Telugu Translations
Krishna Kandadai
This is reg. a posting about translation of some English words into
Telugu.(e.g Railway signal to "Dhooma Sakata something something..").
I wonder why we Telugus are very fond of using very long names not
only for us but even for translations. (Unfortunately my name is also
like that but shortened it after entering U.S).
Coming to the topic of translations, why do we have to put the entire
meaning into the translation? As such the word "Signal" in English means
"indication" or "Soochi". It is used in many contexts and according to
the situations, people understand what it is being referred to. So, in
Telugu why should we use a "Loooooooooooong" word for Railway Signal
and another "very looooooooooooooooooong" word for Road traffic
signals and some other "THE LONGEST" word for other type of signal? Has
this become simply a (Telugu) Habit or a sort of "Ardham leni Pani". I
suppose, even Telugu Academy coins this types of practically unusable
words. Let us call a "signal" a "signal". Everybody agrees that the beauty
of any word or sentence is lost when it is translated. Some words
because of their nature cannot be translated truly in other
languages. So why waste time in creating "Aanjaneyudi tokalu"?
Any comments are welcome........
Krishna Kandadai
--
Nageswara G. Prasad
Krishna Kandadai <kkri...@freenet.scri.fsu.edu> wrote:
>Dear Readers!
>This is reg. a posting about translation of some English words into
>Telugu.(e.g Railway signal to "Dhooma Sakata something something..").
>
>
>Any comments are welcome........
>
>Krishna Kandadai
This topic has come up lot of times. I completely agree with you krishna
when you point out that most of the "translations" are pure BS. Some
just do it for fun (GOD bless their sense of humor!). And some (NTR
would be a nice specimen) take it seriously. Either these people must
be VERY stupid, or they are confused between 'translation' and (should
I say) 'encylopedia".
You don't need to explain all the uses,chemistry and what-not of something
to just name it. For ex. if you call water 'nIru', you don't say "kALLu,
cEtulu, mukku,.........., kaDukkonE, sAmbaar,cAru,........, vanDukonE,
etc. jalamu". You simply say 'nIru' because there is a name conveniently
available for it. The only reason prompting these supra-geniuses to
strain their (d)brains is because there is no available word for it
in classical telugu. If tra etc, were available to us when telugu
itself evolved, we surely would have a simple TELUGU word for itself
and its related. So, all we have to do is just live with it. If you
can't, just do what the English have done. Adopt it from some other
language and say its your own. But please don't mess around with
telugu. Needless to say, if you insist, I would be least bothered
if you mess around with your reputations.
Reason divides sanity from insanity.
--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ *******GO'L'LA'