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“THE SMELL OF MONSOON WIND” edited on damau.org

Phêrô Bùi

It is usually a big happiness for us idle readers to run accross a Vietnamese piece of literature translated into a different language, not only due to the current critical need for us to be globalized or just one’s curiosity to see how a Vietnamese mermaid is metamorphosed into a foreign princess in her splendid exotic wedding gown, but also because of another legitimate expectation — to simply learn something interesting and useful concerning translating our (very dear) mother tongue into a “step-mother tongue” and/or vice versa, in purely technical or academic terms. Last month, I was glad to read a short fiction by Cung Tích Biền, “Mùi của Gió Mùa”, which is really exciting, and whose English version (“The Smell of Monsoon Wind”) is really fascinating, through which our English students may learn a lot of practical/useful strategies/tactics in the art of language translation. However, readers might feel tempted into asking (not the translator, but the “known-to-be-demanding” editors) a couple of below questions:

#1 - Giọng cụ hiền hòa, hấp dẫn; không dạy đời, không cường điệu; rất chân tình, nhưng thẳng thắn, vì tôn trọng sự thật. => His tone was pleasant, mild, free from didacticism and exaggeration; passionate but frank because he loved truth. [Why not “the truth”, or “truths”? Because very rarely is this noun used as a non-count noun, which can go alone without any determiners such as A(n)/ The/ My/ Any/ Some/…; in most other contexts, however, it should be a count noun, requiring a determiner, unless pluralized (“truths”)]

#2 - lại ăn bận khá phiêu lưu trong mắt cụ. Áo ba lỗ, quần cụt ống, trang diện cỡ May - Cồ => a group of youngsters . . . appeared in casual dress and became a real eyesore to him: sleeveless T-shirt and shorts, with heavy make-up like movie or pop stars. [Why not “T-shirts”, because a singular count noun can hardly go alone without a determiner preceeding it? Why not stay parallel with the source text,“Michael (Jackson)”- already a worldwide known symbol?]

#3 - Có đứa con gái cúi xuống lạy ông Cao tổ thì lòi cái khe mông đít đen đen mốc mốc. => When bowing before the altar Ø one of the girls revealed the blackish and moldy cleft between her buttocks. [There seems to be a “missing” comma after the abridged adverb clause, before the main clause?]

#4 - nếu thờ cái nạn nhân thì có mà hàng triệu triệu. => if there were a cult of victims, there would be million and million of souls to worship. [Why not “millions and millions of…”? There must be an “S” at the end of the 2 nouns “million” in this sentence because, like “dozen”/”hundred”/”thousand”/”billion”, this noun is special in that it never takes an “S” if following a numerical such as 1,2,3,…, but when not preceeded by any numericals, it must take an “S”, for example “dozens of books”, ”thousands of dollars”…]

#5 - Đơn giản là thờ cái hệ thống. => Or more simply, ones has better worship the system. [Why not “What should be worshipped is simply the system itself!”? Even if the spelling were now repaired (as “... one had better ...”), it wouldn’t seem all right still, because the semi-modal “HAD BETTER” shouldn’t be used at will: It can be used only if both of the following conditions are met: (i) the situation/the “advisee” is specific, not just generically referred to, and (ii) the advice implies some “warning” that if it isn’t followed, something negative/dangerous may happen. (Raymond Murphy 1997 (2nd edition) English Grammar in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Unit #35, pp. 70-71.)]

#6 - Chưa hề có cái nhân gian Chát, Mạng, Meo, Bờ lốc. => No one entered chatroom. No one surfed the internet. No one set up blogs or corresponded by emails. [Why not “There used to be no Chatting, no Net, no Emails, no Blogs then in the (human) world”? Because “No one entered chatroom / surfed the internet /…” might suggest that “people just refused those modern means of communication despite their availability at that time”!]

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