Saturday, April 07, 2012

Lost in translation

Well one of my friends posed a question as to what should the translation of a line written in Bengali to English. So here how I replied and the line.

The question: Jabar path ache ki baki ? (যাবার পথ আছে কি বাকি ?)

Would you please help me to translate the above into English ?


The answer: This is not so easy this sentence has spiritual meaning. Lets see word by word. First word "jabar" if written in English. But this one you can write with G as well. So it becomes gabar. Meaning a person belonging to Iranian Zoroastrianism. The second word "path" is same in English as well meaning road. So seen as in English the first two words translated will mean "The road to Iranian Zoroastrianism". Moving forward, "ache", in English it means pain. The next word "ki" can also be written as "key" like lock and key. And the last word is "baki" we can also write it with an e like bake as if baking a bread. Now the key refers to something particular. In this case the road so the key road to Iranian Zoroastrianism, and to get good things in life or achieve spiritual enlightenment you have to suffer or bear pain. So the author of the above sentence wants to say that " The key road to Iranian Zoroastrianism is baked in pain"