[lg policy] Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them

[Fierman, William]

Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them
By THOMAS FULLER<http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/f/thomas_fuller/index.html>JULY 19, 2015
Photo
[http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/07/20/world/20burmese-1/20burmese-1-master675.jpg]
The printing of a Burmese-language newspaper in Yangon. A historian called Burmese "a liability and a constraining factor" on the country's future. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times
YANGON, Myanmar - It's the dawn of democracy in Myanmar<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/myanmar/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>. If only the Burmese had their own word for it.
As this former dictatorship opens to the world, language is a stumbling block.
For half a century, Myanmar<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/myanmar/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> was so cut off from the outside world that people were jailed for owning an unauthorized fax machine. As the rest of the world was hurtling into the information age, the strict censorship of publications, limited access to global media and creaking connections to the Internet stunted the evolution of the Burmese language, leaving it without many words that are elsewhere deemed essential parts of the modern political and technical vocabulary.
Today, as Myanmar embraces change, many foreign words are being imported wholesale, but their meanings are getting lost in translation.
The English word democracy was subsumed into the Burmese language decades ago - it is pronounced dee-mock-rah-SEE - but for many Burmese it remains a foreign and somewhat abstract concept. There are no native words for other common ideas like racism, federal or globalization.
By The New York Times
"Burmese has a far poorer political vocabulary than English," said U Thant Myint-U, a historian who also serves as an adviser to the president. "At a time when everything is about the country's political future, it's a liability and a constraining factor."
When foreign experts recommended that the government pass a computer privacy law, Burmese translators scratched their heads because there is no precise translation for privacy in Burmese. The very idea may not exist, possibly because there is little privacy in a society in which people traditionally lived and slept in common areas.
Interpreters are also stumped when parades of foreign advisers and scholars preach the virtues of strong institutions. While there is a word for an organization in Burmese, linguists say, there is no single word that conveys the meaning of an institution.
Under British colonial rule, English words leached liberally into Burmese, yielding such Burmese words as budget and beer. But the xenophobic military governments of the past five decades prohibited the use of English loan words on the grounds that they were culturally disruptive, scholars say.
Since the military officially relinquished power in 2011, foreigners have been pouring into the country. Mr. Thant Myint-U, whose grandfather U Thant was the secretary general of the United Nations in the 1960s, says he has been in meetings between the president and foreigners where translation is done by some of the country's top interpreters. "Ten percent is still lost in translation," he said.
Vicky Bowman, a former British ambassador to Myanmar, says 10 percent is optimistic. "I would say it's more like 30 percent to 50 percent," she said.
Ms. Bowman is director of an organization called the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business. When she and her colleagues wanted to translate the name of her organization for Burmese speakers, it took hours. They came up with a Burmese name that in English sounds like a bad Internet robo-translation: "Myanmar economic sector having and assuming the responsibility, support-help department."
The structure of the Burmese language, part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, varies considerably from English. Written Burmese has no spaces between words and is generally wordier than English.
Lost in Translation
As Myanmar opens to the world, words and concepts that do not exist in Burmese are proving to be a stumbling block.
Privacy
No word in Burmese; often translated as personal affairs.
Burmese is far from unique in having words that are difficult to translate, said John Okell, a scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and one of the leading linguists of the Burmese language.
"Plainly, between any two languages there are words in one that seem to have no equivalent in the other," he said. "As Myanmar opens up, an increasing number of English words are being imported and slowly standardized. It's a gradual process."
No one is suggesting these linguistic hurdles are insurmountable; concepts can be explained and understood even where no precisely translatable word exists. The borrowed word democracy has since been assimilated into Burmese and is even in the name of the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy.
But some question how well the term is understood by Myanmar's 51 million people after so many years of brutal suppression.
"All these things - democracy, institutions, even freedom - I don't think Myanmar people know what true freedom is or what to do with it," said U Thaung Su Nyein, the editor in chief of 7Day Daily, a Burmese-language newspaper. "For them being free might mean, 'As long as no one is knocking on my door in the middle of the night, I'm free.' "
Even words and phrases that are not difficult to translate can have very different shades of meaning because of the legacy of military rule.
The term "rule of law" has become a mantra for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the British-trained Nobel Peace laureate and icon of democracy. She rarely fails to mention the importance of the concept in speeches around the country.
But to the ears of many in Myanmar, the rule of law sounds similar to exhortations by generals to obey the law - the junta's law.
Photo
[http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/07/20/world/20burmese-2/20burmese-2-articleLarge.jpg]
"When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can't explain it in Burmese," said Daw Ei Myat Noe Khin, a software and app developer in Yangon. Credit Adam Dean for The New York Times
Rule of law "is not an attractive concept," said U Pe Myint, a commentator and columnist. "We do not usually equate the rule of law with justice. It has connotations of pacifying, subjugating people. I think most people don't really understand what it means."
A similar problem of interpretation exists in the country's peace talks with ethnic armed groups. Ethnic minorities are demanding a federal system, but federal is a term, directly borrowed from the West, that is still abstract in Myanmar. To military leaders, the word sounds threatening because they link it to secession, Mr. Thant Myint-U said.
"You assume that another person has the same interpretation as you," he said. "But these words can mean very different things to different people."
Myanmar today has one foot in its old dictatorial and paternalistic past and one foot in a Western-inspired dash for democracy. This makes for odd juxtapositions. A recent edition of The New Light of Myanmar, a state-run daily newspaper, had both an article praising the "strength of honest and hard-working peasants" and a story about the American television show "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."
Younger Burmese are growing up exposed to modern technology and foreign concepts, creating a gulf of vocabulary between generations.
A 21-year-old developer who creates apps for Android phones, Daw Ei Myat Noe Khin, says her job is bewildering for some members of her family.
"When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can't explain it in Burmese," she said.
"There is no word in Burmese for developer, so I used the English word programmer," she said. "If they don't understand programmer, I say, 'It's what is inside your phone and makes it work.' "
"They say, 'Oh, it's something to do with computers!' "
And they say it using the English word.
There is no Burmese word for computer. Or phone, for that matter.
A version of this article appears in print on July 20, 2015, on page A4 of the New York edition with the

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20150720/5c6a5338/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 73982 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20150720/5c6a5338/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 51482 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20150720/5c6a5338/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list