Thread by @fxdurandy

📖 This piece in @dawn_com intrigued me. What could it mean to #translate #Premchand into #Urdu? #اردو #हिंदी 1/n
dawn.com/news/1590368

Premchand’s last unfinished novel #Mangalsutra can be read here in its #Devanagari version. #मंगलसूत्र 2/n
hindisamay.com/premchand%20sa…

Dr Hasan Manzar’s “translation” can be found on @Rekhta. Two editions are available. This one 👇🏼 (New Delhi: Modern Publishing House, 2002) I found had a better print quality. 3/n
rekhta.org/ebooks/mangal-…

I can’t comment on the translator’s choices, so I decided to just quantify the changes between the two versions. Both in syntactic and lexical terms, ie grammar and vocabulary. I sampled the first 1,004 words of the novel in the #देवनागरी edition. 🔍 4/n

Now let’s play. 😏 How different would you expect both texts to be in terms of syntax (the arrangement of words) and/or morphology (how words are formed)? 5/n

And now to vocabulary. How many words in my sample would you expect to differ between the original (Hindi) and the translation (Urdu)?
(For example, निराश, nirāś, became مایوس, māyūs) 6/n

One more quiz. Out of these four nouns, only one was translated into Urdu. Which one, according to you? (Try to explain why in your comments) 7/n

So. In terms of syntax and morphology, both texts are almost identical, but that should not come as a surprise.
#हिंदी Dev Kumar ne samajh liyā ki vah jīvan ke kartavya se mukt ho gae.
#اردو Dev Kumar ne samajh liyā ke vah zindagī ke farẓ se subukdoś ho gae.
8/n

There is one izafat construction (ātma-sammān > ‘izzat-e-nafs) and a couple of instances where words were reverted (jab unhein > unhein jab) or clauses connected by “aur” were split into two sentences, but that’s about it. In fact, the first 23 words are 100% identical. 👯 9/n

The vocabulary part is more interesting. In my 1,004-word sample, I found 171 substitutions. In other terms, one word in six was replaced, the remaining five are untouched, and at the same place. 10/n

Surprisingly, a number of Hindi words you would expect to have a direct equivalent were left as they are in the so-called “translation”. Some are simple (ātmā, dhan, prem, śānt, sansār), some maybe less so (gr̥hastha, vānprastha). sammān became ‘izzat. 11/n

In a number of instances, words of Sanskrit origin were replaced by words of Sanskrit origin.
विवाह vivāh > byāh بیاہ
जन्म-संगिनी janm-sanginī > jīvan-sāthī جیون ساتھی
उपासना upasnā > pūjā پوجا
मूल्य mūly > mol مول
सदैव sadaiv > sadā hī سدا ہی
12/n

In one instance, a word of Persian origin was replaced by another Persian loan: gulzār bāzār became bāraunāq bāzār.
And in a text almost entirely devoid of English loans (one exception: degree), प्रकाशक, prakāśak was rendered as publisher (instead of, say, ناشر, nāśir). 13/n