The Art of Translation (as a Fan!)

As Filipinos, we know (and I hope that we still care) that August is National Language Month (or in our native tongue: Buwan ng Wika). To celebrate and to commemorate at the same time our appreciation of the Inang Wika (Mother Tongue), most of the schools usually hold activities such as Sabayang Pagbigkas (Group Oration) or Dula-Dulaan (Role Playing) in which the national language (be it called Tagalog, Pilipino, Filipino) is mainly used in performances. Some of the radio programs who mainly use English as their medium of conversation try to set a day of their program just to talk in Filipino (I heard one, and it's so funny, but I salute them in being proud of our identity).

And I, as an ordinary citizen (and now a blogger), am very proud of Filipino language too. I love learning different languages, but using Filipino makes me proud of who I am. So to help our country propagate further the use of Filipino in this modern era where English is everywhere (including this blog post), I decided to do one of the hobbies I love the most - and that is doing translation from English to Filipino and vice-versa. And my victim article is a Wikipedia post that is currently close to my heart - the article of the most popular English-Irish pop boy band today, One Direction.

Screenshot of the 1D article that I translated from its original English post.

When I first made up my mind to translate the 1D (popular nickname for One Direction) Wiki article, I thought this would be chicken (I mean, easy), because I already had a non-professional experience in translating a book chapter in Asian History during my high school days. But when I pulled out the content and started typing automatically the words popping out of my mind, I started getting puzzled and even I amazed myself because one, I know a lot, and second, I still don't know a lot. I know a lot in a way that I can put into words the Filipino equivalent of English sentences in just a second or two. However, I'm still an amateur when doing translation, because though I know the meaning of a certain word, phrase or sentence, translating it becomes hard because there are no Filipino equivalent words of those words. This actually makes me further realise that our national language is lacking terms, especially those that are technical and cybernetic in nature. But when it comes to the thoughts and ideas, our language is enough to translate those lines. And actually, it becomes clearer and more descriptive when translated to Filipino.

Some of the challenges I faced when doing the translation were the use of active (karaniwan) and passive (di-karaniwan) voices in sentences, terms that are specific to the subject or genre such as "electropop" or "guitar riff," and even commentaries that are too new to me such as "perfectly coiffed dos" or "almost-too-put-together preppy style." But the great thing I got from this was that by translating a foreign material to your language, you get to know the topic deeper, and every single detail of the material should be interpreted in a way it is understood in the original language. I can still remember the book that I read during my high school days about the art of translation. It was said there that "ang pagsasaling-wika ay parang paglilipat ng kaluluwa ng isang patay sa isa pang katawan" (language translation is like transferring a dead's soul to another one's body). Perhaps it was said so because there are lots of things to consider when making any translation. You shouldn't just be good in Tagalog and English languages itself, but also you're familiar with the culture surrounding those languages.

Now basically, since I am a fan of the lads (considering that I am too old to be a fan of any teen groups), I really gave myself a push just to contribute to the Tagalog section of Wikipedia, because I noticed that there are still few articles available on this very informative site. Most of the stuff are still written in English and also other major languages such as Spanish or French. Even the Bahasa Indonesia has a lot of Wiki articles about almost anything and everything! So I asked myself, why not use my skills to help the Tagalog section grow? This is actually a great step to share what I know, and who knows, this might also convince other Filipinos to join Wiki and contribute in expanding the Tagalog section. And I don't worry if I get wrong with some of my translation, because the community will notice those lines and help me correct or revise those. It's a win-win case, because you learned something new, and of course they already contributed something to the community. Perfect scenario!

So, if you want to check the product of my work, you may check my One Direction in Tagalog Wiki: http://tl.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Direction. I hope through this, many will be encouraged too to be part of the translating team and help Tagalog Wiki to expand. To those who accept the challenge, good luck! :)