Lost In Translation
Everything will be alright.
One day while singing in the shower, I stopped and listened to the words I was saying.
I was stunned. I had listened to this song hundreds of times, but never really taken in the words. They had a music of their own. You didn’t need to sing them to hear it.
Over the years, I started paying more attention to lyrics, especially those of Hindi/Urdu songs. Poetry in these languages is something else. Maybe it is because of their word order flexibility1 2. Native speakers of Hindi (and other South Asian languages) sometimes use the wrong word order in English (‘You are going where?’), because almost any word order is grammatical in Hindi3.
These thoughts came up while trying to write a longer piece about the experience of being multilingual. That one will come out at some point. In the mean time, I want to share some of my favourite Hindi song lyrics—some old, some not so old. I tried to translate them into English, but something gets lost in each one..
Translation achha nahi lage, toh maaf kijiye!
Kyun main toofaan se daroon? Mera saahil aap hain Koi toofaanon se keh de, mil gaya saahil mujhe
You are my shelter I'm safe from storms So let the storms know, I have found home.
From Aapki Nazron Ne Samjha, written by Raja Mehdi Ali Khan. Uff.
Bas ab na mujhko tokna, na badh ke raah rokna Agar main ruk gayi abhi, toh ja na paungi kabhi
Don’t stop me now, don’t pull my sleeve If I stay now, I'll never leave
From Abhi Na Jao Chhod Kar by Sahir Ludhianvi.
From Rehna Tu, written by Prasoon Joshi:
Tu zakhm de agar Marham bhi aake tu lagaye Zakhm pe bhi mujhko pyaar aaye
Every now and then you hurt me, and then you come and heal me. I fall in love even with the wounds that you have given me.
Also from the same song:
Haath thaam chalna ho, toh dono ke daaye haath sang kaise? Ek daaya hoga, ek baaya hoga Thaam lo, haath ye thaam lo Chalna hai sang thaamna
Let's walk holding hands Your right, my left We can't both be right If we hold hands when we walk. I want to hold your hand And walk this life with you And come to rest with you.
This part is especially lovely because the word ‘thaamna’ in Hindi means both holding (as in ‘haath thaam lo’) and stopping (as in the last line).
Tu hoga zara paagal, tune mujhko hai chuna Tu din sa hai, main raat aana dono mil jaayein shaamon ki tarha
You have chosen me ... you must be mad. You are day And I am night Let us join like an evening
These words are from the song Moh Moh Ke Dhaage, written by Varun Grover. Is somebody chopping onions over here?
You would think that can’t be topped. But this Anu Malik classic does it4:
Ek garam chai ki pyaali ho Koi usko pilaane waali ho Chaahe gori ho ya kaali ho Seene se lagaane waali ho Mil jaye toh mit jaaye har gham
Which can only be translated as
All I need is a cup of tea And a woman, to feed it to me No matter if she's dark or light As long as her embrace is tight Everything will be alright.
Told you.
If you enjoyed this, check out Lost in Translation: Part 2. Thank you for reading!
Take a simple sentence: “You are not here”, or “Tu yahaan nahi hai” in Hindi. There are four words, so you can make 24 different permutations. In English, there is only one correct word order (you are not here). In Hindi, half the permutations are grammatical (tu hai nahi yahaan, yahaan tu nahi hai and so on) and eight others would be okay in verse (nahi yahaan hai tu, hai tu nahi yahaan). Only four sound “wrong” to me (yahaan nahi tu hai, nahi tu yahaan hai, nahi tu hai yahaan, nahi yahaan hai tu). Even these may pass in verse. But in English, the un-grammatical ones sound completely wrong: Are not here you. You not are here. Here not you are. It was a fun half hour.
I am using wrong here in the sense that these word orders sound wrong to native English speakers. They may well be adopted by English at some point and become “right”. And they are widely used in Indian English, making them “right” in some sense.
To be fair to Anu Malik, he also composed the music for Moh Moh Ke Dhaage. The man contains multitudes.
Great read! Loved the first footnote. What an amazing rabbit hole of word-jenga. 😂