The bastardisation of Roald Dahl!

Teaching your wife to drive and explaining the football off-side rule are infamously two things a husband must never undertake. In return, the wife should at no point disclose the complexities of a “pre-wash” and why shoes are as much needed as water for female survival! As an expat , I am formed into a marriage with a woman from another language than my own English tongue. With this in mind, a few years ago I discovered another thing to throw on to the pile of “Thou shall not undertake” that of “thou shall not undertake any attempt to translate each other’s mother tongue!”.

Sat peacefully at home, very late one Friday evening, the phone rang, jolting us both from our slumber. Like everyone who receives a late night phone call the immediate contemplation is “who’s dead?”. I solemnly looked at my wife and slowly picked up the phone without taking my eyes from her! “ Is that Mike"?” a panicky accented voice enquired. Then on accepting my affirmative answer, explained that he was a friend of a friend who needed my help desperately. Apologizing for the lateness of the call, he explained how is daughter was studying English at some Turkish university and had been given a very important project to complete. The worriment being that she had procrastinated on the project and needed to complete it by the end of the weekend!. “what I need from you Mike bey is to translate a few pages from English into Turkish from a short story by a child author” he paused then quickly threw into the pot “…….by Sunday morning”. Now, even though the hour was late my mind was still fully operational. “I am so so sorry I am fully busy tomorrow and definitely will not…..” My sentence was cut “ I can pay you 200 Lira for your time” came the voice at the other end of the phone!. “…… here’s my email address, send it through to me” I greedily replied. With the promise of  it would be ready by Sunday morning, the deal was done. The man coming to my home at 7.30 to hand over lovely crisp Turkish bank notes in exchange for a few pages of translation from English to Turkish of a child story!

Closing the phone, I excitedly passed on the contents of the call to my wife, through the toilet door – where she had removed herself once she had satisfied herself that no one was dead!. As she came out she looked at me nervously and asked “are you really sure we can do this”?

Ok! Maybe I conveniently put it at the back of my mind that to be a fully qualified translator, you need at least a degree in the chosen translation language. Then further qualifications to furnish you with the skills to do the occupation admirably. With that all being well, maybe living a few years in the country of that tongue to build you up to a height that you are classified as a native speaker!. My wife spoke Turkish, I spoke English, so in my dimwitted brain we were well qualified for the task in hand!

We slept early as to wake early and do the job with as maximum speed possible thus leaving at least an afternoon free to relax ourselves and plan how to spend the 200 lira! My wife showered, as I excitedly opened up my e-mail, waiting for the correspondence with the translation.

It was there in bold at the top of the inbox SUBJECT: Roald Dahl. While waiting for the attachment to open in my word program, I was thinking Roald Dahl..must be Willy Wonka or that well know classic poem “IF”, mixing up my Dahls and Kiplings!. Then the word program opened emblazoned with the heading “ Mr Botibol”. Little did I know at that point that even years later the name Mr Botibal would still send shivers down my spine!. I glanced down to the bottom of the program page 1/20!. Twenty pages! – what happened to a few pages that I had been told!. This worked out at 10 lira a page! Even if we managed one page every thirty minutes it was going to take us all of ten hours without a break!. A deal is a deal though, so after breakfast we started on a literal journey that was only going to end in two ways – tears at best, divorce court at worst!

Being that the original language was English, we devised that I would furnish my wife with the sentence and explain what Dahl was attempting to conjecture and she would put it down in her Turkish mother tongue on her laptop. We started on the heading:

English : Mr Botibol

Turkish: Botibol Bey

A fine start! - that wasn't improved on!

The first few lines of the first paragraph were laboriously worked over in a game of linguistic tennis. Each word converted into something in which the recipient could understand what Mr Dahl was attempting to express! Then came:

“Mr Botibol threading his way cautiously between the tables and the people, walking on his toes in such a meek and self-effacing manner and clutching his hat before him with both hands, he thought how wretched it must be for any man to look as conspicuous and as odd as this Botibol”

Such an easy, descriptive long sentence!. Except when you are attempting to translate it in simple enough English for your wife to convert!. Now, one should point out here, my good wife is a perfectionist!. “If a job is worth…” is a proverb that could quite easily be made for her!. The adjective use of “meek” “wretched” and “self effacing” and finally “conspicuous”; the form needed “to thread” in Turkish; The verb “to clutch”  - All had to be probably expressed according to my wife and with just this one sentence, she perused her dictionary both online and in her hand! It was painful..one long sentence in 20 minutes!

Finally two hours after starting the first page was finished!. TWO HOURS – I calculated, at this rate we would need 40 hours of no sleep, non stop work to terminate this. “Look you need to be quicker “ I barked at her. She gave me one of those glaring looks that also can be translated without words – things were not going well!.

We labored on, stumbling, fumbling and muddling over each carefully crafted line. Mr Botibol crawling into everyone of our senses! Teasing us with every one of his traitfull characters. Words such as “enthusias” “accustomed” “quota” “exasperated”  sent us into a torturous spiral of  linguistic purgatory. Slowly both ready to snap, both throwing spite and bile at each other “ Come on this is NOT difficult” coming from me “ Never ever ever promise to take translation work again” coming from her. We were in a whirlpool of adjectives, correct verbal use, adverbs anything that Roald Dahl could throw at us.

The self inflicting torture continued hour after painful hour! “ I want to go to the toilet” my wife said pitifully after seven hours in. “NO you don’t have time we are only on page nine”!. She ignored me of course!. She took too long! “ Bloody Hell – hurry up will you, we are never going to finish for Christ sake” I hollered through the keyhole! She came out, keeping her cool through reddish cheeks, biting her bottom lip. “Ok Next sentence” she said calmly in the way a woman replies “Nothing” when asked “what is wrong”…She was biding her time I knew!

I glanced down at the next line which gunned out of my clenched lips..

“The trace of a smile, weak and infinitely sad, flickered around the corners of his mouth.”

“How can you trace a smile and mouths do not have corners?” she looked at me blankly!. She was correct of course! Unfortunately, it was the sentence that broke the camel’s glossary!. “ Of course it can, trace..you bloody know what trace is don’t you?. CORNER – the edge of the mouth, you know what a bloody corner is don’t you? YOU know what a mouth is don’t you?” I paused shocked at my outburst but continued anyway “ Are you dumb or something"?”…

I looked away, not baring to look at her, in full knowledge that I had not so much gone too far but had reached the edge and had fallen head first down it. I squeezed my hand around my mouth and shot a sideways glance at her. She sat, closed eyed, still. “ I am so sorry” I groveled. She opened her watery green eyes, fixed them on me, then stood up. Standing by the door she calmly articulated “ No problem, if that is what you think – I am dumb, so then you are intelligent enough to do it yourself, I am going to bed, you are on your own". The door slammed behind her!. I sat angered with myself for accepting this impossible work, angered at Roald bloody Dahl for writing this, angered at Mr bloody Botibol for this torture and of course angered at myself for the first time in our marriage distressing my wonderful wife!. The living room door opened again, ok my chance to fully apologies for my pathetic outburst. “ Askim..look I am so….” my words were finished as a pillow and blanket hit me squarely on the face!. I was spending the night with Mr Botibol!

Silently I sat. not even looking at my PC, I would explain to the gentleman tomorrow how sorry I was, we tried but failed miserably to translate it. Yes, I would admit failure but 200 lira was a miniscule price to be paid for the damage I had caused this day. The remaining ten pages would have to be handed back untouched, there was nothing more I could do. Unfurling the blanket and curling up into it, I lay and thought of the pain I had caused my wife and myself on this burdening project based on my greed for 200 lira. Even though not a religious man, I would pray on the bible to take this day back and be curled up in my marital bed with my spouse. “BIBLE” – the word shot back into my brain again!

The Bible could just be my saviour I thought!. Maybe closer to the truth was Martin Luthur, the 16th Century German Monk, who had in all his wisdom decided to translate the Bible from it’s original Latin text into his own Germanic mother tongue!. The controversy in doing so was that good old Martin, cut text out. altered it, threw away some chapters until it was fully to his liking and those all around. I would be Martin Luthor and Mr Botibol was about to become my Latin Bible!

With that, I attacked the final ten pages with a vigor. The work of one of the world’s greatest authors was customized, crucified,  reorganized and bastardised. Cutting it down into easy, mouthful chunks that myself and my limited Turkish could transform into workable pieces, and the text I struggled with then Google translator would become the tool of choice!  Sentences such as :

“Later, when he was resting in his chair in the other room, he was still enjoying it. He closed his eyes because he didn't want anything to break the spell”

Became:

“O yorgun ve oturdu” (he was tired so sat down)”

Great swaths of text lavishly scripted from Roald Dahl’s pen were swept away never to be enjoyed by the student that this translation would end up with.

Out with..

She had lived long enough in the city to discover that old men, if they
are dirty old men, do not bother about trying to pick up a girl as unattractive as herself. Only twice in her life had she been accosted in public and each time the man had been drunk. But this one wasn't drunk. He was nervous and he was peculiar-looking, but he wasn't drunk. Come to think of it, it was she who had started the conversation in the first place. "It would be lovely," she said. "It really would. When could I come?"

and in with

“bir kızla tanıştım ve onunla birlikte eve gitti” (He met a girl an she went home with him”

And so it continued through the night, cutting and pasting and crafting a story in a language that I could barely managed to ask “where is the toilet” in!

The semi-distant noise of the Mosque calling out for morning prayer told me that daybreak had come and with it just one more page to transform !. The page with the final crescendo. In this crescendo, the ilk some (well to me) Mr Botibol conducts an imaginary orchestra whilst playing Chopin on an old gramophone player. Accompanying him is a classical pianist who he has fallen in love with! The story builds up and up in tune with the music he is conducting in his mind. All into some type of pseudo sexual climatic ending! Beautifully scripted and breathtakingly exciting!. With each thrash of a drum and each vibration of a violin string the story and feeling inside Mr Botibol builds and builds! My scripted ending was not so intoxicating

“O bazı müzik ile oynanan ve kadın onu izledim çok heyecan vericiydi” ( He played with some music and was so exciting as the woman watched him)

It was over – I cared not one jot that the original 20 pages had been edited down to 14!. It was 7.00am I didn’t care how many pages this had taken. It had taken twenty one long, arduous, painful and destroying hours! I hurriedly printed it out. As the whirling of the printer spewed out the garbage of my translation I slowly opened the bedroom door. The woman I had abused and mistreated lay as always on her side with her arms hanging over the side of the bed. The pains of guilt returned and the realization that nothing I could do or say could take away my shameless words that had bialy exited from my mouth to this wonderful woman who slept before me.

In typical Turkish fashion the man arrived fifteen minutes later than his 7.30! Opening the door, he  expressed great thanks and was so full of apologies and sympathy for making us work so hard! I embarrassingly smiled as we swapped envelopes. Me receiving a small white one with 200 lira and himself a large brown one with probably the worst investment he had ever made, inside! I placed the white envelope by the side of the television placing an ornament over it to hide the disgrace it mirrored to me!

The day was spent without me sleeping, the coldness of the Antalya winter in no competition at the coldness between me and my wife, an iceness that would last days. Luckily though the ice was melted overtime with the warmth of our marriage. We slowly returned to normal and Mr Botibol was never mentioned again. Undisturbed the envelope stayed under the ornament for months. Like an unwanted smell it hung in the room, neither of us wanting to have any dealings with it. It vanished one day taken obviously by my wife – I have never inquired from her what she spent it on and never wish to know!

Six long years later I worried about that poor student who had to endure that disgraceful work of mine, attentively I enquired from a friend at what had happened to her. Thankfully, she is now an English teacher in Istanbul. The pains of guilt of my behavior that day to my wife still lingers and to see or make my wife sad in anyway now is thankfully beyond my capabilities. If I ever feel the steam of anger building all I have to do think of the bastardisation of Roald Dahl!

Roald Dahl enjoys a comforting cigarette whilst contemplating the  hideous torture that his creation  Mr Botibol  will  inflict on me!