မုန်း၍မဟူ, မမလေး
I was killing some time in a bookstore in Bangkok recently while waiting to meet up with some friends. By chance I wandered past a shelf and this art deco Veronica-Lempicka-esque cover caught my eye and I happened to pick it up. I nearly fell over when I read the back cover and discovered the book was by a Burmese author, and was the first book published in English translation from the former hermit kingdom of Burma. A country virtually shut off from the modern world for nearly fifty years, there was as little leaving Burma as there was going in, and the country remained a black hole on many world-readers' lists.
Although one of the country's very few female authors, Ma Ma Lay is widely acknowledged to be one of Burma's greatest twentieth-century writers. Her stories are known for authentic portrayals of modern Burmese society. Not Out of Hate, originally published in Burmese in 1955, explores the impact of the West on Burmese culture and society, as told through the story of a young, small-town woman who marries a Westernised man. The well-written story was made more poignant when post-reading contemplation led me to see the book as an allegory for the country as a whole.
As a translator myself, I found it quite interesting that Not Out of Hate's translator, Margaret Aung-Thwin, made frequent recourse to the use of footnotes to explain contextual and cultural elements of the book. Footnotes are certainly one possible strategy for translators to use when they encounter a concept that's difficult to translate because it doesn't exist in the other language, or a situation the foreign readers wouldn't understand because they lack the same cultural references. The general view is, however, that they are a distraction that breaks the flow of reading the text, and, as such, are rarely used by most translators. It's interesting to see through the use of footnotes here, the details and nuances that must sometimes be left by the wayside when translating otherwise.
