6/13/22, 1:46 PM Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/world/asia/those-who-would-remake-myanmar-find-that-words-fail-them.html MEMO FROM YANGON Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them By Thomas Fuller July 19, 2015 YANGON, Myanmar — It’s the dawn of democracy in Myanmar. If only the Burmese had their own word for it. As this former dictatorship opens to the world, language is a stumbling block. For half a century, Myanmar was so cut off from the outside world that people were jailed for owning an unauthorized fax machine. As the rest of the world was hurtling into the information age, the strict censorship of publications, limited access to global media and creaking connections to the Internet stunted the evolution of the Burmese language, leaving it without many words that are elsewhere deemed essential parts of the modern political and technical vocabulary. Today, as Myanmar embraces change, many foreign words are being imported wholesale, but their meanings are getting lost in translation. The English word democracy was subsumed into the Burmese language decades ago — it is pronounced dee-mock-rah-SEE — but for many Burmese it remains a foreign and somewhat abstract concept. There are no native words for other common ideas like racism, federal or globalization. “Burmese has a far poorer political vocabulary than English,” said U Thant Myint-U, a historian who also serves as an adviser to the president. “At a time when everything is about the country’s political future, it’s a liability and a constraining factor.” When foreign experts recommended that the government pass a computer privacy law, Burmese translators scratched their heads because there is no precise translation for privacy in Burmese. The very idea may not exist, possibly because there is little privacy in a society in which people traditionally lived and slept in common areas. Interpreters are also stumped when parades of foreign advisers and scholars preach the virtues of strong institutions. While there is a word for an organization in Burmese, linguists say, there is no single word that conveys the meaning of an institution. Under British colonial rule, English words leached liberally into Burmese, yielding such Burmese words as budget and beer. But the xenophobic military governments of the past five decades prohibited the use of English loan words on the grounds that they were culturally disruptive, scholars say. Since the military officially relinquished power in 2011, foreigners have been pouring into the country. Mr. Thant Myint-U, whose grandfather U Thant was the secretary general of the United Nations in the 1960s, says he has been in meetings between the president and foreigners where translation is done by some of the country’s top interpreters. “Ten percent is still lost in translation,” he said. Vicky Bowman, a former British ambassador to Myanmar, says 10 percent is optimistic. “I would say it’s more like 30 percent to 50 percent,” she said. Ms. Bowman is director of an organization called the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business. When she and her colleagues wanted to translate the name of her organization for Burmese speakers, it took hours. They came up with a Burmese name that in English sounds like a bad Internet robo-translation: “Myanmar economic sector having and assuming the responsibility, support-help department.” The structure of the Burmese language, part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, varies considerably from English. Written Burmese has no spaces between words and is generally wordier than English. Burmese is far from unique in having words that are difficult to translate, said John Okell, a scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and one of the leading linguists of the Burmese language. “Plainly, between any two languages there are words in one that seem to have no equivalent in the other,” he said. “As Myanmar opens up, an increasing number of English words are being imported and slowly standardized. It’s a gradual process.” No one is suggesting these linguistic hurdles are insurmountable; concepts can be explained and understood even where no Your preference has stored for this browser andinto device. If you clear your precisely translatable word exists. The borrowed word democracy hasbeen since been assimilated Burmese and is cookies, even in the your preference will be forgotten. name of the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/world/asia/those-who-would-remake-myanmar-find-that-words-fail-them.html 1/3