6/13/22, 1:46 PM Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them - The New York Times But some question how well the term is understood by Myanmar’s 51 million people after so many years of brutal suppression. “All these things — democracy, institutions, even freedom — I don’t think Myanmar people know what true freedom is or what to do with it,” said U Thaung Su Nyein, the editor in chief of 7Day Daily, a Burmese-language newspaper. “For them being free might mean, ‘As long as no one is knocking on my door in the middle of the night, I’m free.’ ” Even words and phrases that are not difficult to translate can have very different shades of meaning because of the legacy of military rule. The term “rule of law” has become a mantra for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the British-trained Nobel Peace laureate and icon of democracy. She rarely fails to mention the importance of the concept in speeches around the country. But to the ears of many in Myanmar, the rule of law sounds similar to exhortations by generals to obey the law — the junta’s law. "When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can't explain it in Burmese," said Daw Ei Myat Noe Khin, a software and app developer in Yangon. Adam Dean for The New York Times Rule of law “is not an attractive concept,” said U Pe Myint, a commentator and columnist. “We do not usually equate the rule of law with justice. It has connotations of pacifying, subjugating people. I think most people don’t really understand what it means.” A similar problem of interpretation exists in the country’s peace talks with ethnic armed groups. Ethnic minorities are demanding a federal system, but federal is a term, directly borrowed from the West, that is still abstract in Myanmar. To military leaders, the word sounds threatening because they link it to secession, Mr. Thant Myint-U said. “You assume that another person has the same interpretation as you,” he said. “But these words can mean very different things to different people.” Myanmar today has one foot in its old dictatorial and paternalistic past and one foot in a Western-inspired dash for democracy. This makes for odd juxtapositions. A recent edition of The New Light of Myanmar, a state-run daily newspaper, had both an article praising the “strength of honest and hard-working peasants” and a story about the American television show “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” Younger Burmese are growing up exposed to modern technology and foreign concepts, creating a gulf of vocabulary between generations. A 21-year-old developer who creates apps for Android phones, Daw Ei Myat Noe Khin, says her job is bewildering for some members of her family. “When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can’t explain it in Burmese,” she said. “There is no word in Burmese for developer, so I used the English word programmer,” she said. “If they don’t understand programmer, I say, ‘It’s what is inside your phone and makes it work.’ ” Your preference has been stored for this browser and device. If you clear your cookies, “They say, ‘Oh, it’s something to do with computers!’ your ” preference will be forgotten. And they say it using the English word. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/20/world/asia/those-who-would-remake-myanmar-find-that-words-fail-them.html 2/3