The Unwomanly Face of War
I was reading
Svetlana Alexievich's The Unwomanly Face of War, which I got from genlib (of
course!) [Mir & Progress Publishers are dead! Long live Alexandra Elbakyan! Elsevier Murdabad!], when I discovered
that, at the time I looked, the only other translation of this book into a
language other than English had been made by the Peoples War Group
in Telengana, into Telugu, of course! So
I decided to make a draft of a (future?) poster, using Google Translate, to render the original Russian
title of Svetlana Alexievich's book into several different languages, partly
because of my fascination with (old fashioned, classical) linguistics (= the
learning of many languages, a la Suniti Chatterjee), as opposed to the modern
version, which studies their structure. Most of the languages I chose were languages spoken in republics of the former Soviet Union, now independent countries. I
left Hindi out, because the Google translation was inaccurate (युद्ध का अस्वाभाविक चेहरा),
but I'd be happy to add better Hindi and Urdu translations, if someone suggests them. I was particularly taken with the Tajik version (çang cehrai zanona
nadorad, which as you know, should be read, like Turkish, as jang chehrai
zanona nadorad), which can then be seen to be almost Urdu/Hindi. The highlighted word in each
different language is the word for woman and is an interesting exercise in
(classical) linguistics! So, without further ado, here's the result of my little exercise:
у вайны
не жаночы твар [u vajny nie žanočy tvar] (Belarusian)
vojna nemá ženskú tvár (Slovak)
válka nemá ženskou tvář (Czech)
рат нема женско лице [rat
nema žensko lice] (Serbian)
войната няма женско лице [voĭnata
nyama zhensko litse] (Bulgarian)
rat nema žensko
lice (Croatian)
războiul nu are chip de femeie (Romanian)
a háborúnak nincs női arca (Hungarian)
војната нема женско лице [vojnata nema žensko lice] (Macedonian)
karas neturi moters veido (Lithuanian)
karam nav sievietes sejas (Latvian)
sõjal pole naise nägu (Estonian)
sodalla ei ole naispuolisia kasvoja (Finnish)
ҷанг чеҳраи занона надорад [çang cehrai zanona nadorad] (Tajik)
the war has no female face
యుద్ధానికి
ఆడ ముఖం
లేదు [Yud'dhāniki āḍa mukhaṁ lēdu] (Telugu)
savaşın kadın yüzü yok (Turkish)
соғыстың әйел беті жоқ [soğıstıñ äyel beti joq] (Kazakh)
Urushning ayol yuzi yo'q (Uzbek)
urşuň aýal ýüzi ýok (Turkmen)
müharibənin qadın üzü yoxdur
(Azerbaijani)
согушта аялдын жүзү жок [soguşta ayaldın jüzü jok] (Kyrgyz)
şer rûyê jinê tune (Kurdish/Kurmanji)
lufta nuk ka fytyrë femër (Albanian)
պատերազմը
կին դեմք
չունի [paterazmy kin demk’ ch’uni]
(Armenian)
ომს
არ აქვს ქალი [oms ar akvs kali] (Georgian)
যুদ্ধের
কোনও মহিলা
মুখ নেই
a guerra não tem rosto feminino
