofessional-pray estler-wray” (“professional wrestler”). Much of the childlike joy imparted to the text by Nolan and his fellow-translators has been lost, I’m sorry to report. Recently, I returned to the novel, this time in its unabridged original form, translated by Evelyn Hummel, who apparently is an adult. The principal translator, Billy Nolan, was a fully proficient speaker. version of olstoy-Tay’s “anna-Yay arenina-Kay” in the abridged translation done by Mrs. I even prefer to read novels in it, because it makes me feel at home. Other members of my linguistic community will tell you that I’m fiercely proud of my fluency and stand up for the language whenever it is misused. Among linguists, it’s known as Demotic Ay-speak, for the sake of precision, and to remove any allusion to pigs (which have nothing to do with the language). The earthy, untrammelled, and lyrical other language that I’m referring to was derived originally from Latin, hence its common name, Pig Latin. Because I am aware of how frustrating it is when people drop foreign-language expressions into their speech and expect the listener to understand, I will translate: entence-say, in English, is the singular noun “sentence,” and en-thay is the temporal adverb “then.” You’ll notice that I did it just en-thay. Even today, I find myself going back and forth, sometimes even in the same entence-say. I grew up multilingual and learned in earliest childhood to switch effortlessly between languages.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |