J.R.R. Tolkien’s not the only novelist who invented fictional languages! In Harry Mathews‘s early masterpiece, the epistolary novel The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, newlyweds Zachary McCaltex and Twang Panattapam, separated by the Atlantic, exchange letters in which they “try to trace the whereabouts of a treasure supposedly lost off the coast of Florida in the sixteenth century, while navigating a relationship separated by an ocean as well as their different cultures.”
Twang, who hails “from the Southeast-Asian country of Pan-Nam,” peppers her letters with snatches of her native language, “Pan.” Fortunately for her husband and the reader, she also translates it on the spot. I’ve collected all of the Pan and its English equivalents in the hope it will be of interest; it’s all after the jump.
“Slow, you may take-on my tongue, like I your.”
—Tro-tsi Twang Panattapam McCaltex (p. 92)
| Pan | English |
| atra atram bukhaï battazhum dek dhum duvaï ghanap laï Lao lemö, lemu lemum lucrem lucri lucrim ma maï mau me mem mo naï nam namma Namma Ghaï neng nob Nob-ma pheu phrap pok pop pristwe, -i, -ei sheenam sheenö slop stheu tharaï theu ticbaï ticbaï laï üin uüaxe uüax-m vin weï, wey wuc, wun |
think (pok atro: do not speak, but think) I think kind of brush; tree prostitute, whore in (?) stink long farewell, death hour(s) mud Laotian love I love (nob-lemum: for that I love) I eat (nob lucrim: I ate) eat (nob lucri: to eat) food Being, being now, for-this-moment; The Now to be (?) to be (nob-me: for to be, become) be be [imperative form] so, thus in, of royal shrine capital of Pan-Nam nose; Buddha’s nose; beautiful thing [if the body isn’t mentioned] [qualifier: for, have] O Being (pok-ma: no being) yours sari-like outfit not [negative] over (?), on (?) demon I endure, I bear (it) I shall bear misery entire (?) without end, endless, forever us, we running from, turning against; in the face of, in front of; confronted with in flight of mud [when used in Twang’s village] / confronted with mud [when used in the capital] idea retch I vomit; man; what man makes; to make cadaver, corpse alas, sadness, woe; to laugh to be similar, like (?) |
Thus, letter 100, Twang’s penultimate letter to Zachary (p. 182), might be translated as:
7 Not Mud
Dear Beloved! Love body now vomits the demon. We are beautiful things, alas forever farewell. As all Laotians think, run from/confront now misery, thus: we shall endure eating eels in mud.
“Not Mud” I interpret to mean a particular month or stretch of time (i.e., “not during the rainy season”).
The real challenge in translating this letter is the fact that ticbaï means both “run from” and “confront”—obviously Mathews is being cheeky.
(Actually, the expression ticbaï lai offers some guidance: it means “fleeing from mud” when used in Twang’s village, but “confronting mud” when used in the nation’s capital. So it would seem that the word’s meaning depends on one’s power in relation to the obstacle—a mudslide can destroy a small village, but heavy rains are usually little more than an inconvenience in a large city. The question then becomes: where are Twang and Zachary situated in regards to the obstacles they face?)
[Readers will no doubt also want to see “The Cares of a Family Man” by Franz Kafka.]
2 thoughts on “A Pan-English Dictionary (for readers of Harry Mathews’s The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium)”