18 August, 2013
Languaeability -
Abilities of a language to express thoughtful emotions vary primarily due to cultural and philosophical roots. Over the centuries, many precious thoughts originating in one geographic location have been translated, mistranslated or taken out of context. In the process humanity gets robbed of its precious heritage.
Original thoughts take on different meaning by translating them from one language to another. I have tried Google’s “Translate” tool to translate the following thoughts from English to Hindi and saw the absurdity of the translated material in Hindi. Our friend Raghavendra Garde who worked for the Indian Force in the capacity of a translator of Russian into English and vise versa cautioned that even a person well versed in English and Hindi may not he able to effectively communicate the spirit of simple philosophical thoughts from one language to another. That may be why philosophically self-enriching words such as God, Devil, Spirituality, Heaven and Hell get misinterpreted and screwed up by self-proclaiming religious experts who have no direct experience with the spirit of these words. As a result humanity around the world finds itself on road to nowhere even in the 21st Century. An honest effort to translate the following thoughts in our own mother tongue and cultural identity may help us better understand ourselves.
1. Me and my ego, neither the twain should meet.
2. I do not exchange gifts with my true and invisible friend that I have learnt to address as God since childhood.
3. An old Arabic saying “If Wishes were horses, Beggars would ride”. I do not wish a Horse lest my wishlist become endless and make me miserable; and most importantly Allah, I may forget you..
4.. I pray only to the God within me that is always available to guide me even without me asking for guidance.
5. I am not eager to travel to the far away Heaven because I am assured that all heavenly pleasures will come to me when I am ready.
6. I like the people that do not like me, because only they effectively teach me what I should not do. That keeps my “To Do” list shorter.
7. I do not hate anyone simply because it is a tremendous waste of my life energy for which I have far better uses. I abhor waste and consider it to be a sinful act.
8. I do not wish to be a beast of burden to prevent others from dumping their burden on me. But offering help to the needy is my self-enriching motto.
9. I like to dig and dip both of my hands in a heap of municipal trash to learn how we humans disrespectfully discard natural resources.
10. I do not wish to conquer Mt. Everest because I will reach the peak effortlessly when the right time comes. Do not misunderstand me, I am not lazy.
11. I would like to learn more about my own Self so that I do not imitate others like a Chimp.
12. People of ach different nationality and cultural heritage have their respective identity and yet becoming Human, respectful of each other and the entire environment seems to be everyone's innate Identity
