Mudure Translating Proverbs
Mudure Translating Proverbs
Mudure Translating Proverbs
TRANSLATING PROVERBS
Rendering proverbs from one language into another is one of the most
difficult issues in translation practice. The proverb is an extremely complex lexical
structure that belongs to the oral tradition and to the anonymous genius of the
language. Its scholarly counterpart is the aphorism that has a well-known artist and
which is constructed according to an often very complex poetics. Paremiological
collections appeared already in Antiquity. They were appreciated and judged by
comparison/interference with scholarly famous collections of great sayings by
great authors.
The proverb can be considered an abridged form of gnostic literature, the
conclusion of a fiction that is often presupposed or abridged. The Romanian
linguist Pavel Ruxăndoiu analyzed the relationship between the word and the
proverb and came to the following conclusion: “If we analyze it in connection with
the word, the proverb is, therefore, a more complex linguistic unit, characterized by
a higher level of organization of the elements making up the inventory of a
language. This complexity is the consequence of the fact that proverbs are not
themselves elements of the inventory of language, but stable forms of organization
within which each component is in contextual relations determined by the other
components” (Ruxăndoiu 2003, p. 47)1.
Context must be understood here in the Coşerian sense as linguistic con-text,
cultural con-text, and the universe of the discourse (the universal system of
significations to which a discourse belongs and which determines its meanings and
its capacity to be understood). According to Eugeniu Coşeriu: “By the universe of
the discourse we mean the universal system of significations to which a discourse
(or statement) belongs and which determines its validity and meaning” (Coşeriu
2004, p. 324)2. Literature, mythology, science, they are all universes of the
discourse, i.e. they are world of references for the discourse. According to Coşeriu,
(cf. Teoria limbajului) the correlation and the interference of all these con-texts and
universes of significations give the features of the paremiologic discourse.
1
„Raportat la cuvânt, proverbul constituie, deci, o unitate lingvistică mai complexă, la un nivel
mai înalt de organizare a elementelor care alcătuiesc inventarul limbii Această complexitate reiese din
faptul că proverbele nu constituie ele însele elemente al inventarului limbii, ci forme stabile de organizare,
în interiorul cărora fiecare componentă intră în relaţii contextual determinate cu celălalte componente”.
2
„Prin univers de discurs înţelegem sistemul universal de semnificaţii căruia îi aparţine un
discurs (sau enunţ) şi care îi determină validitatea şi sensul”.
preserve the richness of the English oral culture already under threat by the modern
policies of land exploitation and social management. As soon as the English
aristocracy understood that it could make more money by “enclosing” land and
driving their former serfs and yeomen away, raising sheep and limiting traditional
farming, traditional medieval, oral culture was doomed. The serfs and yeoman
were driven away and obliged to find work in the wool manufactures of the time,
oral culture was doomed. In Britain, modernity found it dying in the slums of the
big Victorian urban agglomerations.
Iuliu Zanne’s agenda is different but he shares with Heywood the awareness
that an oral traditional culture is dying out. Zanne collects the proverbs from an
area that surpasses the boundaries of today’s Romania as a marker of a Romanian
national identity that is still not very sure of its modern contours and where the
oral/aural still plays an extremely important role in shaping the literary, the formal
and highest level of a national(-ized) culture. Both personalities, both cultures feel
the need to hoard the proverbs, but for different purposes. With Heywood, they are
a marker of a national past, with Zanne they are the foundation of a national future.
European contexts are different and proverbs are the texts that provide excellent
con-texts for these socio-cultural evolutions.
Proverbs also constitute the material of literary works both in English and in
Romanian literature. Michael Drayton (1563–1631) published Idea in 1619. It is a
collection of sonnets, a genre very much in vogue during the Elizabethan and
Jacobean. Interesting, for us, is “Sonnet 59” also entitled “To Proverbs” where the
poet and Love discuss the amorous excitement exchanging proverbs. The intensity
of the allegorical dialogue reminds one, on the other hand, of George Herbert’s
ardent Love poem, a masterpiece of the Baroque.
As Love and I late harboured in one inn,
With Proverbs thus each other entertain.
„In Love there is no lock”, thus I begin:
„Fair words make fools”, replieth he again.
„Who spares to speak, doth spare to speed”, quoth I.
„As well”, saith he, „too forward as too slow”.
„Fortune assists the boldest”, I reply.
„A hasty man”, quoth he, „ne’er wanted woe!”
„Labour is light, where love”, quoth I, „doth pay”.
Saith he, „Light’s burden’s heavy, if for born.”
Quoth I, „The main lost, cast the bye away!”
„You have spun a fair thread”, he replies in scorn.
And having thus awhile each other thwarted,
Fools as we meet, no fools again we parted (p. 28).
Important for us is the use of the paremiological discourse as individual cues
in the dialogue that tries to enlighten us about the meaning of love. The poem is a
delightful game of wit and paradoxes constructed with the help of these exquisite
fragments of experiential wisdom which are the proverbs. The delightful sonnet
reminds one of the intelligence competitions organized by the lovers from
Shakespeare’s comedies. The lovers want to know each other before getting
intimate, namely, they are interested in testing each others’ intelligence before
sentimental sincerity and erotic capabilities.
In 1847 the Romanian Anton Pann similarly uses the Romanian
paremiological material in his famous Povestea vorbii (The Story of Speech). Pann
intends to comment on human nature and experience using proverbs and sayings. If
the competition in wit and intelligence is similar with Drayton and Pann, the result
of the experiential enterprise is different. There is nothing more futile then love,
opines Pann, for instance in one of his proverb-ed narratives: „Again, on Love and
Hatred” („Despre amor şi ură iarăşi”)3. A certain mysogynism – woman is
incapable of genuine love, she has to be controlled and dominated – is Pann’s
advice to those who want to take women’s feelings and emotions too seriously. In
the end, there is always a measure for measure and woman and the erotic attraction
are no exception to this call for sobriety and caution in marital experiences. The
woman who paid no attention to her first husband will be utterly punished by her
second partner who will not trust her and will put her to work in exchange for
supposed sexual fulfilment.
The way in which proverbs are used in the two verse narratives is extremely
interesting. With Drayton, the proverbs, the markers of an aural/oral culture, are
exterior to the love story falling into decrepitude. Proverbs form a kind of
moralistic, cautious mise-en-abîme to the narration which is about the encounter of
Love and I at an inn. With Pann, proverbs form the very substance of the narrative,
there is no narrative framing. The distance between the two writers between the
two texts is the distance between two cultures and the way in which they
constructed their own identity (suppressing or allowing the communal, on the one
hand, giving the individual the possibility to hide behind the communal, on the
other hand. The universes of the two cultural discourses are utterly different. With
Drayton, Love is an allegorical partner of discussion, with Anton Pann the
interlocutor is the implied reader. There is a significant difference in the immediacy
and the nearness of perception between the two texts. Pann belongs to a culture
where the cult of the individual has not been able to stifle yet the pleasure of the
community to judge the others and create a sense of comm-union by this evaluation.
This difference is emblematic for changes brought in by modernity whose early
harbinger was already in the British Isles, in the seventeenth century.
3
„Lelea joacă până-n noapte, / Iar bărbatu-i e pe moarte. / Şi / De focul bărbatului / Joacă-n
capul satului. / Şi / Lelea joacă, dănţuieşte, / Iar bărbatu-i pătimeşte. / Şi / Cumetrii bărbatu-i zace / Şi
ea face ce îi place. / Zicând: / Dacă m-am căsătorit / Nu m-am şi călugărit. / Că / De drag ce-l vede, /
Din ochi parcă-l pierde. / Şi / Pân-a nu-i muri bărbatul, / Ea a dat mâna cu altul. / Şi / În focul lui c-a
murit / În grab’ s-a căsătorit. / Dar / A dat peste dracu. / Că / Pe dragul l-a căutat, pe dracul l-a găsit. /
Şi acum / Buna noastră gazdă / Se dete pe brazdă. / Ca căluşaua, / Se dă încoci-încolo, se loveşte de
tânjală, / Şi-apoi vine singură la ham. / Şi / Trage ca calul la grăunţe. / Că / Toate îşi au leacul. / Şi /
Arţagul îşi găseşte pârţagul” (Pann 2001, p. 228–229).
truth, translation is a betrayal but in this case what did Micu betray? Scholarly
honesty beyond any doubt.
Also in 1999 Ioan Creţiu published Vade mecum. O culegere poliglotă de
proverbe (Creţiu 1999). The book is very enjoyable because of the graphic material
that illustrates certain proverbs. Proverbs are grouped thematically and they are
given equivalents into Hungarian, Russian, English, French, German, Italian,
Spanish, and Latin. Creţiu’s book of proverbs is a thematic one relying on the
similarity of the universe of the paremiological discourse and, if possible, the
similarity of cultural contexts of the source text and the target text. The equivalence
here is looked for at the level of thought and not at the level of linguistic
expression. Creţiu does not translate proverbs but looks for equivalents of
metaphorical or logical thought.
In 2005 Monica Mihali-Oniga and Emilia Vulturar published a Dictionary of
English–Romanian Proverbs (Mihali-Oniga, Vulturar 2005). The book targets a
didactic readership. The authors want to offer students and teachers of English a
selection of English proverbs arranged according to their root word. The study of
proverbs reveals the cultural specificity of the English and the Romanian languages
as well as their intrinsic philosophical grid. The Romanian is much more concrete,
the English is more abstract and has lost that touch with the rural universe which
makes the charm of the Romanian saying. In the preface, the authors pretend that
“they tried to find the equivalent Romanian proverbs, and when they did not find
any, they made us of translation in order to render the meaning, and the stylistic
nuance typical of the English proverb” (p. 5)4. But this promise remains
superfluous and the authors translate literally the proverbs even where there are
excellent equivalents pointing to the differences between the English and the
Romanian forma mentis.
Here are some examples:
“Too many cooks spoil the broth” (p. 26).
becomes:
Mai mulţi bucătari strică supa (p. 26)
although
Copilul cu multe moaşe rămâne cu buricul netăiat –
would have been much better.
“Like cow, like calf” (27).
becomes:
Cum e vaca, şi viţelul (27),
4
„S-a încercat găsirea unor proverbe româneşti echivalente, iar atunci când nu s-a găsit unul,
s-a recurs la o traducere care să redea sensul şi coloratura stilistică, specifică proverbului englezesc”
(Mihali-Oniga, Vulturar 2005, p. 5).
much beyond the level of human will. On the contrary, in the English version there
is a sense of a divinity that wills our destiny and whom we can influence by
prayers and good behaviour. If destiny cannot be understood, in the Romanian
proverb, in the English one there is a logical system that might help us understand
both our lives and the universe.
Serious problems arose when we (Mudure and Proctor) had to deal with very
well known proverbs. In such situations, we have preferred translation, taking the
source proverb as a text in itself and translating it.
Apa trece, pietrele rămân (p. 13)
Becomes:
“Water flows, rocks remain” (p. 13).
Romanian proverbs reveal a rural universe with specific objects. We have
tried adaptation, in such cases, as for instance in the ironical proverb:
Popa, pentru o babă surdă, nu toacă de două ori (p. 49)
had to become:
“The priest doesn’t spend two hours ringing the bells for one deaf old woman”
(p. 49).
The creator of the proverbs is not prudish. Fertility is looked at as a natural,
normal phenomenon and shame does not mean prudery for the Romanian peasant.
Therefore, we (Mudure and Proctor) were not afraid of thinking of the meaning of
such proverbs as:
Cel scopit nu cunoaşte cinstea fetei (p. 49)
which becomes, in translation:
“A gelding wouldn’t know about a girl’s honesty” (p. 49).
Mudure and Proctor were equally unashamed of the rustic manners and the
eroticism implied in the following saying:
Omul deştept găseşte să scarpine pe femeie unde-o mănâncă” (p. 96)
which becomes in translation:
“The clever man scratches where he knows the woman itches” (p. 96).
For the Romanian peasant, all the functions of the body are equally normal
and acceptable. False prudery is very far of the rural mentality which has the
directness of a simple mind that lives in nature and with nature and for whom there
is nothing shameful about the body and its biological functions.
Lucrul împrumutat
Plăteşte un căcat (p. 85)
becomes:
this in mind: proverbs are the generous gift of the past generations who share with
us their meanings and their effort to humanize themselves and their world.
Experience and work are unavoidable. In other words,
Ca să stingi un foc, trebuie să te-arunci în el (p. 17)
“To put out a fire you must throw yourself into it” (p. 17).
BIBLIOGRAFIE
Barker Mawr 2009 = Romanian Fairy Legends and Tales. Translated by E. Barker Mawr, London, Abela
Pub.
Barker Mawr 2011 = E. Barker Mawr, Analogous Proverbs in Ten Languages (1885), C. George
Săndulescu and Lidia Vianu (eds.), Bucureşti, Editura pentru Studiul Limbii Engleze prin Literatură.
Beza 1921 = Marcu Beza, Rumanian Proverbs. Selected and translated by Marcu Beza, London,
A. M. Philipot.
Coşeriu 2004 = Eugeniu Coşeriu, Teoria limbajului. Cinci studii. Traducere de Nicolae Saramandu,
Bucureşti, Editura Enciclopedică.
Creţiu 1999 = Ioan Creţiu, Vade mecum. Culegere poliglotă de proverbe, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Echinox.
Drayton 1928 = Michael Drayton, Idea, London, Chatto and Windus.
Gorunescu 2000 = Elena Gorunescu, Dicţionar de proverbe francez–român, român–francez, Bucureşti,
Editura Teora.
Heywood 1966 = John Heywood, The Proverbs, epigrams, and miscellanies of John Heywood, John
Stephen Farmer (ed.), Guildford, Charles W. Troylen.
Lefter 1974 = Virgil Lefter, Dicţionar de proverbe englez–român, Bucureşti, Editura Ştiinţifică.
Micu, Besoiu 1999 = Anamaria Micu, Mioara Besoiu, Proverbe (selection). Traducere de Anamaria
Micu, Deva, Editura Emia.
Mihali-Oniga, Vulturar 2005 = Monica Mihali-Oniga, Emilia Vulturar, Dictionary of English–Romanian
Proverbs. Dicţionar de proverbe englez–român, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Limes.
Mudure, Proctor 2010 = Proverbe româneşti. Romanian Proverbs. Selection by Călin Manilici.
Translated into English by Mihaela Mudure and Richard Proctor. Drawings by Călin Stegerean,
Cluj-Napoca, Editura Pro Vita.
Pann 2001 = Anton Pann, Culgere de proverburi sau Povestea vorbii, Bucureşti, Editura Garamond.
Rosetti 2004 = Dimitrie R. Rosetti, Dicţionarul contemporanilor din România (1800–1898), ediţia a
II-a, ediţie de Dan Jumară, Iaşi, Editura Alfa.
Ruxăndoiu 2003 = Pavel Ruxăndoiu, Proverb şi context, Bucureşti, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti.
Zanne 2003–2004 = Iuliu A. Zanne, Proverbele românilor din România, Basarabia, Bucovina, Ungaria,
Istria şi Macedonia. Ediţie de Mugur Vasiliu, Bucureşti, Asociaţia Română pentru Cultură şi
Ortodoxie, Editura Scara.
Cuvinte-cheie: proverbe, traducere, hieroglif, literal, context coşerian, parafrază.
Keywords: proverbs, translation, hieroglyph, literal, coşerian context, paraphrase.
Universitatea „Babeş-Bolyai”
Facultatea de Litere
Cluj-Napoca, str. Horea, 31
mmudure@yahoo.com