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This can be used for an intro to translation. It provides several different metaphors for how translation works.

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I include this primer on the translation of poetry with pleasure and diffidence since I dislike dogma or prescription. Why not show preferences, to use Jorge Luis Borges' favorite word for choice, judgment, discrimination, and taste? The ABC itself allows me some escape from a charge of inconstancy in method in that it indicates that method is justified provided it is openly named.

A second reason for diffidence has been a reluctance in this book to emphasize the practice of translation-how, for example, to translate Greek or Spanish verse or verbs into English. For many good reasons the practical methods of how to render work from a particular language into English have been the subject of recent volumes on translation. In a history and theory of translation, practice must be specifically documented, but I have made its example secondary.

With these reservations here are some general observations on the practice of the art of translating poetry.

1. Translation is an art between tongues, and the child born of the art lives forever between home and alien city. Once across the border, in new garb, the orphan remembers or conceals the old town, and appears new-born and different.

Moving between tongues, translation acquires difference. Because the words and grammar of each language differ from every other language, the transference of a poem from one language to another involves differing sounds and prosody. And because there are no perfect word equivalents between languages, or even within the same language (as Borges proves in his story of the mad Menard), perfection in translation is inconceivable.

2. Yet translation of poetry is conceivable. A translation dwells in imperfection, using equivalents and shunning mechanical replicas-which is the dream of literalists who believe in truth. It gives us the other. Or under another name it gives us itself.

3. A translation is never an exact copy. It is different. In translation perfect mimesis is impossible. But a fake or counterfeit of the original is possible, and usually it lacks criminality, since it stays close and calls itself what it is: translation. In many eyes translation resembles a museum reproduction of a Cycladic statue: it is beautiful but has no intrinsic value. It remains merely a bright mirror of an ancient glory. In its worst, barely clothed nudity, it cloaks its exposure with the scarlet T of translation.

Translation is sin, Eve's courageous breakfast leading to forbidden knowledge of the unknown. Outrage in art is desirable, and a bit of felonious deception and license are also healthy. The true counterfeit (an unattributed imitation or re-creation), which is other in sound and devices, may be invisible, go unrecognized, in order to pass on its own in the new mother language. Then, as an unrecognized alien, it will enter the native literature, be absorbed by it, and refresh it.

4. A translation dwells in exile. It cannot return. Those who invoke its former home wish to disenfranchise it. The translated poem should be read as a poem written in the language of the adopted literature, even if it differs because of its origin from any poem ever written in its new tongue. Fray Luis de León wrote that translated poems should not appear foreign but as "nacidas en él y naturales" (as if born and natural in the language). Yet why not some flagrant unnaturalness? Why not shake up English poetry with the sudden arrogant figure of Vladimir Mayakovsky, standing tall in his coalminer's cap, shouting his syllables out to the sky from the Brooklyn Bridge? Why not the ghost of the "disappeared" Osip Mandelstam, reading his alchemic lyrics about Stalin's mustache or his EXILE poems from the snows and ice graves of Voronezh?

Lexical shock renews weary language bones. It is good to drink Turkish coffee in the pampas of the American Midwest.

5. A translation is a friendship between poets. There is a mystical union between them based on love and art. As in ordinary religious mysticism, the problem of ineffability exists: how do you find words to say the unsayable? Since a vision cannot be replicated, you seek equivalents for the other.

When one poet knows the other's tongue, it is a start. If not, a third person, a friendly and responsible human dictionary, can be an intermediary. Enter the informant.

The poet reads the source text or makes conscientious use of an informant to read it. With the informant scholar, the poet translates the poem. The informant is a dictionary, not a poet, useful as a dictionary but risky as a poet.

Although it is best when one poet can chat with the other poet, the ability to chat in the foreign tongue does not create a poet. Nor does knowledge of the language of the original text qualify a translator any more than good knowledge of English makes every English speaker Milton. Poems prepared by a taxidermist, to use Robert Lowell 's words, "are likely to be stuffed birds." So from the King James Version of the Bible to contemporary versions of modern Russian poets, putting together a responsible, literalist informant and a meticulously honest but imaginative writer is preferable to commissioning work from a scholarly nonwriter.

In a translation, without art there can be no friendship between poets.

6. In the art of literature and scholarship, the Platonic good lies in tradition, a code word for theft. Translators are hardcore stealers, but unlike ordinary literary confidence men, the translator gets caught. For a translator, to be "honest" means that if he steals the original for his poem, as Chaucer did, or invents or omits passages from it, as the two Roberts, Lowell and Bly, have frequently done, he will declare the theft or omission openly, as the Roberts do. Give the art a name like paraphrase, imitation, or verse transfer, and the translation police will not arrest you. A poet translator survives as a good confessed thief. The best poet translators-the "original" authors of the Bible, Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Saint John of the Cross-wear masks and have not been caught.

7. Heaven is the instant of translation. The poet in hot anticipation, with all the skills and preparation for walking in paradise, creates.

8. A translation aspires to independence, yet even when apparently achieved, the dream is false. Original work is never independent, nor even wholly original. When handsomely reborn through the word-giving voice of the translator, is the translation a form different from other literature? It is sometimes indistinguishable. When different, it need not be humble and inferior. It is so only by affirmation of a superficial convention that sees poorly and has established feudal hierarchies of value between overlord originals and vassal translations.

The secular poem marks only the last in a string of Buddhist rebirths and transformations. They started long ago, or rather, like time have no beginning. A translation is the first acknowledgement of a string of original Buddhist rebirths.

So all literature is translation and all translation is unique and therefore original. Octavio Paz goes so far as to declare, "Every text is unique and, at the same time, is a translation of another text."

9. A good translation is a good joke. Reader, you are fooled.

Historically, the transformed words have no beginning, do not seek an original author, an original tongue, or first words. And good or bad, beauty or trash, ancient or modern, a joke lurks under the text. So the translator lacks the miracle of creation that served Yahweh when with the utterance of a few syllables, yehi, he translated chaos into light.

Whether wonderful or monstrous, the version is always a version, another working and retelling. Even a recent reading of the source text constitutes one act of translation in an infinite series of prior acts, extending from childhood's acquisition of the first signs and sounds of words to that reading of the source text. Language incessantly transforms itself, slowly like rust, quickly like conquest, and never, along the endless way of self-translation, remains the same.

Instability-eternal transformation-may be uncomfortable, but it is best to live with it. Because the dream of capturing and stilling words must really be seen as an allegory for death, a bad joke, it is better to accept movement-translation-and live with peppy Proteus and Heraclitus, the two Greek jokers.

10. A translation aspires to the kabbalah, wherein the universe is a system of permanent though fiery words; yet it wakes down on earth in the knowledge of its instability and impermanence.

Given the inconstancy of words and texts, can we demand miracles from human translators who work today to grace us with a poem? Yes. The poet translator should at the very least compete with the Creator. In our ignorance, we need her work of restoration and we need to be saved. When we look at a poem in a language unknown to us, we are looking helplessly into the formless void that puzzled God until he found the right words to translate chaos into form and light. In that sequence of translation and retranslation from the earliest original creation, from God's self-translation into being, up to the text before us, we depend on the secular powers of the translator to turn the formless void into light.

In the Zohar (the Book of Radiance), the infinite (the eyn sof) lies not in a stationary mass but in two forms of undulatory movement: darkness and light. Within the most hidden recess, a dark flame issues from the mystery of eyn sof like a fog forming in the unformed, which springs forth into light through which Adam saw from one end to the other of the world.

Translation is a movement from darkness into light and back to darkness. Even for the Kabbalists the infinite of God's creation of Adam's vision is only a flash of light.

11. Religion is God's bureaucracy. As in translation, in the hierarchy of power a fidelity to the word is essential. Fidelity to the letter, preceding the word, makes an even better, higher form of faith. Kabbalists like meaningful letters.

In their old drawings we see a tree of life whose leaves are letters and a man whose body is covered at vital spots by the ten letters of the sefirot.

Before God created the earth and heaven, he created the book. The Torah was "written with black fire on white fire, and is lying on the lap of God." Thereafter to create the world through his word, he devised the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. They "descended from the terrible and august crown of God whereon they were engraved with a pen of flaming fire."

12. The translator plays with nothingness, with la nada, and from nothing comes everything. "De nada a todo," Saint John of the Cross inserts into a concrete poem drawing. The unlikely and impossible to translate are rich. In la nada the Spanish poet-saint found God.

Untranslatable lines are natural meadows of translation and yield the best wild herbs. What has never been done in the adopted language will expand its thematic and formal boundaries and its literature. Traditions of theme and form are altered by the infusion of poems from other languages, especially the impossible ones.

13. Translation is voyage and the poet takes a translation across the ocean. Any ship of any description may be qualified to reach port, sailing across the sea of fidelity or the sea of license. The port too will suggest in its name the conditions of the sea by which the ship reaches its destination. So the port where the cargo of poems lies anchored may be called Saint Faithful or New Harmony or Wild Strawberries. But the port must have a name, a true name. Modest designations will do-translation, version, paraphrase, metaphrase, retelling, imitation, or whatever.

The ocean offers all things, including these mixed metaphors about the translation of poems.

And be fair to the gardener who keeps them up. Don't eat a prickly pear for a peach and make unfriendly faces.

14. A translator's reward for a mistake must be capital punishment. Freedom to invent, to stray from the text, even to scratch out words and passages succeeds in a defined method, such as imitation, which Chaucer and Shakespeare boldly practiced. But not freedom to make errors. Such practice puts a poet on the hot seat. Only a punk sees freedom and error as synonyms.

15. The writer's skills, as Quintilian already knew, are increased by exercising the act of translation. Of course Quintilian, being an eloquent grammarian, suggested the translation of quality oration rather than of the poem. Even Latin grammarians and orators have troubles with poems and tend to Q them behind the eight ball.

16. The translator poet is a blatant robber but should not kill the other author or steal her very name from her. But if murder and robbery are necessary, be open. Robbery can be an admirable crime. Normally, as with music, the translating artist reads and interprets but does not fully invent the score. Yet if you must kill and rob, if you must transform the past and correct and embellish it for your time, confess and praise your benefactor. Then, when you display your stolen wares, greater praise will await your deeds.

17. A translator poet must be a translator. In the act of rendering poetry from nothing into something, the translator is first a poet, even if outside the recreation he never writes poetry. If a poet-and among the grand translators are Mary Herbert, Hölderlin, Pasternak, Rilke, Valéry, Lowell, Moore, Pound, Quasimodo, and Bishop-we are lucky. But as Octavio Paz has written, good poets are not necessarily good poet translators.

Translation is also an art to be learned, even by poets. Critical for the poem is when it changes tongues, that moment of translation truth when fire and knowledge come alive to commingle and create. In that instant the poem becomes everything or nothing.

18. A translator operates in the unknown. To choose the unknown path risks loss-and often brings gain. The translator must gamble on gains to balance losses. Clichés in the original are often fresh in a new tongue, so give literal clichés a new life-especially those from the exotic languages. Indulge in literal translation of a worn cliché so it will shine anew, and beware of a safe equivalent that will persist in tedious dimness.

Choice is also a venture against loss. The translator begins with the advantage of selecting the poem that lends itself to her translation. This editorial choice is a formidable gain. In the end, with her gains she may not only come out even but wipe out her progenitors and, after the unforeseen literary genocide, prosper in fresh freedom.

19. A translator spends a life asking y, but the I (even puffed up as the one Creator Eye) knows it's for u.

20. Good translation of poetry is essential to a hungry reader in a decent book store and to a global village of letters. We need it, for we still suffer under that early Babylonian God's edict of language dispersal. Although Antigone and Lear sometimes speak in exotic tongues, subverting God's rage against the monolingual builders of Babel writers still scrawl their words in a thousand scripts, pile them up on mounds of hope and futurity, awaiting translation. Translation is a zoo and a heavenly zion.

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An ABC of Translating Poetry - A primer on poetry translation by noted translator Willis Barnstone: "A translation is an x-ray, not a xerox."

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This article gives more intro information. It may be useful to structure conversation about both sides of the debate on whether complete translation is actually possible.

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Is it possible to translate poetry from one language into another without losing meaning?

To paraphrase Robert Frost - not really. "Poetry is what gets lost in translation," the American poet is often quoted as saying. In other words, the meaning the reader extracts from a poem can never be a replica of the writer's intent.

Then again, I'm just translating.

But poet and award-winning literary translator Aaron Coleman tells NPR's Michel Martin that the impossibility of translation shouldn't stop us from appreciating the art of the verse.

Allow Coleman to elaborate with a few poems of his choosing. But first, some background for our newcomers: Every week during National Poetry Month (April, as it's oft referred to), All Things Considered is asking a professional poet to read from some of your mini poems that caught their eye on the #NPRpoetry Twitter feed.

It's Coleman's turn - here's how the bilingual poet translates a work by Catherine Hulshof: "I am the wind pushing you. I spend my days drawing waves and goodbyes. Songs between window blinds and white cement."

And #NPRpoetry español: Soy el viento empujandote. Paso el tiempo dibujando olas y despedidos. Canciones entre cortinas y el cemento blanco.
- Dr. Catherine Hulshof (@BE_bilingue) April 4, 2016

He breaks down his method: "I loved that little opening metaphor of calling herself the wind."

Then, the trickiness of translation comes out to play. In Spanish, "tiempo" means both "time" and "weather." Coleman says, "We don't have that opportunity for metaphor in English, so I did 'days' instead of 'time' in order to get at weather and also the passage of time."
A Sound Language
Coleman shares another poem from Laurel Katchatag. With lingo like "muktuk" and "tuttu," it's fair to say that some of her words - in the Inupiaq language of her native Alaska - ring unfamiliar to many:

Does it matter?

"That's the thing about poetry - it's as much a thing of words as it is a thing of sound," he says.

Upon first listen, "I'm sort of blown away by the rhythm and the momentum that she gets from mixing together two languages. And mixing together languages is the reality for many people."
Translation As Transformation
Though the art form, in translation, is subject to lose its accuracy, integrity and beauty, Coleman argues that the process invites new opportunities to parse, and thus meditate on, any lingual and cultural disparities.

"I approach translation even knowing that it can't quite be what it is in the original language," he says.

The language lapses that inhibit an ideal interpretation can ultimately be "a creative, productive failure," he adds. "Maybe it can open up a new way for us to see what can happen in English and what can happen in Spanish, for me, or whatever the original language is."

Instead, translation can be transformation. "I think we all want to have translation work as a process of reproduction, but it's really a process of transformation," Coleman says.

Finally, Barbara Valentina, manages, in English, to touch on this very theme in under 140 characters:

#NPRpoetry he asks me about my ancestors/ I tell him/ I cannot explain what in my mother tongue means/ I am a ghost holding up the earth
- squigglybug.bsky.social 💤 (nap mode) (@squigglybug) April 7, 2018

She addresses the caveats of translation "in the fact that she can't tell him what her name means," he says. "At the same time, she's still able to create something beautiful in English. 'I am a ghost holding up the Earth' is an incredible line for any poem."
April isn't over yet. We're still accepting submissions to Twitter with hashtag #NPRPoetry. Remember, this is not a contest - it's a community project - the point is not to win or lose or even to get your poem on the air. We want to create a space where listeners can share their poems and read the work of others.

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Where imperfect translations are blamed on our lapses of language, Aaron Coleman sees "creative, productive failures." Allow the poet and literary translator to explain with a few tweet-length poems.

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This article discusses the historical and social context of Spanish in America. It explains the various relationships Spanish language has had to colonial power, native culture, and immigrant culture.

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Rosina Lozano, associate professor of history, researches Latino history with a focus on Mexican American history, the American West, migration and immigration, and comparative studies in race and ethnicity.

Her latest book, " An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States," published this year by the University of California Press, is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States from the incorporation in 1848 of the Mexican Cession - the region that Mexico ceded after its war with the United States - through World War II. It also discusses more recent developments.

In "An American Language," Lozano argues that the United States always has been a multilingual nation, and that Spanish-language rights, in particular, have remained an important political issue to the present.

Lozano answered questions about Spanish's little-recognized role in the development of U.S. history.

You describe Spanish as a colonial, immigrant and indigenous language in the United States. Can you explain that?

Social linguists have defined the Spanish language in this way. It is a colonial language because the Spanish colonized much of what became the United States. It is also an indigenous language in many parts of the current United States due to its over 400-year history of being used by Spanish settlers and Native peoples. The oldest capitol city in the United States is Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was founded in 1610. Since then, Spanish has - over time - become viewed by many in the United States almost exclusively as an immigrant language due to the millions of immigrants who have come in recent decades from Latin America.

How and why have Spanish's roots in American history been forgotten?

If you grow up on the West Coast, the evidence of a previous Spanish-language past is all over in the place names of streets, towns and even states like Colorado. Most people know there are older roots, but they don't know what happened with the language after the United States took over the lands that became the U.S. Southwest.

"An American Language" traces the largely forgotten history of the official use of Spanish in political settings in the states of the Southwest after the war with Mexico. This included having legislatures with translators, constitutional protections of translations at the state level, Spanish-language ballots, political speeches, court proceedings and schools. This history may have been forgotten, but it was never hidden. It was all over the archives once I began looking.

Why is it important that we acknowledge that history?

There are several reasons why the longer history of the use of Spanish in the United States is important. First, it demonstrates that a United States political system not only can, but has operated bilingually before. Second, it serves as a reminder that Spanish is not just an immigrant language in this country, but has very deep roots in the political culture of the nation. The federal government acknowledged the use of Spanish and even paid for translations of documents in New Mexico. It did very little in the 19th century to try and transition much of the Southwest into English.

As I give talks, I am also reminded that this history has a real value for individuals. It provides Spanish speakers with a way to connect with the history of the United States. They have told me that it makes them proud to know that the language they are often told is foreign has a longer history in the nation.

You make the argument that Spanish, from pre-colonial times through today, gained a privileged status over other languages in this country. How has it benefited?

The reasons that Spanish has held a privileged status have changed over time. In the 19th century, Spanish was the only language that the federal government supported financially by paying for translations of official territorial documents. It did so because instead of the Spanish language being a second language of government (like it was with German in several states), it was actually the language of politics. In New Mexico, the legislature and many of the courts operated in Spanish.

By the 20th century, Spanish gained incredible importance because it served the economic and political goals of the United States in Latin America. Spanish became the most studied non-English language in high schools and universities by World War II. At the same time that Spanish became important for hemispheric reasons, increasing numbers of immigrants also arrived from Latin America. This immigration has brought debates over its use in official settings at a broader scale.

How do your students respond to learning about the more complex racial and ethnic underpinnings of the nation's founding?

The vast majority have never learned the history of everyday individuals in the United States and how they were affected by colonialism, war or immigration policy. Most high school textbooks only have a cursory discussion of these sorts of topics. Sometimes students get a little angry reading primary sources for class that cause them to draw different conclusions from the summaries that their high school textbooks provided because they wish they had learned this side of history sooner.

Learning the history of those everyday people who resided in the United States allows my students to connect the history of the United States to their own experiences.

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Lozano discusses 'An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States'

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Rosina Lozano, associate professor of history, discusses the use of Spanish in the United States, which she researched for her latest book, "An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States."

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This article gives some current event background on how language is "enforced" by society, but also as an example of linguistic variety and shifts in linguistic power.

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Hip, Woke, Cool: It’s All Fodder For the Oxford Dictionary of African American English (Published 2022)

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The new lexicon, with Henry Louis Gates Jr. as editor in chief, will collect definitions and histories of words. “The bottom line of the African American people,” Gates said, is “these are people who love language.”

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This article walks the reader through the author's mental process of translating a work, step by step. It helps outline how and why someone makes choices in language, from broad meanings to subtle diction. [toggle this page into "reader view" (F9) to bypass paywall.]

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See how a translator carries a book from one language to another, line by line.

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This book focuses on a teenage Dominican girl living in Harlem, and explores her identity and life experiences through poetry. The author is a spoken-word poet, intending for her work to be performed rather than silently read.

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Spanglish: The making of a new American language

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Spanglish: The making of a new American language

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This book gives a history and deep analysis of how Spanglish has evolved and continues to do so in America.

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Right now, we have a matching gift campaign that will double the impact of every donation. We understand that not everyone can donate right now, but if you can afford to contribute this Saturday, we promise it will be put to good use. Our resources are crucial for knowledge lovers everywhere-so if you find all these bits and bytes useful, please pitch in.

Your Donation Will Be Matched! Can You Chip In?
Dear Patron: Please don't scroll past this. Right now we have a matching gift campaign that will double the impact of every donation. We understand that not everyone can give right now, but if you can afford to contribute this Saturday, we promise it will be put to good use. If you find all these bits and bytes useful, please pitch in.

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Spanglish : the making of a new American language : Stavans, Ilan : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-270)

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Spanglish As Experienced by a Native Speaker

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Spanglish As Experienced by a Native Speaker

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This piece directly reflects on how the meaning of apparent synonyms can change depending on cultural context. It also shows how languages can change and combine over generations.

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Go on, tell me
My hands look like yours,
Nail clipped, filed, buffed, shined.
They weren't always so.
My hands were

Forged from
Gardening, working so deep
In the soil, they could have been roots.
Fingers splintered by wooden
Rakes and shovels.

Some gardener-
Whose face and name get lost
Like loose coins in my memory's
backseat-told me women
Look at men's hands

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spanglish as experienced by a native speaker

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Spanglish As Experienced by a Native Speaker

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Spanglish As Experienced by a Native Speaker - A George Washington quarter was a cuarta.

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This blog post discusses the choices a translator has to make when engaging with both text and visual arts from one culture to another. While it's less related to the languages being discussed here, it might have value for hooking less interested students into the ideas of translation if they already enjoy manga.

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I have a secret to tell you. If you're ever been particularly moved by a line of dialog in a manga I translated; if something pithy spoke to you in some way, or had some meaning to you; if you thought something was cool or inspiring, or even if you laughed at a joke-that was probably me, not the original cartoonist. It's disappointing, I know. But I submit for you the Rule of Rubin. It comes from Jay Rubin, translator of the best-selling novels of Haruki Murakami and one of the most notable modern Japanese-to-English translators. Rubin said in an interview: "When you read Murakami (in English), you're reading me, at least 95% of the time." When I saw that, I nodded knowingly in agreement. And shuddered a little. Someone had finally said it.

That's the secret. The Rule of Rubin. When you read the words in a comic-the actual words, mind you-you're reading me, at least 95% of the time.

Nobody likes to hear that. When I tell people about the Rule of Rubin, they feel betrayed. And I get that. People want a connection. They want to believe it is the actual artist's words that they react to. Making people cognizant of the translator sets up a barrier between reader and artist. Translators are supposed to be invisible. We are enablers, the babel fish in the ear with no personality or presence of our own. Readers want to think all the translator does is swap words into a different language, substituting "あ" for "a." But that's not how translation works. Especially not literary translation. Especially not Japanese to English translation. And especially not manga translation.

Japanese in Translation

Direct translation-translating words as-is-produces unreadable gobbledygook. Even reordering those words into proper English grammar results in uninspired nonsense. Here's an example: The following joke is HI-larious in Japanese! A total knee-slapper!

Husband: Let's have ginger pork for dinner!

Wife: Alas, we have no ginger.

Did I get an LOL from you? No? Nothing? That's strange ... I can drop that joke on my wife anytime and it always gets a chuckle. How about this one?

Husband: I want to eat salmon roe!

Wife: But how much will it cost ... ?

Trust, me, that is SUPER funny in Japanese. "Salmon roe" and "how much?" are homophones, both pronounced " ikura." The wife's answer (in Japanese; ikura kana ...) sets up an ambiguity in which you are not sure if she is worried about the cost or just not in the mood for salmon roe. It's also an old joke that everyone knows, so it's told with a wink and nod and has the relaxed feel of something familiar. Putting the joke into English as written-swapping one word for another-means it's dead in the water. A successful translation requires something more. And that's where the artistry of the translator comes in.

Any form of literary translation is a collaboration between artist and translator. Not a direct collaboration; As much as I would like to, I rarely work on comics where I chat with the original artist. Sometimes they are even long dead. But we are always working together. As invisible as I try to be, both voices are in the mix. Think of it like a band doing a cover song. No matter how good a mimic, every singer adds their own voice and style to a performance. The finished song is neither wholly the work of one nor the other. That may be a clumsy metaphor, but the point is this-a different translator produces a different comic.

Part of that is the nature of the language. Japanese is not translation-friendly. It is a high context language, as opposed to a low context language like English. This means that Japanese can use fewer words, and relies more heavily on cultural context to communicate what is going on in the scene. It is sometimes said of Japanese literature that for every word on the page there are three unwritten. Readers are expected to fill in the blanks.

On top of that, Japanese utilizes four writing systems; kanji, katakana, hiragana, and romaji. Each can slightly twist meanings or add further context to what is going on in a sentence. A person speaking in katakana probably has a foreign accent. Or single words can change writing systems for emphasis, like how English use italics or bold. You can even write a word in kanji, like "teacher," and then superscript it with hiragana to say "warlord" for additional meaning. On top of that, Japanese makes heavy use of set phrases and repetition. Navigating the complex world of Japanese politeness levels can be dangerous even for those born and raised in the culture. They often take the path of least resistance and use and reuse socially appropriate phraseology, relying on cultural context to give the true meaning.

English is comparatively straight forward-most of the time people say what they mean. Japanese is "Shaka; when the walls fell."

Role of a Translator

I've found out on Twitter than not many people know what a manga translator does. (Twitter was actually the genesis of this article. I thought a little education was in order.) People get caught up in industry terms like "translation" and "localization," which are different in theory, but less so in practice. Many assume the editor does the heavy lifting, and all the translator does is provide a rough breakdown of vocabulary. But that's not my experience. The main role of the editor is to chose the translator, manage the project, and then tidy up the finished comic. Never underestimate the importance of that first part. It's probably the single most important decision that will be made once a comic is licensed.

When they chose the translator, editors are choosing what kind of comic will eventually be made. Many readers don't realize the amount of influence translators have over the finished comic. It's true that some companies hire adapters to assist in the dialog. And there's nothing wrong with that; Kelly Sue Deconnick got her start as a manga adaptor. But I don't think it's a common practice. I've only personally used an adaptor once, and most translators I know deliver a finished script that goes straight onto the page.

My job as a translator is to take all that context and language and reshape it into something that reads as if it was originally written in English. The Japanese script is my raw material. Along with translating the words on the page, I add context and create bridge sentences that might not have been in the original. I fill in gaps that would have been apparent to Japanese readers. And sometimes I rewrite things entirely. That's the Rule of Rubin in action.

How I Do What I Do

To be honest, I don't know how other manga translators get to their finished script. I only know what I do. What I am going to tell you about how I do things might be completely opposite of how someone else does it. Or it might be the same. It will be interesting to find out. To tell the truth, I am a little nervous to hear what people like Matt Smith, Fred Schodt, and Matt Alt will say about this article. Or Jay Rubin himself; will he nod his head knowingly? Or scoff? We'll see.

I didn't go to school to do this, or take any training, so if my process is a little wonky that's entirely my fault. Like any artist I worked out my own method through practice and experience-and make no mistake, manga translation is an art form, as much as writing, drawing, coloring, lettering, or any of the other myriad jobs that add up to a published comic. There's a reason why computer aided translation (CAT) is useless in manga. We're not technicians.

I'm not entirely self-taught; I have my Master's degree in Japanese, and did literary translation as part of my coursework. But that's different from manga. I learned through practice. I took an already translated series ( Dr. Slump, in my case), and translated it book-by-book, comparing my translation to the published version. I figured the closer I got to the published version, the better I was doing. That also taught me what choices were made, where the differences were-and why those decisions were made.

My process is simple. I prop the comic next to my computer and start to read-and write. And feel. That's important, because that's what I am trying to replicate, a feeling. I never read the comic ahead of time. I want to capture the exact moment of when I read a page, and then use English to make readers experience that same emotion. I get deeply involved in the comics while I am working on them. I laugh out loud. Cry. Of course, I will go back later and adjust, but if I read the whole comic first I miss the immediacy.

Each character gets their own voice. I know how Kitaro sounds, how Emeraldas speaks. I can talk like Nezumi Otoko or Yakob the Country Killer. As I read, I listen to those voices in my head. I try to let them tell me how they would say something. And yes, there are times when I do the voices aloud, just to make sure it sounds right. Fortunately I usually work alone in a room. Only my pets look at me funny.

Capturing the mood is important too. When I first switched from Shigeru Mizuki to Leiji Matsumoto, it took me awhile to sink into the formalized heaviness of Matsumoto's dialog as opposed to Mizuki's light earthiness. Matsumoto's characters were sounding too much like Mizuki's, and it wasn't right. I started playing Wagner in the background when translating Queen Emeraldas, which was the perfect solution. It helped me focus all that melodrama and operatic language into something equally powerful in English.

Then there was Mamoru Oshii's dialog. That was the most difficult by far. Oshii goes out of his way to use obtuse phrasing and difficult kanji. I figured the best way to capture that was to plunder the thesaurus and pull out the most obscure English I could find. I'm awfully proud of the way Seraphim: 266613336 Wings turned out. It was a hell of a job. And don't even get me started on Panty and Stockings with Garterbelt. Translating sex puns is not an easy task ...

That's not to say I don't stumble over individual words. Showa: A History of Japan had me diving to the dictionary for military and historical terms. I used my grandfather's WWII Japanese/English phrasebook as a bridge to the past. And I knew I had to get every battleship name correct. There was no room for error. Matsumoto Leiji's technobabble was tough to figure out as well. Queen Emeraldas's juryoku seba, could have been a number of things, but I ultimately went with "gravitysaber." I figure if "lightsaber" was cool, then gravitysaber wouldn't be too bad. That's also the name they use in English in Japan, which can be helpful. But it doesn't always work; just ask Führer Deslock from Space Battleship Yamato, or Leader Deslock as he was renamed for the official translation. And nothing helps me with the planet Heavy Metal. There is no way that is sounding anything than pure 1970s cheesy Japan. Oh well.

Once you name something, you have to figure out what it sounds like. Sounds effects are one of the greatest challenges you will face as a manga translator. Japanese uses repetitive sound effects. Don don don. Bup bup bup. Sha sha sha. And they have a LOT more of them. Rain that falls zaaa is different from rain that falls shito shito. I wanted Emeraldas's gravitysaber to have a unique sound effect, so it goes zwark. Each gun-from machine gun to battleship cannons-in Showa: A History of Japan makes a different noise. Space ships are fun too. I am particularly fond of the ships in Queen Emeraldas. I researched 1950s science fiction comics to see the sound effects used for spaceships and borrowed a few of those. I think it adds a nice nostalgic feel to the ships, which is a hallmark of Matsumoto's impossible flying pirate ships.

And then there is the dreaded sheeen. That's the Japanese sound effect for silence that has no equivalent in English. Everyone has to solve that particular problem in their own way. But I wince every time I see it.

Fortunately, I have a living dictionary anytime I need one. My wife Miyuki is my assistant on particularly tricky passages, or when that context and culture gets too dense to penetrate. She was a huge help on Showa: A History of Japan and penetrating Oshii's dialog for Seraphim. There are times being married to a native Japanese speaker comes in handy for this particular profession.

Words on the Page

There is also the space issue. Manga translation presents an additional challenges not faced in other mediums. The nature of comics is a dance of words and pictures. With manga, the pictures are there. The word balloons are there. They aren't going anywhere, and you can't change them. All you can do is make sure the words match the picture. And fit in the balloons-that part is important. Due to the nature of the Japanese language, you can fit a hell of a lot more into the available space than you can with English. When I am writing out a translation I always have to be conscious of the real estate available to me on the page, and how the words are going to fit into that balloon. Not to mention vertical balloons ...

I saw a fellow translator say on Twitter that what we really do is write new English scripts to match the existing artwork. I agree with that to some extent. I imagine it's similar to the old "Marvel Method" of making comics, in which the artist draws based on a plot and then the writer goes back in and re-writes the dialog to make sure it matches what the artist drew. That's the final step in my process. I print off the English script, and read it along with the comic in real time. I always make changes. There are things that worked well in my head, but don't flow as well as I thought. Or words I repeated too often on one page. Or phrases that don't fit the faces speaking them. Or any number of small details.

I was once brought in as a consultant by a major publisher looking to expand into manga. They successfully published translated novels, and thought it would be a small jump to also offer a manga line. I laid out my process exactly as described above, and showed them what it took. After my presentation, they decided not to get into manga-it was more work then they could handle.

Knowing Japanese isn't enough to make you a good translator. You have to be a good writer. You need creativity and imagination. It's not too much work to master enough Japanese to read a comic, and any words you don't know you can always look up. But to put that into English takes something more. In fact, I would say the balance of the job is something like 40% Japanese ability / 60% English writing. I have friends whose Japanese far surpasses mine, but they aren't better translators.

It's also important to love comics. Really love them. I scoff at the term "fan translators" because all professional manga translators are fans-if we weren't, we wouldn't be doing this. If there is one thing all manga translators have in common it's that we love manga. We want to make comics that we want to read. I have my list of dream comics that I shove in front of every editor that will listen to me. I assume everyone does. Sometimes, like with Shigeru Mizuki, Satoshi Kon, and Matsumoto Leiji, I get to work on those dream comics. Some others, like Miyuki Saga and Daijiro Morohoshi, are still waiting for their chance. (Fingers crossed! Anyone reading this want to take a shot?) But no matter what I am working on, I love it. I have to. I put too much of myself into every story not to care.

I once saw someone complain that a listing for Showa: A History of Japan had it "By Shigeru Mizuki and Zack Davisson." They complained that Davisson (me) was only the translator, and so the series wasn't "by" him. But I think that is an accurate listing. I am also a writer, and to me the translations I do are as much "mine" as the books I write. They are "my comics."

Next time you read a manga you love, take a peek at who the translator is. Maybe check to see if you have any other comics by that translator. As an experiment, compare two works by the same original artist, but translated by different people (for example, my Satoshi Kon translations for Dark Horse and the ones by Vertical). See if the voice changes. See how different they are. And remember that what you are reading is always a collaboration. No matter what your favorite manga is, or who originally wrote it-translators are a part of your experience.

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Confessions of a Manga Translator - The Comics Journal

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A first-hand account of what a manga translator does, and doesn't do, and how.

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This poem shows an example of how an author can combine languages in one piece. Topically, it addresses Hispanic heritage in connection with place, family, and food.

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This poem expands on the idea of verbal translation to translation of body language as well. She frames what gets "lost in translation" as equivalent to missing pieces of identity. It also addresses the publisher's systemic control over language.

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Ode to the Head Nod by Elizabeth Acevedo | Poetry Foundation

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This poem connects the idea of dance and rhythm to language, and combines conversational language with written language.

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Legs wrap around each other
es la culpa del verso,
on the floor, wood lodges
in the skin open at our heels.

Caderas to the right, to the left
hips swing swaying to el acordeón
hitting notes to the side.

What it is that en realidad
manda en mi país, no es,
el ritmo sabrosón del Salvador.
Es el peso, el dólar, el colón.
Paper currency o cualquier tipo
de intercambio.

Pedacitos of broken bone
splinter in our teeth. Spitting them out,
we count steps, sweep soreness
from the joints-wish I could say
oh, the dancing. Tired arms
scour the greed from resistant corners.

Watch my curves cut through the cadence
of my babosada spree at el 99.
I request all parts of the animal,
wrap red juice of tripa in new dish towels.
Are you watching? As I make deals
that keep me scrubbing to meet
the minimum on the statement.

Try to stack under my pillow
so when I visit I can dance
under neon duty free sign,
binge on brand names
sport a striped American feel.

Pa pa ra pa cu cu cumbia
Yes girl, it's the remix,
not the record scratched
or skipping. Repetition
but of choreography, interpreting
where desire and wallet part ways.
Sellers nodding heads, unfolding welcome
mats-sold, for cheap.
Es dinero el que manda en mi país
Es el ritmo sabrosón del Salvador
Para allá para acá ay para qué,
did you hear about la fulanita,
out of work, never goes dancing
¿Y eso ? es que she danced
right into the store, slipped and fell
on her debt.
Cumbia de mis amores

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Cumbia de Salvación - Legs wrap around each other

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This piece includes an excerpt of poetry and prose from a book that reflects on how the way we present and differentiate languages reinforces/contradicts structures of colonial power.

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Alice Te Punga Somerville's first book of poetry Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised is out on September 8. Here she is, from Vancouver, Canada, where she's now teaching at the University of British Columbia, on the heels of National Poetry Day, explaining why she wrote the book and her feelings about writing - in general and in English.
To write is to cite. Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised I am here, on every page. I am here, struggling against structures of power that are represented and metaphorised in conventions of writing. I am here, in every decision about footnotes, about the language in which a thing is written. I am here, knowing the world is shaped by the decisions we make (and unmake) about when to italicise. Kupu rere kē is not a book about someone's life. This poetry does not describe all that I am as a person. And yet, and yet. So much of me is in here: this is partly because colonialism insidiously inserts itself into every part of one's life - and partly because writing does this too. To write is to cite. I am here, writing this short essay, stretched between two poles of academia as I know it: commitments and observations of brilliant anti-colonial redistributions of power (in the classrooms, in the theses, in the libraries and archives, in the conferences, in the tearooms, occasionally in the meeting-rooms and paperwork); and (two decades so far of) crushing disappointment, disillusionment, rejection and exhaustion. I am literally writing this sentence with the laptop balanced on a plastic container of crackers while I reheat leftovers and try to ignore my four-year-old who wants my attention. The distance between liberation and violence in the academy is some days exhilarating and some days exhausting. Many days, the "some days" are the same days. This conundrum is addressed in published research, conference discussions, blogs, journalism, social media posts, and whispered conversations over cups of tea and glasses of wine/ beer/ gin. This book renders at least some of this in poetry, and the response of so many Indigenous academics (and public servants, and journalists, and others working in mainstream environments) to some of these poems has been both heartwarming and sad. To write is to cite. The very act of writing is a direct reference to, and demonstration of, the colonial project. Every written word, every written paragraph, every written poem cites the past 500 years. The inextricability of writing from historical and ongoing violence is a predicament - sometimes paralysingly so - and we can't sidestep this, as much as we may wish to try. And yet. This does not require us to decide that every act of Indigenous writing is a colonial act or proof of not being Indigenous.

My friend was advised to italicise all the foreign words in her poems.

This advice came from a well-meaning woman

with NZ poetry on her business card

and an English accent in her mouth.

I have been thinking about this advice.

The publishing convention of italicising words from other languages

clarifies that some words are imported:

it ensures readers can tell the difference between a foreign language

and the language of home.

I have been thinking about this advice.

Marking the foreign words is also a kindness:

Every potential reader is reassured

that although obviously you're expected to understand the rest of the text,

it's fine to consult a dictionary or native speaker for help with the italics.

I have been thinking about this advice.

Because I am a contrary person, at first I was outraged -

but after a while I could see she had a point:

When the foreign words are camouflaged in plain type

you can forget how they came to be there, out of place, in the first place.

I have been thinking about this advice

and I have decided to follow it.

Now all of my readers will be able to remember

which words truly belong in Aotearoa and which do not.

Something happens when we as Indigenous writers position ourselves as inheritors and transmitters of a legacy of Indigenous written expression. When we hold the pen, writing can be an infinitely colonial and infinitely freeing - and connecting - act. Haunani-Kay Trask describes Hawaiian writing as part of a "resisting and reconstructing process" and asserts: "Consciously anti-colonial, my work is also consciously Indigenous." To write is to cite. We make use of the technology of writing, but also the specific colonial language of English, for our own purposes. Back in 1981, Acoma writer and thinker Simon Ortiz argued that Indigenous peoples have made these colonial languages our own. "I know English was brought my white men to our country," admits Loa Niumeitolu, as she both uses and accuses the language in which she writes the poem "When we Tell," but by the end of the same poem she claims the language for herself and her community: "We've got to have a Tongan way of doing it." Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen poet Deborah Miranda writes: "You never thought we could/ wield these letters for ourselves,/ write our humanity, make new songs,/ become lawyers or poets - redefine words/ like warrior or strategy." Menominee poet Chrystos ends her poem "I have not signed a Treaty with the Unites States government" with a challenge - "Take this language back with you" - which, if accepted, would of course take away the very language in which she has expression. And yet she, like generations of Indigenous writers all over the world, has made use of English for her own purposes. But every citation - every act of writing - in English reinforces the power of the language that arrived in these islands in 1769 with Cook, and although that may connect me with others who have their own Cooks (or indeed the same Cook), I cannot write in English without being painfully - painfully - aware of the language which doesn't sit easily in my mouth and sits nowhere near my hands as they hover over a pen or laptop.
One of the pervasive myths about Māori people (which we have taken to enthusiastically telling ourselves) is that "we don't write" despite literally millions of pages filled with words penned (or typed) by our own people - by ourselves - in published texts, manuscripts, and personal writing.
To write is to cite - according to Barthes, every text is a "tissue of quotations" - language is not ours alone to control - everything we say has already been said before. Many of the poems in this collection gesture towards things that have been said (verbally or in writing) and I cannot write without thinking about how I speak back in the same language that was used by those others. (Maybe this is a comment about the use of English; maybe it is a comment about writing; maybe it is a comment about language in its broadest sense.) And yet. Citation need not be understood only as foreclosure (in which we are literally unable to say anything original) or as mimicry (in which we cannot help but endlessly produce copies of forgeries or fakes).
I respond to Chrystos's challenge: in this book, following the "advice" mentioned in the opening poem "Kupu rere kē," I have made use of conventions of writing that use italics to clearly mark which words are foreign (and okay to not know) and which are from here (and are assumed to be familiar). That most of the words in this book - including these ones - are in italics is an attempt to make something explicit that in a settler colony can feel as invisible as the air we breathe.

Things can feel less constrained, and more grounded, if our thinking about citation starts with whakapapa. Indeed, Taranaki poet JC Sturm affirms: "what is more/ there is nothing that has not been before/ the new repeats the old/ we are simply variations on original themes/ why are you dismayed?/ we carry history in our genes/ like messages in bottles."

To write is to cite. Each of the four sections of the collection opens with a cluster of quotations about the section to follow but also, if we think about citation in relation to recitation and in particular the recitation of whakapapa, each of the cited writers here is a name to follow to other work; their thinking has influenced my own work.
(Re)citation is an opportunity to position one's own thinking. It's an opportunity to gesture towards - to produce - a broader net(work) of thinkers and writers. There are other names, other people, other networks cited in this book - many of the poems are dedicated to particular people or groups who inspired them. (Re)citation is also about the combination of names; the "who is there" collectively as well as the "who is there" individually. Of course, there are so many more names - it is always tempting to trace in all directions and not fail to mention certain names and the work and networks those names represent.
I cite them, these writers and these/ their knowledge traditions: Apirana Taylor, a whakatauki, Hirini Melbourne on my relationship with language; Haunani-Kay Trask, Taika Waititi, Chelsea Watego (Bond) on racism; Jacinta Ruru, Joanna Kidman and Cheri Chu, Epeli Hau'ofa and Teresia Teaiwa on my work in the academy; and, finally, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and Te Rangihiroa on the acknowledgment that can be articulated through goodbyes.

But, whakapapa are always collectively held and multi-dimensional; the idea that one could - let alone should - name everyone is a conceit. We name the ones we name, and leave those names to lead to others. As Patricia Grace's character Linda in Mutuwhenua puts it, "every branch reaches out . . . touches every other."
These others: the words, the thinkers, the connections. These are how we know that writing while colonised is not the limit of what is going on here. We also write while anti-colonial, we write while intersectional, we write while revolutionary, we write while sitting with the breadths and depths and gaps and possibilities of who we are. We write while Indigenous.
I hope that, as with any (re)citation of whakapapa, names and words here will pique your curiosity and lead you to other words, other thinkers, other connections.
© E-Tangata, 2022
Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) is a professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia. She studied at the University of Auckland, earned a PhD at Cornell University, is a Fulbright scholar and Marsden recipient and has held academic appointments in New Zealand, Canada, Hawai'i and Australia. Her first book Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) won Best First Book from the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association. Her most recent book is Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook (BWB, 2020).

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This video explains both the linguistic and historical context of how different versions of the word "ask" came to be. It also speaks to the absurdity of social pressures/stigmatization around certain forms of the word, asserting that there isn't one "correct" way.

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Why do people say AKS (or AX) instead of ASK?

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This podcast episode has several different segments talking about both Black American and Spanish linguistic history through idioms. The show has over 1,600 episodes with multiple segments in each, so there's something for every niche.

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A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

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If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don't want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter , as in "truth." To spill the T means to "pass along truthful information." Plus, we're serving up some delicious Italian idioms involving food. The Italian phrase that literally translates "eat the soup or jump out the window" means "take it or leave it," and a phrase that translates as "we don't fry with water around here" means "we don't do things halfway." Also: a takeoff word quiz, why carbonated beverages go by various names, including soda, coke, and pop; fill your boots, bangorrhea, cotton to, howdy; milkshake, frappe, velvet, frost, and cabinet; push-ups, press-ups and lagartijas; the Spanish origin of the word alligator, don't break my plate or saw off my bench, FOMO after death, and much more.

This episode first aired March 23, 2019. It was rebroadcast the weekend of November 25, 2023.

In British English, the exercise known as push-ups in the United States goes by the name press-ups. The Spanish term is lagartijas, a lagartija being a small lizard that sometimes moves in a similar way. The English word alligator comes from the related Spanish term el lagarto, or "the lizard."

Debra, who teaches eighth graders in San Antonio, Texas, says some of them use the expression spill the tea meaning "spill the beans" or "share gossip." The earliest version of this phrase, which appears in print in the early 1990s, was spill the T, in which the letter T stands for truth. The phrase was popularized by the TV show RuPaul's Drag Race, and a similar use of T for truth appears in John Berendt's 1994 bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Jonathan, who lives in Dallas, Texas, is originally from Prince Edward Island, Canada, where he often heard the phrase fill your boots, an injunction that means "help yourself." Variants include dig in and fill your boots, eat up and fill your boots, and muck in and fill your boots.

Craig from Helena, Montana, wonders about the etymology of pop as a term for a carbonated beverage. Depending on which part of the country you're from, you might also call this drink a soda or a coke.

Quiz Guy John Chaneski proffers a puzzle he calls "F-Takeoffs," which involves removing the initial letter F from a word to get an entirely different word. For example, if John orders some lumberjack tools by sending some scanned, printed orders over a phone line, what two words apply?

Kyle from Euless, Texas, wonders about the phrase I don't cotton to this meaning "I don't agree with this." It originated in the textile industry, where cotton is prepared to adhere to another fabric. In the same way, some agricultural terms have given rise to useful metaphors in English; the expressions tough row to hoe, aftermath, and broadcast all originated in the language of farming.

Wendy from San Diego, California, is curious about the soda fountain treat known in Rhode Island and parts of Massachusetts as a cabinet. Elsewhere it's called a milk shake, frappe, velvet, or frost.

In her 1958 memoir Beloved Infidel, F. Scott Fitzgerald's lover Sheilah Graham recalls the famous author's distaste for exclamation points, the use of which he compared to "laughing at your own joke." Some have proposed that such overuse of exclamation marks be called bangorrhea, bang being an old printer's term for that punctuation mark, and -rrhea being a stem that comes from a Greek word meaning "to flow."

Years ago, Derek from Omaha, Nebraska, adopted the greeting howdy, but his wife says it sounds too uncultured. In a 2012 paper in the Journal of English Linguistics by Lauren Hall Lew and Nola Stephens describe howdy as a term that is enregistered as rural and Southern - in other words, seen by outsiders as country talk, and therefore supposedly unsophisticated.

Don't break my plate or saw off my bench just yet is a colorful way of saying I'll be back. It's somewhat like the phrase he hung up his spoon, referring to someone who has died.

The Italian phrase Non si frigge mica con l'acqua literally translates as "We don't fry with water around here," and means that the speaker doesn't do things halfway. Quite a few other Italian idioms involve food. One translates as "to be like cabbage as an afternoon snack" - in other words, to be out of place. An Italian idiom that means "to be like parsley" suggests that something is ubiquitous. Another translates as "eat soup or jump out the window," and is the equivalent of urging someone to take it or leave it, and yet another translates as "don't eat the egg in the hen's body" and is similar to the advice in English about not counting your chickens before they hatch.

Denise in Panama City, Florida, is trying to recall a word for the fear of not knowing what happens in the world after one dies. It's a more elevated term than FOMO, the fear of missing out. A poetic alternative is gephyrophobia, a fear of crossing bridges. The fear of death itself is thanatophobia, from the Greek root thanatos, which also gives us euthanasia.

John says that many of the older patients in his Northeast Tennessee orthopedics clinic will refer to habitual activity as occurring of the morning or of the evening. The vastly more common versions of these phrases in the South and South Midlands of the United States are of a morning and of an evening.

The verb duffifie is defined in the Scots National Dictionary as "to lay down a bottle on its side for some time, after its contents have been poured out, that it may be completely drained of the few drops remaining in it."

Sherilyn in Indianapolis, Indiana, says when she was rambunctious as a child, her grandfather, who is of German descent, would ask if she had a hummel. In German, the word Hummel means bee, and a fidgety youngster might be asked Hast Du Hummeln im Hintern? meaning "Do you have bumblebees in your behind?" The German word Hintern, meaning "behind," is related to the English words hind and hinterland. In Germany, such a child is also called a Zappelphilipp, from an 1845 poem about a boy who couldn't sit still.

If you have an aversion to human company and a love of solitude, you have apanthropy, from Greek words that mean "away from humans."
This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine. Photo by MattX27. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Books Mentioned in the Episode

Music Used in the Episode

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If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don't want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in "truth."