English to Hindi Translation
By L. Balasubramaniam
With over 500 million native speakers who are spread in the
entire South Asia region in countries like India (of course),
Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, Hindi is believed to
be the third largest language in the world after Chinese and
English. Wherever there is a large Indian diaspora (and Indians
have been great migrators historically), Hindi is spoken. Countries
like Kenya, South Africa, UAE, Mauritius, Guyana, USA, UK, Ireland,
Canada, Australia and the West Indies have substantial numbers of
Hindi speakers.
Hindi belongs to the Indo-Aryan group of languages and is,
therefore, syntactically and semantically very close to languages
like English, French, German and Sanskrit. Hindi, like the European
languages, is written from left to right. In has a very compact and
scientific script called Devanagari and a well-defined grammar.
Because of this, translating into Hindi from English is not such a
difficult matter. There is another reason for this too. English has
been around in India for more than two centuries now and English
and Hindi have closely interacted with each other and influenced
each other's vocabulary, grammar and writing style. This also helps
in translating from English to Hindi as the
translator finds that suitable Hindi terms for English words and
phrases already exist in Hindi and there is much less need to coin
new terms.
But translation is always a tricky and challenging business.
Described below are some difficult and perplexing situations that
can be expected while translating from English to Hindi.
Hindi Punctuation
Hindi has only one punctuation mark of its own, the sentence
terminator called khadi pai (which looks like this - । ). All
the other punctuations marks are borrowed from English. These
include the coma (,), exclamation mark (!), hyphen (-), question
mark (?), brackets, etc. But there are subtle differences in the
way these punctuation marks are used in English and in the way they
are used in Hindi. It won't do to just affix these punctuation
marks on the Hindi translation in all those places where they occur
in the English source. Here is a brief description about the
pitfalls that should be avoided in Hindi punctuation.
Some translators use the English full stop (.) in Hindi also,
instead of the khadi pai (।). This practice is unacceptable
in standard Hindi. In standard Hindi, the khadi pai should be
always used as the sentence terminating symbol. There are several
good reasons for this. One is aesthetic. Any one who has seen the
Devnagari script will notice that most letters of Hindi have the
vertical pipe character ( khadi pai - ।) built into them (for
example, अ, क, ग, ख, प, etc.). So the
khadi pai goes well with the rest of the script and makes for a
visually more pleasing display. The second reason is that Devnagari
script uses the dot symbol for many other purposes. For example,
for indicating nasalisation (the anuswar अं and the
anunasika अँ, both of which are now representated by a
dot above the letter). It also uses the dot to indicate special
inflexions of certain consonants (when used for this purpose the
dot is called nukta, e.g., ड़, ढ़.
ज़, etc.). Further, some characters have the dot built
into their shapes, e.g., ङ. In this way, the dot is already
much overused in the Devnagari script for many other purposes.
Using the dot for yet another purpose, i.e., as a sentence
terminating mark, could lead to confusion.
Regarding the other punctuation marks, the coma, question mark,
exclamation mark and hyphen are used more or less in the same
manner as in English. The colon and the semi-colon are exceptions.
The colon is unsuited for use in Hindi, for there is already a
symbol in Hindi, the visarga (ः), which looks exactly like
the colon. So to avoid confusion with this symbol, the colon is
generally substituted by a dash in Hindi. The semi-colon, again, is
much less used in Hindi; in fact, it is quite rare in Hindi. So if
there are semi-colons in the English source, the translation should
be reconstructed in Hindi to avoid the need for the semi-colon.
This in most cases can be done by splitting the original sentence
into two independent sentences at the place where the semi-colon
appears. If the semi-colon is used in a list of terms, it can get
tricky to get rid of this punctuation mark in Hindi. Options
available are to replace the semi-colons with comas, or to place
the list items in separate lines, or to enumerate the list.
Hindi phonetics
Like the scripts of all languages, the Devnagari script too
works with a finite set of sounds, and so many sounds that occur in
foreign languages cannot be represented in Devanagari. Two common
sounds of English that cannot be represented in Hindi are the "z"
sound as in zoo, dizzy, etc., and the "o" sound as in doctor. The
closest sound in Hindi for "z" is the consonant ज, which is
often used to indicate the "z" sound. Sometimes a dot is added
below it (ज़) to distinguish it from the normal ज
sound. For the "o" sound a new vowel has recently been added to the
alphabet of Devanagari, which looks like this - ऑ. However,
these symbols are as yet not universally understood and should be
sparingly used. The recommended practice is to adjust the
pronunciation of foreign sounds to fit into the normal set of
sounds available in the Devanagari script. So instead of writing
ऑस्ट्रिय (Austria)
or ज़ांबिया
(Zambia) one should write
आस्ट्रिया or
जांबिया.
Word choice
Another important issue that English-Hindi translators face
relates to the choice of words. Hindi is a very rich language which
sources its vocabulary from a number of languages like Sanskrit,
Persian, Arabic and English. For many English words, synonyms
derived from any of these languages can exist in Hindi and the
translator is faced with the task of choosing the most appropriate
alternative. This is where his/her real knowledge of Hindi, his/her
familiarity with the latest trends in Hindi writing, and
understanding of the cadence and poise of Hindi is put to test.
These things cannot be taught. One can only acquire them through
long association with the Hindi language. But some general
guidelines can be given.
These days Hindi feels more comfortable with the use of words of
Persian and Arabic origin. In fact, there is a marked preference
for words of Persian and Arabic origin over their Sanskrit-based
alternatives. However, while using Persian and Arabic based words,
they are adjusted phonetically to fit into the phonetic system of
Hindi. This point must always be borne in mind while using words of
Persian and Arabic origin in Hindi. Hindi translators should not
commit the mistake of using these words with their Persian or
Arabic pronunciations (which is indicated by using the nukta symbol
on Hindi consonants). They should use the words in their
naturalized Hindi pronunciations (without the nukta). For example,
instead of writing ज़मीन,
क़ानून,
बाग़, फ़ल, etc., in
Hindi, it is more natural in Hindi to write these words as
जमीन, कानून,
बाग, फल, etc.
There is, however, one exception to the above rule which,
though, does not directly concern Hindi translators. These days
Devanagari script is also being used extensively for writing Urdu.
When Urdu is written in Devanagari, the nukta should be used to
correctly indicate the pronunciations of Urdu consonants. Otherwise
much of the beauty of Urdu will be lost when it is written in
Devanagari. But Hindi translators should keep in mind that they are
not writing Urdu in Devanagari, but Hindi. In Hindi the nukta is
not used that extensively as in Urdu.
Numerals
Hindi has its own set of numerals, but international numerals
(0, 1, 2, 3, ... etc.) are also widely used. In fact, standard
Hindi stipulates that international numerals alone should be used.
There are one or two things to keep in mind when using the
international numerals in Hindi. The numeral 1 looks very similar
to the Hindi sentence terminator khadi pai - ।. So when a
number (such as a telephone number) comes at the end of a Hindi
sentence, the dot instead of the khadi pai should be used for
indicating the end of the sentence, otherwise, it is every easy to
confuse the khadi pai। for the numeral 1, in which case the
telephone number will never work!
Standard Spellings
There are some issues of multiple ways of spelling Hindi words
with which a competent Hindi translator will already be aware, but
it will be useful to mention it here too. In standard Hindi
spellings with ई and ए are preferred over spelling with
ये and यी in words like गए,
गई, लताएं,
जाएंगे,
जाएंगी, लाए,
लाई, etc. Using the ये and
यी versions is considered rustic or uneducated. So one
must scrupulously use the ई and ए spellings in all
Hindi translations.
Nowadays, the pancham varna (ङ, ञ, ण, न,
म) are replaced by the anuswar (ं) in when they combine
with consonants of their own category. So it would be considered
archaic to write डण्डा,
पञ्जाब,
कङ्गन, बन्द,
सम्बन्ध, etc. Each of
these should be written as डंडा,
पंजाब, कंगन,
बंद, संबंध,
etc.
The chandrabindu (ँ) seems to be on the way out, and is
being replaced by the anuswar (ं). So instead of writing
आँख, लताएँ,
हँसना,
रँगना, etc., it more standard to
write आंख, लताएं,
हंसना,
रंगना, etc.