Vol 5 No 3 | Oct-Dec 2025

Found in Translation

Story by Sheela Jaywant | Art by Anirban Dasgupta

 

This piece is a humourous take on how idioms in one language can be nonsensical in another. The entire text of the piece is reproduced below.

We have a new neighbour, a male nurse. At dinner, we all agreed that he has been such a help since Azoba (grandfather) came home from the hospital.

Azoba takes a fistful of medicines three or four times a day. He’s very particular about reading the literature that come with his medicines. Why, he reads even the labels on shampoo bottles, the instructions written in English, Marathi, or Hindi, and tries to figure out the words in other languages, nowadays with the help of Googleshwar (as he calls that search engine).
He has always been impressed by polyglots and is interested in different languages. He used to say: “Those Lamani women on Goan beaches selling scarves, they haven’t been to school, but they can speak Russian, Bengali and Hebrew. They can bargain and calculate in different languages. They can’t write their names, but illiterate doesn’t mean unintelligent, see? Survival is a good teacher.”

When he was admitted in hospital, he wanted to read the informed consent forms for every procedure, and he made sure he understood the technical terms with the help of a doctor or nurse. One day, I told him to swallow the ‘goli’ that he had been given.

“Goli?” he asked, cackling toothlessly. “Do you mean the pill, the capsule or the tablet?”

He held a bunch of ‘golis’ in his hand and explained that we have no separate words for them in Marathi.

I marvel at his alertness. Once, while eating from his tray, half-sitting on the bed, he remarked: “Is there a word for ‘ushta’ (Marathi) or ‘jhootha’ (Hindi) in English?” Taking a sip of fruit juice, he said, “I could say this juice or glass is ‘touched’, but it doesn’t mean the same thing, does it?”

He’s constantly looking at his phone, trying to translate things from one language to another; that keeps him busy most of his waking hours. The other day, I discovered that a book I had borrowed, its cover had been scratched by our pet cat. I was distraught. “What am I to do, it’s not even mine…” While I was having a meltdown, Azoba distracted us by saying: “Guess what, there’s no verb in Marathi or Hindi equivalent to the English ‘to own’. You can say, this book is mine—ye meri book hai. Or I’m the possessor of this book—main iss book ki malkin hoon.”

There have been fun moments with Azoba’s habit of noticing people’s language mess-ups. Once, in his younger days, a colleague had told him he was leaving office early because he had ‘zor’. “Zor?” Azoba had asked him in ignorance. “Why would you go home if you have ‘zor’?” Now ‘zor’ in Marathi and Hindi means ‘energy’ or ‘strength’. Why would a person go home early if he had ‘zor’? Thing was, the person was a Goan, and in Konkani, ‘zor’ means fever. We still laugh when Azoba narrates this incident to us.

Ill or not, with Googleshwar to help, Azoba chuckles at the most inopportune moments. The other day, a distinguished relative came to visit him. And the relative said, quite politely, “Chaha chalel (chai chalega).” Azoba responded naughtily, “Tea will run? Or walk?” The relative didn’t find it funny. We did.

“No machine can use language the way we can,” Azoba declares. The other day, he pointed to something he had typed, “Mere paas bada buxa hai—look what my phone screen says… I have the big bucks. Can it not understand the word ‘buxa’, this smart phone? Not very smart, is it?”