Growing up in a multilingual family and community, I was always curious about how the expression of feelings and sentiments differs across languages and culture. As a non-native English teacher, at times I struggle with expressing my thoughts in English as translation is a difficult task when one wants to keep the essence of what the author wants to express. When I was translating the poem “Oriental” by Jenny Yang Cropp the first challenge was to capture the subtleties in translation and avoid over-expressing the author’s emotions. Something else that I found interesting while translating "Oriental" was locating similar idioms in Urdu while trying to keep the flow of the poem. For instance, there is no Urdu equivalent idiom for “hiding in plain sight”. Translating a poem can become difficult with regards to sentence breaks, especially when the two languages have different sentence structures. Sentences in English for example follow the Subject+Verb+Object pattern whereas Urdu is written following the Subject+Object+Verb structure. Therefore, to convey the meaning accurately at times I had to deviate from the sentence structure used in the original poem. Similarly, following the change of tenses was not straightforward as the meaning might change if one is to use the same tenses in Urdu. So I had to make adjustments accordingly to keep the meaning intact. What made it possible for me to convey the author’s message in Urdu was the shared experience of living as an outsider, coming from a different culture and speaking a different language in the United States. I could relate to every single word, and thus translating it took me on an emotional journey. It didn’t feel like someone else's thoughts. What I want to accomplish by translating this poem into Urdu is that the readers take a peek into the complex world of people living in western societies coming from different backgrounds and working to make their dreams into realities.
The second poem that I translated is “Testimony” by Kazim Ali. As the poem explores the existential dilemmas that one might face when one comes across another culture, I could relate to the author. The central theme that is discussed is questioning one’s faith and feeling torn between two ideologies and the futile effort of holding on to something that is deeply rooted in one’s being but is slowly slipping away. Translating this poem, I could sense that on one hand the poem presents a plethora of varied interpretations, but on the other hand this might baffle the readers of the translation who may find it hard to grasp the existential conflicts taking place in the author's mind. I took the liberty to use simple, clear and concise language to circumvent the obscurities and make it easier to understand for Urdu readers. Here again I encountered the problem of keeping the same flow of changes of tenses, and I used tenses in Urdu to portray the most accurate meaning.
About the Translator:
Shahzadi Laibah Burq is a multilingual speaker of Urdu, English, Persian/Dari, Pashto, and Punjabi. She is currently doing her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics at Arizona State University. Her research interests include L2 pedagogy, language planning and policy in higher education, and cognitive linguistics. Burq did her Bachelors in English Language and Literature from a University in Pakistan. She taught ESL for four years and became an enthusiastic advocate for linguistic diversity in academia. As an instructor, She takes a translanguaging stance and encourages the use of students' full multilinguistic, multimodal and semiotic repertoire to create inclusivity and equity among students.
Translations:
"Oriental" by Jenny Yang Cropp (Urdu)
"Testimony" by Kazim Ali (Urdu)
With grateful acknowledgment to translation reviewers: Sayed Hadeed Hassan & Aqsa Maryam