2 3 NOV 2006 los.c,?> Is III/Of.- L--__ ~+~~_·-~=_-~_-_··~l A THOUSAND FIREFUES IN MANHATTAN: TRANSLATIONINTHESHORTSTORIESOFUMAR KAYAM Harry Aveling 2 Abstract: Tllis papa tli,\('IISSt'S the ti'cllIIiqlles 1I.\'(,tI h\' II/ajor Ind()lIesiall allliror VII/ar Kayall/ /01' presclllil/g repre.\'('lIfl1lioIlS (~r AII/ericall ElIglish llllel ial'(lllc.H' lallgllagi' alld Cllltllre ill his early /Ildollt'sian-lallgllage Sh()rl stories. pllblis"ed as Sri Sumarah dan Ccrila Pcndck Lainnya ill /975. Vsillg Villay l/Ild Darbelllel \ Iisl (If 1I'l1ll.l'!lIl;OIl slraleg;es. I"e paper JlIggl'SIS Ihat Kayall/ II/lli/i' C'X/('I/.I'iI'(' 1I.I'e of e1ircct lral/s/atiol/, especially /ilel'a/ Ir{//H/alioll I\'illl borrowillgs ./iml/ Ellg/i.~", a//{//wr/'{lll'illgs \I'it" /1/{!olll'JiclII g/osws /01' jal'lllles(' tel'II/S. He a/so IIses ca/qlles alit! ac/aptaliolls ill a l'CI:\, /l'\I' iIlCitl('IICl',f. Key words: UIII"r KCI,HIIII. lralls/m;oll. ca/qllo' clld ai/aplatiolls INTRODUCTION Umar Kayam is widely recognisl!d in Indonesia as a major realist fiction writer of thl! I!arly New Ordl!r period. In 1975 Kayam published his American and posl-1966 stories logl!ther as Sri 511111((/'{/1I clC/1I Caitll Pelldek f.ail/llya'. In Ihis paper I would like to explorl! the process of linglllstic and cultural translation which occurs \vithin the original Indonesian texl or Ihe short storil!s Ihl!ll1:-.d\\:~. Th.~ papcr.~ ha~ed \111 .. kelll!'c rre~clllcd to thc Dcpa.1I1K·1l\ "I' LIIl~ui~tk~ (If F •• kuha!- IImu Budaya. lIni\cr'lta, IndllnC~la. :\1'IrI:h ::!X ," ::!005. For the Ilriglllallllllllnc,"l1llcxt!- refcrrcd to here ~l'C Sri SUII/omh d(1II C,'I'il(l 1'l'IIdd L(liIlIlYo. Pustaka Jaya 1975, l';'ly English tran,I.llion, C'111 he found in S,.i S",uomh IIlId ()thn SI/1";I''\, Hcinel1l.1n Educational Hooks (Asi'l). Kuala Lumpur 19XO, Harry A\'eling, Ph,D. rccci\cs his Ph.D, in 1'.lalay Lllcraturc from thc Nation .. 1 University of Singapore :l11d a Doctorate in Cn:ativc Art~ (DC A) fro III the UniversilY ofTcchnlllllgy. Sydney. In late 200-t he was a Visillng Professor ofTran~lation Studies within the School of Language :lIld Translation. Univcrsiti Saim Malaysia. Penang, Pustaka Jaya. Jakarl,\ 1975: reprintcd wilh addiliolls 191(6, 88 Celt, Volume 5, Number2, December 2005: 117 - 97 UMAR KAYAM U~ar Kayam wus born in Ngawi. Central lava. on 30 April 1932. in the family of a HIS school teacher. "a primary school for the children of priyayi nobles. who were preparing to be government administrators under Dutch colonial rule" (Rahmanto 2004: I). After attending school in Yogyakarta. he is trained as a teacher at Universitas Gajah Mada (Sarjana Muda UGM. 1955). After teaching for a few years. he then undertook postgraduate studies in America. completing the degrees of Master of Education at New York University in 1963. and Doctor of Philosophy at Cornell University in 1965. On his return to Indonesia. he was appointed as the Director General of Radio. Television and Film for the Ministry of Education (1966-1969). then as Head of the lakartaArts Council (1969-1972). Following this. he went on to serve as the Director of the Pusat Latihan IImu-IImu Sosial Universitas Hasanuddin. Ujungpandang (1975-1976), and of the Pusat Penelitian Kebudayaan. UGM (1977-1997). He was appointed a professor at UGM in 1989 and retired in 1997. Umar Kayam began writing short stories in New York: these were published after 1966 in the I iterary magazine HoriseJII. and later collected as Seribll Klltlang-klllulIIg eli Mallhattall (1972). He wrote four longer stories around the events of 1965: two of these ap'leared as Sri S"marah elm, BawlIk (1975). His complete short stories appeared as Sri S"maJ'{lh elall Cerira Pelldek Laillllya (1986). During the I 990s. he also wrote two novels: Para Priyayi (1992) and }a/(/II Me/likllllg: Para Priyay; 2 (1999). Other short stories. appearing sporadically throughout this decade. were gathered as PartCI KranUi in 1997. in a collection published in honour of his retirement. and republished in a more complete form as Lebaral/ di karer. eli kal'et ... (2002). His other books included collections of his weekly newspuper columns: Mal/gall Ora Mallglll/ KlIIllplI/ (1990); S"gih Tallp(/ Ball"(/ ( 1994): Madhc'p Nga/or SlIgih. Mac/Ilc'p Ngidl// SI/gih (1998) and Sardo Pillillgir illg K(/mplII'g Pillgir (2000). His studies of Juvanese culture were Selli, Tl'lIdisi. MCI,\'.\'al'Clkar ( 1981 ): SelllclIlgClr 'llc/ollesia, SlIllfll Pc'rjCl/clllclII (1985); and an analysis of w .. yang. Kelir Tcmpa BafCIs (200 I). He passed away on 16 March 2002. TRANSLATING KAYAM, KAYAM TRANSLATING Andre Lefevere has stated: "Texts are not written in a vacuum. Like language. literature pre-exists its practitioners. Writers are born into a certain H. Aveling, A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan 89 culture at a certain time. They inherit that culture's ~~~*l\ traditions (its poetics). its material and conceptual characteristics and the ideas of Sigmund Freud in twentieth-century chamber-pots and the ideas of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century England) - in a word its 'universe of discourse' - and its standards."~ In studying translations we arc interested in words. but we must also consider the cultures which shape and determine those words. Kayam's stories are set. as I have noted above. firstly in America. then in Java. Their poetics are that of the modem Indonesian story, with some influence from AmericJIl authors such as Carson McCullers, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck. Salinger. Bellow and Updike (see Mllsim Cugur di COllnecticut). They tend to revolve around indirect conversations between two characters and move to clear (although often understated) climaxes. This avoid of obvious conflict is perhaps an Indonesian value. The stories also feature Indonesian literary values relating to loneliness (sepi) and nostalgia (rind,,). Their universes of discourse range over middle class in mid-town Manhattan and the experiences of the priyayi class of Java during the twentieth century; while their ideologies relate to moral laxity and uprightness. responsibility. faithfulness, obedience. political struggle and arbitrary human destiny. Kayam's short stories show that he was very sensitive to different language registers. In a few places Kayam describes speech styles explicitly - he refers to the Jakarta accent of Sri's customer in Sri SUlllaralt; the ungainly rapid speech of Pak Carik who seeks to remarry Sri. ian, I have also left these words and sentences untranslatcd into English. 90 Celt. Volume 5. Number 2. December 2005: 87 - 97 Most of Kayam 's representations of these other languages and cultures use a fluent standard Indonesian. Apart from making an extensive analysis of Kayam's Indonesian, there is not a lot that need be said about this. One begins the task of translating them into English by seeking an equivalent standard English, but one that is based (for the American stories) on an American conversational style." I would like to spend my time here not on discussing how one might translate Kayam's stories into English but on a different issue. If Kayam's stories are themselves also translations of the language and culture of America and Java, how does he translate these into the Indonesian which he writes? Our focus is on Kayam translating other languages and cultures into Indonesian. TRANSLATION STRATEGIES A useful starting point for a discussion of Kayam's translation techniques is Vinay and Darbelnet's more general list oftranslation strategies: I. Direct translation 1- borrowing (taking the SL term) 2-calque (borrowing an expression from another language, but translating literally each of its elements) 3-literal translation (direct transfer) 2. Oblique translation 4- transpositions (replacing one word class with another without changing the meaning of the message) In her book Amol/.~ 11r", Whil(' MO!1l,{ClCC'S: Melllo;rs I~r CI N.I'III/."CI FI·m;l/;sl. Times Books Inlernmional. Singapore 1996. major Malaysian author Shirley Geok-lin Lim writes: "In 1974 ... I returnelltn Malaysia for the summer. Seconll Brother was te.lI:hing at Universiti Silins Malaysia in Pellilng ... A \ i\iting AUSImiian professor. rell-haired .mll rell-skinnctl from the tropicul sun. inviled Ille In leach 1I cre.llive wriling cuurse wilh him. A schulm uf Inllnnesiun lileruture. Hlirry 'llItlresselllhe stullelm in Iluelll Bahasa. for Ihe national language of Inllonesiil cmne from Ihe same Malay linguistic S lUck as the ~alaysian national language. I hall not usell Bahasa Malaysia since stullying illlt seventeen for Ihe precollege examinations. so I lecturell in English. It was IlIlother of those internationul cultural ironies that befuddle simple identity equations. Harry had just translated a collection of stories set in New York City by an Indonesian writer. "If you could read this and check the American idioms." he saill. "I would be ever so grateful." He hud never been to Manhattan, had to guess at the speech of New Yorkers from old American movies. and thought of me as American." (p. 263. 265-266) H, Aveli"c, A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan 91 5- modulation (variation in the form of the message, obtained by a change in the point of view) 6- equivalence (rendering one and the same situation by using completely different stylistic and structural methods) 7- adaptation (creating a new situation that can be considered equivalent to that referred to in the SL message),7 Beside Kayam's consistent use of literal translation, I would like to point to the other categories which are most relevant to the nature of translation in Kayam's writing: borrowing, calque and adaptation. Of these, the most important category by far is borrowing. BORROWING ENGLISH WORDS We may consider Kayam's nuent Indonesian as representing a dynamic use of Vinay and Darbelnet's third category, literal transfer from American and Javanese languages and cultures Beyond literal translation, Kayam also makes extensive use of borrowing. Vinay and Darbelnet's tirst category. In the American stories. Kayam simply retains many original English terms in his Indonesian without translating them at all. In the story Seribu KW/{lIIg-kwulIIg t/i Manhattan, for example. we find such items as "scotch", "martini", "gin", "vermouth". "darling", "Empire State Building". "New York Times", "Central Park Zoo", "medium large (pyjamas)". and a song, "deep blue sea, baby ...... In the story "Sybil", we find: "please?". "OK?", "toas(", "fish" (a card game), "Iolly" (for candy?), "subway", "supermarket", "cafeteria", "hot dog", "hamburger", "pizza", "coke", "root beer", and the film title "Curse of the Werewolf'. The other American stories confirm that the borrowings without translations mainly refer to the categories which relate to akohol. foods, pluces. song and film titles. S"/lil also includes the semi-calque ".\"('g('/(/.\ gill elall tOllic". Usually the borrowings are single words woven gramll1aticully into Indonesian sentences. Seribu KI/II(/lIg-klllllll/g di Mall/wlIlIlI, begins: "Merekll dllduk berfllalas-lIlll/aS(1I/ di sofa. Mama dellgall segelas Scotch dall Jalle del/gall segelas lIIart;lIi". On a few occasions, Kayam lean-Paul Vinay ;md Jcan Darbclnct (1958): COII/paratil"(' Styli.~tic:; (!f F,.('//ch {//I(ll:.irgIiJh. pp. 30-41. (Abridged version in Halim