Contextualising attā (Attā and Anattā: Part Two)

Having introduced Horner's essay on Attā and Anattā and related some of the (more) open questions around the meanings of attā, we now consider the third and final part, where Horner presents various passages containing ‘attā’ (or more, exactly, “the logical opposite of an-attā”), which she regards as “too much overlooked”.

For example, from S. i. 140. [SN 6.2.2] Gārava Sutta (Respect):

Tasmā hi attakāmena,
mahattamabhikaṅkhatā;
Saddhammo garukātabbo

Horner translates as (my italics):

So he to whom the self is dear,
Who longs for the great self,
Should homage to true dhamma pay.

Yet Bhikkhu Bodhi translates this as (again, my italics):

Therefore one desiring his own good,
Aspiring for spiritual greatness,
Should deeply revere the true Dhamma.

and Bhikkhu Sujato renders it:

Therefore someone who loves themselves,
aspiring to transcendence,
should respect the true teaching.

There is considerable variation in these, but the second and third translations both avoid using the word ‘Self’, though Ven. Sujato does assign to 'mahattama' transcendence, which is not the conventional. My knowledge of Pali is not sufficient to be clear on this, but the key to the translation of the second line is how one deals with 'mahattam' (or 'mahatta[m]') - the PTS dictionary translates 'mahattam' as 'greatness' (from the Sanskrit mahattva). So technically Horner's translation of this line looks erroneous, though they may well share linguistic roots. However, I think the key point is that the second line reinforces the first one, so the sense is actually correct.

More generally, I notice that other modern translations of some of these passages replace references to 'self' by something vaguer, with conventional meaning, or otherwise gloss over the words. Whilst in some cases this may be closer to the intended meaning, it seems to me that more often it’s rooted in a particular limited view of self, entailing some aversion to writing ‘self’ without qualification. Sometimes there’s even an insistence in the footnotes that any reference to attā can’t be metaphysical, as is the case for the following famous passage that Horner includes in her list:

tasmā attadīpā attasaraṇā anaññasaraṇā dhammadīpā dhammasaraṇā anaññasaraṇā

Horner translates this as:

Wherefore fare along with self as island, with self as refuge, and no other, with dhamma as island, with dhamma as refuge, and no other. (D. ii. 100, etc.)

But in a footnote Walshe is adamant it can’t be other than a reflexive pronoun.

Yet Horner was not convinced by the conclusions of Walshe and those with similar views and I believe that by reprinting the essay in the ‘70s she purposely wished to re-express her view:

As the idea of brahma in the Pali canon has been overlooked—in spite of the ever recurring brahmacariya, the Walk to or with Brahma, the Sublime—so has that of attā. Both were of the utmost significance in the Upanishads. Both have a significance, even if we have not yet assessed it, in the Pali canon.

Substantially, she proposed a philological basis to glean the meanings, but she indicates it would require far-reaching studies across the Vinaya and Nikayas and furthermore a proper understanding of Indian cultures and beliefs at that time.

She starts us off with a selection of quotes around the use of “brahma” and “dhamma”, suggestive of affinities with. They include:

He who sees Dhamma, Vakkali, sees me; he who sees me sees Dhamma. Truly seeing Dhamma, one sees me; seeing me one sees Dhamma.

[S iii 119 [SN 22.87] Vakali Sutta]

And a teaching to Vasettha where the Buddha referred to himself using the terms dhammakāya, brahmakāya, dhammabhūta, and brahmabhūta. The passage is from D. iii. 84 [DN 27] Aggañña Sutta, and is as follows:

He whose faith in the Tathagata is settled, rooted, established, solid, unshakeable by any ascetic or Brahmin, any deva or mara or Brahma or anyone in the world, can truly say: “I am a true son of Blessed Lord, born of his mouth, born of Dhamma, created by Dhamma, an heir of Dhamma.” Why is that? Because, Vasettha, this designates the Tathagata: “The Body of Dhamma” [dhammakāya], that is, “The Body of Brahma” [brahmakāya], or “Become Dhamma” [dhammabhūta], that is, “Become Brahma” [brahmabhūta].

Academic Response

So what has been the response to Horner’s paper? When I search online I can find few citations; in fact, it seems to be little known, not even listed in Google Scholar.

Even so there have been a few scholars who have delved into the subject matter. Among them was Joaquín Pérez-Remón, who made a bold attempt to explore at length in his thesis, Self and Non-self in Early Buddhism (De Gruyter), which is partially accessible via Google Books.

A general sense of his position is expressed in his reflection about the Buddha:

Is it not far better to say that what he affirmed and what he denied were not one and the same thing? When he affirmed the existence of attā against the materialists, he affirmed the reality of something objectively true. When he denied the attā against the eternalists, he did not deny the true attā, but the attā of the eternalists that is wrongly identified with the khandhas.

(from Pérez-Remón's concluding section, page 302)

I find this a fair assessment, but his work was considered controversial; reviews found aspects useful, but seem to be critical — it seems that whatever the philological analysis, if it came to conclusions that challenged prevailing views it would not be regarded favourably and might just be dismissed as intellectual speculation (see e.g Vijitha Rajapakse’s review for the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies).

The book is a reworking of the author's doctoral thesis at the University of Bombay under the title: 'The Anattavada in the Suttapitaka' (page v). At 1810 pages it seems that the institution had a very liberal attitude to limits, but I feel sorry for the examiners! The considerable length may explain why the author has seemingly inverted the presentation by devoting the first half of the book to numerous references containing attā: part one (of only two) is entitled ‘The Existential Self’ before treating — in part two, ‘The Metaphysical Self’ — attā and anattā more together. However, with Horner starting mainly with anattā, I find the ordering odd; I think a more balanced approach to treat them alongside each other all along, a more natural process to show how there might be complementarity instead of apparent contradictions or inconsistencies.

It would have been interesting for Pérez-Remón to have disseminated his ideas more widely and continued with his research, but he passed away only a few years after its publication [In memoriam]. However, it looks like Arthur Wells took up the baton with his Master’s thesis: The Early Buddhist Affirmation of Self (Atman) in the Logic, Parables and Imagery of the Pali Nikāyas.

I was only made aware of his work very recently; it seems not so widely circulated. At least it has been considered and cited in the academic literature and it does get occasionally mentioned in online discussions. I wonder why Pérez-Remón went to such great lengths in his research. It may be due to his own religious convictions; he was a Jesuit who explored interreligous dialogue, especially mysticism - among his other publications is Misticismo Oriental y Misticismo Cristiano, Caso Típico: Teresa de Jesús. Having studied some of the imagery of St. Teresa of Avila, I add this to my reading list. Other Buddhist scholars have also been interested in this mystic; Lance Cousins wrote a paper about her, suggesting parallels with the path of purification as expressed by Buddhagosa.

More recently, Chanida Jantrasrisalai’s PhD thesis has examined in depth the meaning of language in the Indian context — around terms such as Brahmacariya, Brahmakāya and Dhammakāya. It’s entitled, 'Early Buddhist dhammakāya: Its philosophical and soteriological significance', available to download from the University of Sydney. It's the Dhammakāya tradition that I wish to explore next.

A Review of Four Reigns (Part Seven): Conclusion

[Updates

9 Nov 2019: added a translation of the theme tune to Channel 3 TV's production
21 April 2018: added a couple of additional paragraphs suggesting multilingual subtitles for TV productions uploaded to YouTube and a few minor edits.]

Welcome to the final instalment of a series of posts in which I am reviewing Four Reigns, a translation of Si Phaendin, a Thai classic of historical fiction by M.R. Kukrit Pramoj. Congratulations if you've managed to read through the other posts! Here I will offer some reflections on the work as a whole set within the context of its original publication and how it might be received today. The analysis is based on the publication by Silkworm Books.

Cultural Transmission

In his preface, M.R. Kukrit relates how, when he was preparing the series of columns for Siam Rath, the story arose out of a natural urge to “set down in writing the modes of mores of a disappearing age”. It came naturally, he says, without pre-meditation, with characters gradually emerging as the plot seemed to develop. And that is how the narrative felt to me — there’s a pleasant rambling flow, consistent with a series of regular newspapers columns tumbling off the top of his head, resulting in a wonderful story.

However, also naturally, the work reflects the deeply held views of the author. This is historical fiction, not merely a story, and marshals a considerable amount of factual details. History, despite its emphasis on objectivity, requires interpretation and this is subjective, not neutral, with intentions dependent upon one’s background, views, personality and so on. As such, beyond the intricate descriptions, Four Reigns comes over as gently didactic, with implicit guidance on how to behave as a model citizen centred on the main character, Phloi. The author deploys clever use of language and imagery; humour is used to cultivate reverence for royalty, even to elevate it beyond mortal grasp: any commoner who would rashly compare themselves with them is destined to have “lice on their heads”.

Yet the appreciation is not uniform; it’s not an unqualified paean. After Phloi gets married and lives outside the Inner Court, the author lets slip that her life in the palace was restrictive:

“For she had felt lost on countless occasions ... like a released cage bird who does not know what to do with its newfound freedom. She had longed for some boundaries, some restrictions, ...”
(p.213)

Nowadays the ability to make choices is generally regarded as fundamental to the rights of the individual, though for the spiritual life there’s a different view: monastics voluntarily commit themselves to numerous rules of training that largely remove such freedom of choice. In this way, the training and lifestyle in the Inner Court has a sense of a spiritual discipline, though without the material austerity.

There are also variations between the monarchs, as seen principally through Phloi’s eyes, through vague allusions to the need for modernisation or puzzlement as to particular royal interests. But a constant is Nai Luang (an affectionate reference to the monarch) as the blessed glue holding together Muang Thai (in this context there’s no mention of “Phrathet Thai”, the political term used for the nation as declared after the country had become a constitutional monarchy.)

As the narrative unfolds the characters are generally well developed. Naturally the spotlight is mainly on Phloi, the central figure throughout, whose qualities are summed up by her son, Ot: “honesty, loyalty, fair-mindedness, compassion towards our fellow beings, all this and more.” However, whilst Phloi is admirable as a paragon of virtue, it is Ot I find the most intriguing: gentle in his manners, he appears as the most benign and easily contented — very low maintenance! He has the least status of all of Phloi’s children, but as far as the narrative is concerned, he has an important role in defining Phloi from the close mother-favourite son relationship. He thus acts as a lens or filter, whilst also having complimentary characteristics; Phloi and Ot affirm each other and hence support each other in promulgating certain values to the reader. His views are more serious than those of Choi, Phloi’s very close lifelong friend and hearty antidote to modernity, and in respect of the overall message they are more significant.

Ot himself is sagacious and resourceful; immediately after his father’s death he is the one who gains authority and able to direct affairs. His savoir-faire reminds me of the Admirable Crichton, a butler taking command of a household he serves when they are stranded on an island. At the same time he can be incorrigible in his humorous digs, sometimes unable to hold back from witty and very astute observations. Just taking his conversation on its own merits, without the commentary, I’d find his remarks cutting, tending towards the sardonic, but the text generally relates that it’s all harmless. One wonders: is that the author speaking? Similarly, Ot smiles a lot, but they’re not all the same smiles, a few are “odd” — there are many kinds of smile in ‘the land of smiles’! Similarly, when I ask myself with whom would the author most identify, I notice that the closest by year of birth is Ot, who displays the keen art of observation, just like the author. (It might be fun to have a readers’ poll!)

The details of gossip (chat about relationships) are extensive and could be shorter, but that’s authentic and it’s done in a light and airy way. M.R. Kukrit’s delightful sense of humour prevents gloomy passages from being sustained: even when encounters are cold and malicious, he adds a little comment such as “Thus ended the dialogue — if that was the right term for such a lopsided exchange.” It’s a measured response, I think, to the immense upheaval, seeking to prompt reflection on noble traditions that are eroding or have been lost and to appreciate how they have contributed to a more harmonious society.

Modern literary criticism would subject the author’s intentions to closer scrutiny; is it a mere coincidence that the son who is most like his father is On, a royalist, whilst the argumentative one, An, is the one who pushes through with the modernisation programme? It’s also noticeable that in relation to political dispositions, the characters portrayed in particularly glowing terms are the most loyal to the royal traditions; they are calm, wise and benevolent, whereas some of the most radical proponents of change are shown as rather hot-headed. Was this really the case? Well, Ot’s slightly frightening description of the countenance of radical French intellectuals are strikingly vivid; we know the author could draw on many contemporary accounts, though, of course, this depended on who were the informants!

Some might wonder about those who have no royal connections — how did they fare? Was the absolute monarchy at their expense? The descriptions include various fads that were sparked by the monarch, such as King Chulalongkorn’s comment on the patina of a particular ivory box; then the fashion was for ivory boxes as collector’s items and this being interwoven with poetry. A commonly accepted historical viewpoint considers that the monarchy was a huge drain on financial resources, leaving many in poverty, made stark in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet, this was nothing new. In the 17th Century Simon de la Loubère, special envoy of King Louis XIV, concluded that the locals, though having few possessions, appeared to generally exhibit a greater sense of well-being than those in the West.

Poverty did affect some of Phloi’s relatives who lost their wealth; the author narrates how this affected her half-sister:

Khun Choie talked of being poor as something ordinary, as nothing shameful or repellant. Certainly nothing terrible like, say, an incurable disease. She talked with characteristic frankness and naturalness ... Khun Choei resented nothing.
(p.266)

Whether rich or poor, it’s still the same family and Phloi’s faith was affirmed.

The descriptions of the landscape and natural environment are, I expect, spot on; some passages contain descriptions similar to those I’ve heard concerning my Thai relatives, especially when they first moved to Thonburi. In the narrative, we read that to get to Choi’s family home required walking down a lane then along planks to cross mud. Similarly, when the family first moved to a plot off the Taksin Road, they had to pull up their trousers and sarongs and walk around the edge of fields to reach it.

The accounts of education also tally with what I’ve heard: the wealthy have traditionally sought to have their children educated at a Christian missionary school. My mother related that when she was a child it was generally considered that these schools provided the best education, especially in English language, but they were expensive, so although her parents wanted to send her to one, they couldn’t afford it. At the same time the fear about conversion “to the farang church” was and is strong — for Thailand is predominantly Buddhist and most want to keep it that way.

Patriarchy

And what of the patriarchy? It’s obviously there and is often picked up in more recent reviews, but I shall say only a few words as I feel I’m not best qualified to comment.

Ahead of Phloi’s wedding, her royal sponsor, Sadet, advises:

“Your husband’s happiness, your children’s happiness, the good name of the family — all this should come before your personal comfort.”
(p.187)

However, the author is aware of changing attitudes, even in his day, as he conveys Phloi’s views shortly after getting married to Prem:

Phloi ... came to be aware of the way she felt about him. She would not call it love; it struck her as not being at all similar to that love which she had once experienced. I feel myself as belonging to him. This is something absolute and unarguable. I belong to him completely and absolutely. I take him as my owner, as centre and mainstay of my life, forever, unless and until he himself should wish to cease being so. Some women may prefer to stay free of such a tie, but Phloi happened to be that feminine type who finds assurance in it, and happiness in that assurance.
(p.199)

Phloi’s role is well-defined and intentionally so as one who derives happiness from service to others. And as one seeking always to give more than she receives, Phloi’s status actually rises in tandem with that of Prem, her husband, until she becomes a Khunying (“Lady”), though she remains the same person and carries out her life as usual. At the same time, whilst Phloi’s responsibilities are confined to the family, the narrative makes clear that in general this doesn’t preclude the highest responsibilities from women. There are extended passages describing Queen Saowabha acting as Somdet Regent whilst her husband, King Chulalongkorn, is in Europe.

My mother came to the West in the ‘60s when the rights of individuals were being asserted more strongly. She herself had a fiercely independent nature (reflected in a large, varied and entertaining group of friends), rather different in character from Phloi. Yet, when interviewed for a local paper in 1981 she retained views distinctly rooted in Thai tradition:

“... Buddha taught us to do things in moderation, and there is a strong accent put on family life — I feel it is important for me to do what is best for my family, whether it be cooking, cleaning or whatever. All the time I have to think of others and try to get rid of any selfishness. “
(Thursday’s Lotus: The Life and Work of Fuengsin Trafford, p. 164).

Whatever one’s views, the narrative describes how Phloi’s attitudes fostered mutual respect, as her husband, Prem, remarked:

“You owe me nothing. It’s the other way round. You could have found a husband a thousand times better than this one. If there should be any debt at all, then it is I who owe it. I’ll make it up to you, Mae Phloi. I’ll try in every way to make myself worthy to you.”
(p.205)

He remains ever faithful and attentive to her needs, particularly in difficult times, as in Phloi’s final life-threatening pregnancy. In a recent academic paper presented by Kanchana Witchayapakorn and Todsapon Suranakkharin at Naresuan University, ‘Dignity in Humility: The Representation of Central Female Characters in Thai Literary Works’, the authors emphasize Phloi’s character in fulfilling a role of complementarity and argue that she is extolling a cultural feminist perspective that is both dignified and vital in giving strength to the family and society as a whole.

Translation or Adaptation?

The text of Four Reigns is coherent, generally polished and even eloquent. It readily stands alone; although aware of Si Phaendin, I didn’t feel the need to consult the original. In the English version, M.R. Kukrit still paints vivid pictures of the outside world through the domestic situation with a flowing narrative and a great sense of timing, rather like a stage play. The translation particularly succeeds in conveying this flow, allowing passages to convincingly convey the tone even if the English is not perfect, for example: “the two men, their voices heavy and low, their faces clouded with anxiety and hurt and shame.” I understand that the name of the translator, ‘Tulachandra’, is actually a composite for a husband and wife team, Tulaya and Chaemchand Bunnag, with the latter being the primary translator. Chaemchand Bunnag was a professional translator of English literary works into Thai and the quality shows: her handling of idioms and turns of phrase is impressive, making the text sound convincing. And I’m sure that belonging to the extensive Bunnag family is also helpful in knowing the author's intentions.

However, I was curious about the original Thai and chanced across the text of Si Phaendin online, though I’m not sure about the copyright. Then I came across ‘Analysis of the Thai-English translation [of] ‘Four Reigns’ by Abhiradee Rungsirichairat, M.A. thesis, Thammasat University, 2005. This scholarly work reveals that the translation is indeed very liberal, reordering sentences, paraphrasing, omitting details and even one or two characters; the thesis also claims that Four Reigns contains many mistakes, yet even so it still conveys the essence.

To investigate briefly, I looked at the Thai source from which the above quote about Phloi’s sense of belonging to Prem (p.199) was derived, which happens to be just beyond the selection used in Rungsirichairat's analysis. The corresponding Thai is as follows:

ความรู้สึกอย่างหนึ่ง ที่ไม่เคยมี ก็เกิดขึ้นมาในใจ พลอยไม่ยอมรับว่าความรู้สึกนั้นเป็นความรัก เพราะไม่เหมือนกับ ความรักที่เคยมีมาครั้งหนึ่ง ในกาลก่อน แต่ความรู้สึกที่เกิดใหม่นั้น เป็นของแน่นอนไม่มีวันเปลี่ยนแปลง หรือหวั่นไหวไปได้คือ รู้สึกว่าคุณเปรมนั้นเป็น เจ้าของๆตน เป็นหลักที่ตนจะต้องยึดมั่นไว่ในชีวิตนี้ ไม่มีวันที่จะผละออกได้ นอกจากคุณเปรมจะไม่ต้องการตนอีกต่อไป คนเราที่เกิดมาทุกคนย่อมมีจิตใจแตกต่างกัน มีใจที่รักความอิสระ โดยไม่มีข้อผูกพันกับใครบ้าง หรือมิฉะนั้นก็มีใจที่ ต้องการจะอยู่กับคนอื่น หรือเป็นของคนอื่น จะอยู่ด้วยตนเองแต่เพียงคนเดียวนั้นไม่ได้ พลอยเป็นผู้หญิงทั้งกายและใจโดย สมบูรณ์จึงมีใจอย่างประเภทหลัง เมื่อรู้สึกว่าตนมีเจ้าของก็เกิดความมั่นใจ และได้รับความสุขจากความมั่นใจนั้น ความรู้สึกว่าตนเป็นของคุณเปรม นั้นผิดกับความรู้สึกที่พลอยเคยมีต่อแม่หรือเสด็จ เพราะความใกล้ชิดสนิทสนมต่อคน ต่างเพศถึงเพียงนี้ พลอยมิได้เคยมีมาแต่ก่อน
(p.232)

Here is my attempt at a literal translation (with the help of Thai2English and Longdo):

She had a feeling in her heart like she never had before. Phloi did not accept that this feeling was love because it wasn’t the same as the love she had [felt] once before. But this new feeling, she was sure, was of belonging; it could not be changed and was unshakeable. She felt that Khun Prem was in that respect her owner. He was the guiding principle to whom she must hold fast in this life. There was to be no day when she would flee apart from the day when Khun Prem would no longer need her anymore. Since birth our minds naturally all bud [and flower] differently: there’s the mind that loves independence by not having any commitment with someone; or else there’s the mind that must live with or belong to someone else — they cannot live only with that one person. Phloi was a complete woman in body and mind. Consequently, her mind was of the following type: when she felt herself to have an owner then confidence arose and she obtained happiness from that confidence. Those feelings about her belonging to Khun Prem were unlike the feelings which Phloi had towards her mother or Sadet, for Phloi had not come to as intimate closeness as this towards someone of the opposite sex before.

Even allowing for mistakes in my translation, which are quite likely, it's evident that there’s a significant amount of paraphrasing as "happiness in that assurance", with the imagery of the bud and the several clauses omitted. Whilst this may help to maintain the flow of the text, I wonder whether this was in part done to be more palatable to a Western audience. In any case, some of the nuance has definitely been lost, similar to the way a high resolution image is stored with some compression — generally it looks fine, but on closer inspection some of the details cannot be discerned.

As regards issues raised in the thesis about meaning, I think a few of these are invalid as they are actually addressed in the text. For example, in the Silkworm Books publication the issue about lice is indeed brought up twice — i.e., there is first the story, as already alluded to above, “and commoners who tried to imitate them were only inviting the lice of ill luck upon their heads...”, and then Phloi seeks an explanation about the story: “Phloi did not laugh because her mind was on something else. She wanted to question father on those lice of ill luck ...” (p.28 [of the thesis]) Further, some of the use of English language is unnecessarily questioned, such as the idiom, “Are you well?” (p.44), which is perfectly natural. But this is quibbling for the research usefully illustrates how a body of work can be deemed an overall success whilst deviating significantly from a literal translation. At the same time, it should also prompt further close scrutiny of key passages in Four Reigns by reference to the original.

I’d also add that Rungsirichairat appears to have used a different printing or edition as whilst I can find the quotes, the page numbers referenced are generally higher than in my copy. (Actually, the copy that arrived on my doorstep had some defects. The printing process seems to have had a few hiccoughs as there are 5 or 6 leaves either missing or incorrect duplicates and throughout the text there are many soft hyphens that have not been removed, as though the original print run was for a different page setup and then someone forgot to clear them before sending to the printers a second time.)

There are just a few other minor issues that I noticed. For example, Ot address his mother as "my darling”, a term of endearment that I find odd — I’d expect it to be used for couples, between husband and wife, or possibly between a mother and her child, not by a son speaking to his mother, but it might be a term that is used in rarefied circles and/or was in vogue at the time. There are also a few spelling and typographic mistakes, such as “Bali" instead of ‘Pali’ and “Brama chaloka” instead of “Brahma ca loka”, but the explanation is helpful in this latter case. Also, whilst the spellings are in British English, some of the idioms appear to be North American, such as, “I’ll write him”.

Television Production Subtitles?

Taken as a whole, there is evidently scope for other translations and one was already being prepared by Marcel Barang, but apparently his proposal was rejected and so we have to wait a long time, it seems, for the copyright to expire before any other version is permitted (see footnote below).

Or do we? Whilst watching episodes of Channel 3 TV's 1991 production on YouTube (starting with the first episode), I realized that an alternative avenue might be possible online via subtitling. There are actually at least two TV productions, but so far only Channel 3 has made every episode from its series freely available. All episodes have been uploaded to YouTube (conveniently via a playlist at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0VVVtBqsoupHcHintTWUEtUF6PNUYxRY). If the production follows the original text closely, then it should be straightforward (for Thais or those fluent in Thai) to improve accessibility by adding Thai subtitles. The text from the original could be applied directly in the creation of YouTube subtitles, as explained on their help page for subtitles and closed captions. Any literal translations into other languages, such as that by Marcel Barang, would be equally amenable to transcription in this way.

There’s great potential in reaching new audiences via such online services and working with Channel 3 (or whichever TV company made the film) should at least avoid potential issues in copyright associated with third party captioning. (See e.g. Blake E. Reid's paper on ‘Third Party Captioning and Copyright’ for the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict). It would be considerable work, so would need a team — perhaps a candidate for crowdsourcing?

As a gesture in this direction, with the kind assistance of Darunee Potikanok, I've had a go at translating the theme tune, having found the lyrics to a performance by the Zansab Philharmonic Orchestra. (Thai / phonetics / translation)

"คนมี ชีวิตและกายา
kon mee chee-wít láe gaa yaa
"People have life and a body,

 ถือ กำเนิดเกิดมา
tĕu gam-nèrt gèrt maa
having been born [human],

 เป็นหญิง หรือว่าเป็นชาย
bpen yĭng rĕu wâa bpen chaai
whether as a woman or a man.

 ผู้มี พระคุณอันแสนยิ่งใหญ่
pôo mee prá kun an săen yîng yài
The great benefactor,

 กว่า สิ่งใด ก็คือแผ่นดิน
gwàa sìng dai gôr keu pàen din
more than any other, is the realm.


 เป็นแดน ที่ให้ชีวา
bpen daen têe hâi chee-waa
It is the land for living beings,

 พึ่งพา อาศัยและอยู่กิน
pêung paa aa-săi láe yòo gin
dependent on each other and living together.

 คุณใด จะเปรียบแผ่นดิน
kun dai jà bprìap pàen din
Whoever is like the realm

 เอื้อชีวิน จากวันที่เกิด จนตาย
êua chee-win jàak wan têe gèrt jon dtaai
is kind to life from birth to death


 ยามใด ความทุกข์กรายมาเยือน
yaam dai · kwaam túk graai maa yeuan
In times of suffering that come by,

 ทุกข์ใดเล่าจะเหมือน
túk dai lâo jà mĕuan
they say that in such distress it is like

 ความทุกข์เยือน เรือนกาย
kwaam túk yeuan · reuan gaai
our suffering visits the body;

 หากเรือน ของเรามีทุกข์ กรายใกล้
hàak reuan · kŏng rao mee túk · graai glâi
when the body is in distress, our suffering is nearby.

 สุขอย่างไร อย่างไรตัวเรา
sùk · yàang rai · yàang rai dtua rao
[Yet] we can be happy, however we are.


 ยามดี เราดีตาม
yaam dee rao dee dtaam
When times are good, we are well

 ในยาม มีทุกข์ควรแบ่งเบา
nai yaam mee túk kuan bàeng bao
and in times of distress, this should ease.

 บุญคุณ ยิ่งใหญ่นานเนาว์
bun kun yîng yài naan nao
Your benevolence is great and long-lasting;

 หน้าที่เรา ตอบแทนพระคุณแผ่นดิน
nâa têe rao dtòp taen prá kun pàen din"
our duty is to repay the realm."

(and repeat the last two lines twice.)

Conclusion

This is a literary classic that I really enjoyed. It has explained quite a lot about attitudes prevailing among my Thai relatives, especially of the older generation. It's also valuable as a historical and educational resource: nowadays references can be easily checked with enhanced appreciation through various multimedia archive material available even in English.

M.R. Kukrit’s treatment of Phloi’s character is very sympathetic; as it emerges in her private reflections and interactions with a broad range of people, it is very fine; she is beautiful inwardly and outwardly, drawing the deepest respect from all family members. The characters around her further enrich these qualities, especially Ot with his wisdom. Altogether this goes beyond any particular theme and is perhaps the main reason why the book is easy to read. It also contributes to the continued reverence with which the novel is held. Seeing the world today, we may reflect that Phloi’s qualities, rooted in metta (loving kindness) and karuna (compassion) are much needed to promote reconciliation and harmony.

Footnote

For other translations, copyright needs to be observed for both the original newspaper articles and the book, Copyright Act B.E. 2537 (1994), superseded Copyright Act B.E. 2521 (1978)
 , which in turn replaced the The Act for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, B.E. 2474 (1931)
, as reported in a useful presentation; the general 
principle is explained (at USLegal, the first site I consulted via a Google search).

Translating Thai with help from electronic tools

With the advent of various electronic tools translations from one language to another should be greatly facilitated, improved, and made faster. However, I’ve found the initial preparation is no trivial matter. Furthermore, as I hope to show, when it comes to attempting a reasonably reliable translation, you need to draw on your wits and whatever knowledge you’ve tucked away in the recesses of your memory – so having a good memory is a good start!

I’ll indicate some particular issues with respect to Thai, with a few comparisons with other languages. I make no claims about my general linguistic ability and with Thai I consider myself a novice both in speaking and writing, though I’m gradually acquiring more skills – without any language aids I would not be able to get very far at all! Even so, having heard my mother speak to me as a child, I have some sense of how Thai ‘sounds’ and its structure.

Assuming that an electronic document is available, like humans, automated assistants have to content with the following general problems:

• There’s no punctuation in Thai – it means that there’s more effort required in parsing the text and, particularly chunking, working out where divisions lie between clauses and sentences. I’ve struggled with this and sometimes depend on the tools’ suggestions.
• There are no tenses in Thai apart from a few designators (token words added in) – it’s not always obvious what mode of voice to use and if making an arbitrary choice, then consistency is needed across the text as a whole.
• Phonetic transcriptions are helpful for aiding a quicker reading, but there’s no single standard – I think it’s partly because Thai is tonal, and Romanised phonetics either look clumsy or just omit the tones; it’s also partly because of the sound combinations, many of which could be transcribed in more than one way.

A Suite of Translation Tools

But let’s not be too pessimistic – as Benny the Irish polyglot would say, the language cup is half full! Having created an electronic document, perhaps via scanning, OCR, and manual corrections, it’s time to find the tools to help you read it!

When it comes to electronic assistants, the temptation is take the easiest route: locate one tool, preferably free and on the Web, and just use that. However, it’s essential to have at least a second opinion! The first electronic tool that I have used in earnest is Lingvosoft Talking Dictionary Thai to English, though the pronunciation even in the 2010 version is still only in English. :-( This is basically a large conventional dictionary with a simple interface – you type in your word letter by letter, and if you’re not sure of the ending, then it will list words that start with that combination. I originally bought the Windows CE version thinking that it would be handy to have with me on my travels in Thailand, but I’ve not really got used to inputting on a small screen.

I’ve found this the most useful tool amongst all those I’ve tried is Thai2English. There’s a version of the software is available on the Web site http://thai2english.com. I have purchased the full copy, though it should be noted that it only runs on Windows. You can see from exploring the Web site that it goes well beyond a simple dictionary and has quite an array of pedagogic building blocks that supports those who are learning Thai.

However, the first thing that can be done is to get a quick sense of what the text is about and it’s here that I’ve turned to the Web by uploading content into Google Translate. This free service, which has only been available since January 2009, provides a very convenient interface offering a number of ways to get content translated automatically – technically it’s called machine translation. You can enter text into the box, upload a document or enter the URL (Web address) of a page that you’d like translated. You specify what language to which you’d like it to be translated and then just press the [Translate] button. You can also bookmark combinations, e.g. Thai to English:
http://translate.google.com/?th&tl=en#
(For newcomers, you can get a flavour from a quick overview provided by Google, which covers a lot of ground in a little over a minute, but you can pause, rewind and replay to take it all in...)

Google Translate does set a limit of a few pages per go, so if you have more than a slender booklet, you’d need to repeat this process a number of times, but for most purposes I don’t think that’s going to be very troublesome.

TIP: When running MS Windows (XP), I notice that there’s much better support for Firefox than Internet Explorer, especially when copying from the browser Window into a Word Processor, even to MS Word, when I intuitively expect more information to be retained from IE.

An example

I’ll consider the title and opening paragraph from my mother’s article about her experience of the Hampshire Buddhist Society. The URL is: http://www.chezpaul.org.uk/fuengsin/dhamma/hants60s.htm.

Here is what Google currently makes of it (click on the image to see the full size version):

Room for improvement, yes? I think it’s quite instructive of the challenges facing language learners, so let’s take a closer look at this paragraph.

You can do this using the text box entry form or alternatively, you can actually enter the above URL into Google and ask for English to be returned. Wherever it encounters what it thinks is Thai, Google has a go at translating, so it generally leaves the English untouched, though not completely(!) In this interface, moving my mouse pointer over the translated title reveals the original Thai, ส่วนหนึ่งของชาวพุทธในอังกฤษ:

Here is the phonetic transcription provided by Thai2English:

Right at the start there’s a lot of scope for differing translations. Let’s compare what Google and I make of it. I’ll do this chunk by chunk:

Title:

ส่วนหนึ่งของชาวพุทธในอังกฤษ

Google’s English:

Part of the Buddhist in England.

Paul’s English:

Some Buddhists in England.

Comments:

• With Thai, there is no written designation for plural – here Google has interpreted ชาวพุทธ (chaao put) as singular, but should it be in the plural?
• It opens with a figure of speech ส่วนหนึ่ง (suan neung), a construct recognised by Thai2English:
  
  Lingvosoft also lists it as a phrase:
  
  

However, it’s still grammatically correct to assume that the two words are distinct: ส่วน หนึ่ง. Then a whole host of meanings are possible for ส่วน, which could be one of a number of parts of speech. Lingvosoft indicates:

Adverb.

Apropos;

Conjunction.

As for, as to

Noun.

Fragment, denominator, form, lineament, member, part, portion, proportion, quota, region, section, segment, while, zone, bit, body

Preposition.

As of

Thus it could be translated: Concerning a Buddhist ... , i.e. about a [single] Buddhist’s experiences in the UK.

So I’ve had to weigh up these alternatives. How to home in on the right meaning? One approach I adopt is to shorten the phrase, which should draw on a larger statistical sample so that the translation is based on more occurrences. Thus I can try ส่วนหนึ่งของชาว (sùan nèung kŏng chaao). Google renders this as 'Part of the people.' This helps persuade me to settle on 'Some people' as the main sense. Yet even with some more pointers it’s still largely guesswork until I’ve had a native or fluent speaker to check it for me.

Having pondered enough over just the title, let’s move onto the first sentence(!)

Sentence 1

นับตั้งแต่ข้าพเจ้าออกจากบ้านเมืองมาอยู่ในประเทศอังกฤษเป็นเวลาเกือบ ๕ ปีไม่มีโอกาสไปวัดทำบุญตักบาตรและฟังพระธรรมเทศนา

Google:

Since I come from homes in the UK for nearly 5 years, no opportunity to measure merits, and put listening preaching.

PT:

Ever since I left my homeland to be in England nearly 5 years ago I have not had the opportunity to go to a temple to make merits, to put almsfood in a monk's bowl, or to listen to the Buddha's teachings.

Comments on Google’s effort:

• The subject of the sentence almost gets lost at ไม่มี – literally ‘there wasn’t’, but in English it’s clearer to turn this into the first person
• Google omits the translation of ไป วัด (go to the temple), yet it’s a very common activity.
• There’s a lack of contextual awareness with “measure merits” – it just doesn’t make sense here!
• Google translates ตักบาตร as just ‘put’, but it’s a construction, which Thai2English renders as “to put almsfood in a monk's bowl” and Lingvosoft offers: “give food offerings to a Buddhist monk.” Perhaps the latter is safer, but the former really conveys the Thai tradition!
• The resulting sentence offered by Google is grammatically very poor. If you look at it, there’s a distinct absence of Buddhist-related vocabulary, which suggests a significant gap in the corpora (assuming it is using statistical methods).

Afterwards I made a few more stylistic changes such as changing ‘home’ to ‘homeland’ to emphasize the change in culture.

Sentence 2

ข้าพเจ้ายังมีความเลื่อมใสในพุทธธศาสนาอยู่เสมอ

Google:

I also have a sequin. Enter the Buddhist religious path always.

PT:

Yet I still have faith in the Buddha's teachings.

Comments:

• Whereas Thai2English translates ความเลื่อมใส as a phrase meaning ‘faithfulness, believability, conviction’, Google errs in its chunking and decides to apply a full stop in the middle of a word, i.e. after ความเลื่อม which literally means ‘glossy things,’ hence ‘sequin’!
• Google doesn’t retain a single voice – it jumps from first person indicative to imperative(?)
• The phrase พุทธธศาสนา is just the Thai transcription from the Pali of Buddha Sasana, which just means ‘teachings of the Buddha’. Although ‘Buddhist religious path’ sounds okay, to use the word 'religious' arguably brings with it a lot of unnecessary cultural baggage.

Sentence 3 (first part)

ในยามว่างได้พยายามอ่านหนังสือเกี่ยวกับธรรมนั่งสมาธิวิปัสสนา

Google:

The guard was busy trying to read books about the fair. Insight meditation.

PT:

In my free time I am always trying to read books on Dhamma, sit and practise Vipassana meditation.

Comments

• Google has split this into two sentences.
• Google has not recognised that ยาม ว่าง is a phrase; Lingvosoft confirms that on it’s own ยาม means ‘gatekeeper, guardian, ...’, but Thai2English both defines it as ‘time; hour; period’ and groups this word with ว่าง (‘free, empty, vacant’)
• Google renders ธรรม as ‘the fair’, but that’s completely out of context. Thai2English helpfully offers amongst others: ‘dharma’ or ‘[to be] natural, lawful, normal.
• It has taken นั่ง สมาธิ วิปัสสนา as just the practice (noun) of insight meditation, rather than as a verb. I’ve emphasized the activity by a longer rendering.

Sentence 3 (second part)

และปฏิบัติธรรมเท่าที่สามารถจะทำได้ในใจนั้นเฝ้าแต่คิดว่าคงจะได้พบกับชาวพุทธเข้าสักวันหนึ่ง

Google:

and practice as they can do but keep in mind that think that would be found to be a Buddhist one day.

PT:

and practise the Dhamma to the best of my ability. I keep these in mind, thinking that I might yet some day get to meet with other Buddhists.

Comments:

• I found this a difficult clause and am not really sure about the translation.
• Google’s clause is all over the place
• Google again fails to translate the key word of ธรรม

As you can see, at present Google’s rendering is very variable, not coherent, and doesn’t make much sense. It seems to chop up sentences and make clauses into short sentences, giving a staccato effect! I’m guessing that Thai is not one of its stronger languages.

Evaluation

I have found that the most helpful translation tool is Thai2English and I copy chunks of Thai there. It gives meanings and phonetic transcriptions word by word, together with help concerning Thai grammar. Occasionally it also fails to chunk correctly and sometimes lacks some vocabulary, but most of the time is does a good job so that where there are doubts or blank spaces, I have often found that there are typographical errors in the original text (or mistakes in the OCR/copy typing).

Google Translate is quick and useful for giving some features, but it’s not fit for translating anything substantial. I’ve found that close-reading is required, for which Thai2English, supplemented by another electronic dictionary – here Lingvosoft – is far more productive.

Whilst Google struggles to provide accurate translations, it does provide a very useful template structure for working on documents: it splits up translations into bite-sized segments of Thai followed by English. At the moment I don't pay too much attention to its translation, but retain it whilst I’m working since sometimes it does offer useful clues. I'm sure that it will improve quite rapidly as it's an important project for them.

At the end of the day the notice pinned onto the board would be: "All translations may be subject to change!"

Translating Thai: Some Experiences of Digitisation

Is it possible to produce a reasonably accurate translation from Thai into English with only a basic knowledge of the language and the aid of electronic tools? I’m not going to make great claims as my experiences are from home-grown experimentation over a few months. However, having recently completed a few translations, I think there are promising signs. At least I’m quite satisfied with a translation of my mother's article concerning Buddhism in Hampshire in the '60s, which runs to about 2,000 words. So there may be some pointers that others find helpful.

Setting this post in the context of biographical research, I’ll first describe some broad considerations and then discuss digitisation (scanning and optical character recognition). One tip I’d offer is that there needs to be attention to detail – rough and ready methods won’t yield very much that's of value. Certainly, there’s been more involved than I anticipated!

I’ll start with a list of very basic questions - as much for my own benefit as anyone else’s :-)

• What are you trying to learn? Why is it significant? Even when carrying out research entirely in one’s native language, time often forces choices with regard to the materials that you examine closely. If they are in a foreign language, then that imposes further constraints.
• Is there anyone who can help? It may be that you can effectively form a team.
• Of the materials available, which ones are going to shed most light in key areas?
• Among these materials, which ones are amenable to analysis? Are they easy to access physically? Are they printed or hand-written?

All these points apply to any language, but then each language has further characteristics that can make the situation more or less difficult.

With regard to Thai, its alphabet (44 consonants and 28 vowel forms) is much more elaborate, particularly with the use of diacritics. Even Thais will tell you that looking up words in a dictionary can be quite a chore. Yet, if the letters are clearly formed then actually reading it is not so hard because it’s generally phonetic. As someone with a limited vocabulary, needing to look up many words, I soon decided that it’d be much more convenient to have an accurate transcription in electronic form so that I can use software-based dictionaries.

A note on reading handwriting

So what about Thai handwriting?! In the Thai education system, primary school children learn to write by copying individual Thai printed letters – I’ve seen one of my cousins do this repeatedly when she was 5 years old. When they leave primary school they then learn cursive script and that stage can mark a huge departure. It’s a similar approach as I learnt for English, but I don’t know whether children develop their own style or are guided to adopt one of a number of standard styles. I’ve shown sets of photos to relatives and friends with Thai writing on the back – quite often there is a struggle to read what’s written, so it appears to be no easier than English. It’s a daunting prospect, but assuming that the writing is consistent, then it becomes a question of recognising patterns and perhaps understanding its topology will help. So for a given author, it may suffice for someone to translate a sample for me and I can try to figure out the rest.

Anyway, at the moment I can’t read much beyond the printed word, which means I have to ask others to copy type what I can’t read. For general documents concerning work that’s quite feasible, at least for someone in Europe the costs of getting this done in Thailand are affordable. However, a biography containing personal items (which are often of greater interest) requires more care – until their contents are known they should be read only by people you can trust.

So in the remainder of what I share here I’ll confine my attention to printed documents as I indicate a methodology I’m adopting for their translation.

Copy type or scan for OCR?

Technology-assisted translations often start with flatbed scanners that can convert the physical page into an image that then gets ‘read’ using optical character recognition software (OCR). In theory, since the printed word generates letters uniformly, software can accurately interpret them. In practice, results are imperfect for most kinds of sources and can take longer than expected. It may be better simply to copy type.

So when should OCR be used? Whatever language you are trying to read, the utility depends upon the nature and condition of the original document – if it is a fragile pocket volume with hundreds of faded pages with tiny letters in an obscure font, then even if you manage to safely scan the page, you may find OCR yields very poor results.

However, this kind of discussion assumes that there actually is some decent software for any language, when in fact for languages that don’t use Roman script, the situation seems to be very varied...

Available OCR options for Thai (very few!)

For Thai the available options have been very few. On asking a few Thai friends, I drew only blanks and when I carried out a quick investigation it seemed that until only a few years ago, the options were not far out of the university laboratory and didn’t look very amenable. An example is NEC-0006 อ่านไทย เวอร์ชัน 2.5 (OCR), which is inexpensive, but it doesn’t get very good experience reports from a Thai OCR discussion thread..

The larger well-established commercial products such as Omnipage and Abbyy seemed for a long time to have ignored Thai until a couple of years ago when additional language support for Abbyy FineReader Pro was introduced for Thai in version 9. Trusting the claims of accuracy I took the plunge and bought a copy - quite an investment, even with an educational discount.

I’m glad I did as the results are generally good, although its accuracy is inferior to that for languages based on Roman script. For someone like me who types Thai very slowly it is a useful start, but unless the lettering in the documents is very clear so that the accuracy is close to 100%, its utility will fall away for anyone who can type reasonably quickly and accurately.

(In case you are wondering, there have been efforts to recognise handwriting, but it’s a much harder task – I was interested to note, though, that a fairly recent paper, Maximization of Mutual Information for Offline Thai Handwriting Recognition, in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, makes use of a toolit that is primarily used for speech recognition research. It prompts the question of the relationship of Thai speech to writing. From my very rudimentary knowledge of Thai linguistics I gather that it has roots in Sanskrit, where the letters of the alphabet are placed according to where in the throat/mouth/lips they are formed. Thai reflects this ordering quite substantially, though not completely.)

Undertaking the OCR.

I think getting the best results is an art and worth persevering to make improvements. For all but a few cases with one or two small documents, the whole scanning workflow ought to be considered as a successful process requires a good rhythm. Washington State Library has a useful checklist and there are some good tips on the OCR process provided by About.com. These cover physical aspects including the selection of the scanner itself, keeping it clean, the placement of the source document, the scan settings (resolution, colour contrast, expected language(s)), and how the scanned image is divided up for the actual process of scanning.

One particular aspect that many software packages provide is training. For text recognition this is basically the process of chopping up the scanned image into a sequence of glyphs (character elements) and assigning glyphs to character names – see e.g. Wikipedia for a detailed entry. As you feed in multiple samples and specify the assignments, it learns how particular characters should be interpreted. There’s a training tutorial for a software library called Gamera, which I found very helpful in explaining the concepts.

I’ve not yet used training, probably because I’ve been a bit lazy to make the effort to learn how to make it learn!

Finereader’s Thai OCR Performance and Correcting the OCR.

Here’s a sample of FineReader's output.

As you can see, it’s a long way from perfection! Here it obviously doesn’t handle the English. I actually set it to interpret everything as Thai – although I could have included English as an additional language, it seems to have a net effect of adversely affecting the Thai rendering, so since English is easy for me to recognise and type, I prefer to let it get that part wrong.

A Thai person might well be dissatisfied with the results, but overall I was quite happy given my very slow Thai typing speed. There were one or two characters that FineReader seemed to really struggle with, but correction was not difficult as the suggested match was often a character used here and not elsewhere – so I could do a ‘search and replace.’ More challenging was the handling of the small diacritical marks – in Thai they are all glyphs since they each contribute towards meaning, either as vowel sounds or tone marks. Instances where there are two such marks on a single letter are common and FineReader often struggled to pick out -่ ไม้เอก (mai ek) – it looks like a hyphen, but its placement varies a lot. If you look at the screenshot carefully, you can see that FineReader simply omits quite a few of these, perhaps because the original source document was not clear enough.

Even if you train an OCR package, there will still be imperfections, so the output needs to be corrected. This process is tedious, but helpful – not least in learning to read! It helps you to familiarise yourself with the alphabet and especially pay attention to the way letters are formed.

If you have a large screen, particularly with widescreen dimensions, then it’s probably easiest to use the scanned image, set the zoom as needed, and place it next to the OCR’ed version that you’re editing.

Conclusion

Although a quick and perfect system is far away, for printed texts a few OCR options are emerging that I find helpful in digitising printed Thai texts. Alternative suggestions are very welcome – I’m keen to improve what I’m doing, even though it’s already been quite an effort and I haven’t yet started talking about the translation itself...!

The Hampshire Buddhist Society in the late '60s

I've recently started translating from Thai into English some documents authored by Fuengsin Trafford (formerly Sarayutpitag), my mother. I'm pleased to make available a draft of Some Buddhists in England, being a translation from the Thai of ส่วนหนึ่งของชาวพุทธในอังกฤษ.

The article describes the early days of the Hampshire Buddhist Society, which was founded in 1966. It organised some lectures at Southampton University, but it really developed at Crabwood Farmhouse, near Winchester, where core members of the Society met regularly. I found it particularly interesting to read about the format of the sessions since I attend a group in Oxford, where we follow a very similar procedure. This is no coincidence since our group used to be led by Freda Wint, who, I gather, was one of the early members of the Society. It's a wonderful feeling to know this sense of continuity.

I'll write separately about the process of translation itself, but just comment here that I think this would have been far more difficult for me even 5 years ago, but current electronic tools have really helped. However, I still need a Thai person to make corrections!

Avoiding 'Invisible Idiots' in the translation of Vatican documents

The dust is just settling as this course comes to a conclusion. I have some time now to cast my mind back on some particular episodes as a student on this M.St. course.

One of the challenges I faced was finding tantalising references in footnotes, especially those which promised to provide some special insights or even definitive analysis by which to anchor an argument. To what lengths should one go to follow such references...?

Such was the case when I worked on my essay, The Catholic Church and Inter-religious Marriages: Reflections on Pastoral Theology and Practice after Vatican II. I was focusing mainly on those marriages where the non-Catholic party was not a Christian, for which there is a rather unfriendly formal term in Latin, disparitas cultus, though it is rendered more softly in English translation as "disparity of worship." The analysis depends on canon law and Bishop John McAreavey gives a good overview of the this and what it can mean in the parishes where there is an ecumenical union (i.e. marriage with another [baptised] Christian: Mixed Marriages: Conversations in Theology, Ecumenism, Canon Law and Pastoral Practice. In one of the footnotes he refers the reader for a comparative analysis of this case with that of disparity of worship: a paper by Urbano Navarrete, an expert in canon law, who, we are informed, has described this as "a symbiotic relationship."

That sounded intriguing! But the reference in question was an official Vatican publication: L'impedimento di "disparitas cultus" (Can 1086), a chapter in I Matrimonii Misti, a volume in juridicial studies from the Vatican Library. Dated 1998, it seemed fairly recent, but it was also in Italian. I've never learnt Italian...

Libraries at your service

Undaunted, I opened up a Web browser tab and pointed Firefox at Oxford's online library catalogue system. However, no trace of this chapter or volume in the Bodleian. I did find it on sale from a couple of Italian online book sellers, but it seemed an expensive route. So I trundled over to the Enquiries Desk at the Bod and asked about inter-library loans. According to COPAC, there was no copy available in the UK, so it would require an international inter-library loan. I was encouraged to get in touch directly with the Vatican. So I duly wandered over to the Vatican Web site, found its library, which is currently closed to members of the public. In any case, I filled in an online registration and found a way to submit a query. I received a prompt reply indicating that actually the the Vatican Library generally holds works of antiquity, at least the volume I requested was considered too recent.

Back I went to the Bod and steeled myself to request an international interlibrary loan. According to Worldcat, which can list libraries in order of proximity, there were several European libraries that had the title in stock. I cast my eye down the list and singled out a German library, the Bavarian State Library (positive discrimination - Germans are efficient!) And a few weeks later it arrived.

The Bodleian is a reference-only library, so any items acquired through inter-library loans are subject to these constraints. Furthermore, although I could take notes, I wasn't allowed to photocopy anything myself - that had to be done by the library staff and according to copyright law they could only do this for one chapter. Accordingly I requested the copying of Cardinal Navarrete's chapter, but I became interested in another chapter on pastoral issues - Matrimoni misti e problemi pastorali by Agostino Montan. This meant I had to take notes - in Italian - from a chapter of 30 pages! This is where I was confronted with not having learnt Italian. What to do? Fortunately, my situation wasn't desperate (timewise or linguistically). I had studied French, Spanish and Latin at secondary school and could gain the gist of a paragraph. From this I could see several sections that seemed particularly useful, including some stats about the religious make-up of marriages carried out in Rome, and some interesting pastoral initiatives in some Northern Italian towns and cities involving groups of couples getting together in marriage preparation. It was these that I copied - sloowly, word for word, like a boy in primary school!

In possession of one nicely produced scan of one chapter plus some notes from another, I now needed more accurate translation of the most relevant bits. I pinned up notices in College - Sai leggere l'italiano? and received a resounding zero responses. :-( I started asking any friends who had even dabbled in the language and was offered translations of selected passages at the rate of 1 word a minute! More promising was a kind offer of assistance from one of my father's polyglot friends from church, Tim O'Sullivan, who is competent in most European languages, who knowing my technological leanings offered a particular word of caution...

We may have the technology, but watch out for 'invisible idiots'!

Whilst trying to find a person who could help I was also exploring an automated technological solution. I first had to generate an electronic version of the texts that had been copied and transcribed and I was given a boost as the library-generated photo-copies were nicely done, clear and uniform, enabling very accurate optical character recognition (OCR) translations - even the footnotes were generally accurate, when all I needed really was the body text. Once in possession of an electronic copy I then proceeded to try machine translation, initially through Babelfish. Although I had used Babelfish quite often before for words or short phrases, I had not really tried far more substantial passages of text. Alas, in this case I found it seriously deficient and discounted this tool as an aid.

However, no online search is complete without Google ... and Google's offering impressed me immediately in being so accommodating, happy to consume large chunks of text and produce translations for the whole lot. More importantly, it was a world apart in quality. Why? I think there's a combination of reasons that make it a good match. It uses statistical methods, trained on large corpora of texts. The core texts in question (see e.g. Wikipedia for discussion) were UN documents - they are formal, rambling, extensive and translated into many languages. And Vatican documents are ... likewise! There are few colloquial idioms used. Even so, word combinations can be parsed and interpreted in so many different ways that it's easy to get the wrong end of the stick, as we might say.

Mr. O'Sullivan was keen to relate to me a story that he had heard in the 1960s concerning English-to-Russian translation (when we met it was topical coming shortly after Hillary Clinton 'pushed the wrong button' on a state visit, but at least both sides saw the funny side!). The story, which was probably very popular at the time of the Cold War, ran along the following lines: boffins produced a computer program into which you could input one or more words. Enter a single word and out popped the correct Russian equivalent and vice versa. However, they next tried "out of sight out of mind" and after a slight pause there emerged the Russian equivalent of "invisible idiot"! I gather that it is actually apocryphal, traceable to an earlier period in which scientists were speculating about possible issues - anyway John Hutchins debunks the myth and offers to explain what was actually going on. Even so, you can still catch out many tools by entering a phrase and translating it back again. This is where, I guess, statistical methods are very useful. In any case, where a translation looked odd in a particular context, I would break it up into smaller chunks and translate those separately, repeating the process until it became clearer or made sense.

At the end of the day I read closely perhaps a dozen pages and quoted from just a few paragraphs. That must seem a very poor rate of return on such efforts, but in this instance I'm going to claim it was how I got there that was more informative and entertaining!

Encountering the Miracle Collection of St. Frideswide

Another topic that I'm delving into for an essay takes us back to medieval times, specifically to the end of the 12th century. Here the focus of attention is a figure who actually lived in Anglo-Saxon times: St. Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford, but there's not much known about her: the academic literature indicates that there's no contemporary account; the earliest manuscripts concerning her life were written several hundred years later. (See e.g. a brief summary).

However, in 1180 there was a great ceremony to translate her purported bones to a new shrine, carried out under the direction of Prior Philip of the Augustinian Monastery of St. Frideswide. He left us with a record of miracles in a series of narratives, a little over 100 in total. They're written in Latin and apparently, unlike her life stories, there's no English translation available of the miracle collection apart from the odd passage and a few quotes.

At least the collection is available conveniently in printed form in the Acta Sanctorum (Acts of the Saints), which is a compendium of documents detailing the lives of saints, organised according to each saint's feast day. They were published by the Société des Bollandistes from 1643 till 1940 and are accessible online from various sites, I think. I made use of the Chadwyck-Healey database available on subscription. Frideswide's Feast Day is October 19th and the miracles are contained in an appendix. Hence the reference is: Acta Sanctorum. Oct. VIII (Main volume text) Dies Decimanona. De Sancta Frideswida Virgine, Patrona Oxoniensi in Anglia. Appendix ad Acta S. Frideswidae.

Prof. Henry Mayr-Harting and Dr. Simon Yarrow have explored this collection in book chapters ('Functions of a Twelfth Century Shrine' in 'Studies in Medieval History Presented to R.H.C. Davis' and in 'Saints and their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth-century England' respectively), revealing some fascinating insights, especially in social and economic history. Yet, I think they may have only scratched the surface as a print-out of the collection runs to dozens of pages! It could be studied a great deal more, for further exploration into medieval life regarding the Church's relation to wider society - religious, social, economic etc.

So as a small contribution I am pleased to offer a translation of one of the narratives, aided especially by Whitaker's Words and a windows front-end called Latin Assistant. Many thanks to Joerg Friedrichs for looking over the translation and correcting a few things, but any remaining errors, awkwardness etc should be regarded as mine (I am only an amateur at this)! I'll reproduce the Latin and then present the translation underneath.

The Miracle Narrative

[9][Alteri puellulæ lumen oculorum restituitur.] Erat in eodem pago juvencula quædam Adelitia nomine, extra muros ejusdem pagi habitans h, quæ aliquanto tempore ante beatæ Virginis Translationem, tali correpta fuerat incommodo, quod ciliis oculorum nimio tumore depressis, præ nimia ciliorum gravedine nec oculos aperire, nec quicquam videre poterat. Mater itaque ejus filiæ, materna pietate compatiens, pro salute filiæ medicos consulit, frustra id modicum quod habebat in medicos expendens, languore jugiter ingravescente, et incommodo de die in diem in deterius vergente. Convolat demum mater ad divinæ miserationis asilum, per dies multos ad beatæ Virginis ecclesiam filiam ducens, et pro ejus salute devotissime supplicans. Nec tædium parit dilatio, spes diffidentiam relegat, perseverat impetendo fides, ut humani defectum auxilii divina suppleret potentia. Nec repulsum passa est devotio, desiderantem rei desideratæ consolatur effectus. Quippe feria quinta in Cœna Domini, antequam Missarum agerentur sollempnia, cum in oratione super beatæ Virginis sepulcrum juvencula prostrata persisteret, subito tota ciliorum gravedine tamquam manu scalpente detersa, tumor paulisper resedit, videndique perfecte recepit officium. Profluebat autem diutius ex oculis sanies, et non multo post interjecto tempore, sic divinæ manus beneficio curata est, ut in ea nulla prorsus ægritudinis pristinæ remanerent vestigia.

English Translation

There was in that municipality a certain young woman whose name was Adelitia, living beyond the walls of that municipality, who for some time before the Translation of the blessed Virgin, had been struck by such inconvenience with her eyelids shut from excessive swelling, and because of very great catarrh of the eyelids she couldn't open her eyes and hence she could not see anything. And so the daughter's mother, compassionate with maternal devotion, for the sake of her daughter's health consulted a doctor, spending that small amount she had in vain, as the feebleness was constantly growing more serious and the inconvenience was getting worse day by day, going downhill.

Finally, the mother had recourse to the asylum¹ of divine mercy, for many days taking her daughter to the church of the blessed Virgin, and praying most devoutly for her health. And the delay did not bring weariness, [for] hope eased the doubts, faith persisted by intense petitioning, so that divine power could make up for the inadequacy of human help. And her devotion was unyielding², as her longing for the [anticipated] outcome of her yearning had a consoling effect.

In fact, on Maundy Thursday, before the solemnities of the Mass were carried out, while the young girl lay prostrate in prayer over the tomb of the blessed Virgin, suddenly just as if all the catarrh of her eyelids was surgically removed by hand, the swelling shortly subsided, and she was re-installed into the capacity of seeing perfectly. Moreover, pus was continually flowing out of the eyes, and not much later, she was cured by the kindness of the divine hand, in such a way that there remained in her absolutely no vestiges of the original sickness.

Note

• For asilum read asylum since a gad-fly doesn't make sense! (It was explained to me that the use of 'y' is uncommon and this was originally a Greek word).

Perhaps a community wiki would be a good way to enable much more of this collection to be translated?