Cõi Đem (iv)

from novelist Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn at Làng Văn

First sentence of the novel: Bên ngoài, trời dã sáng lắm.

Outside, it’s bright, says the Google translator. In French and Spanish the Google also speaks of outdoors. French: Dehors, c'est lumineux. Spanish: Afuera, es brillante.

The Latin machine returned: Erat foris clarissima. That foris is a location word from a forgotten term for gate. Outdoors.

In both French c'est and Spanish es, the Google put the verb in the present, unless those translations evoke some literary, unmarked, past tense. In Latin the machine delivered an imperfect.

The Vietnamese original dã rather goes out of its way to mark perfected action, the way the sun comes up in the tropics, bang oh my god now morning has arrived. Over there, it was bright already.

Maybe my over there is precious, a translator’s crotchet, inappropriate to such plainspoken Vietnamese. My reason for saying over there rather than outside is that bên ngoài is the first phrase of about a man returned to the Country of Night.

The next sentence refers to the morning in question as tomorrow, so the narrator is speaking from our side of the planet about the other. He is a prescriptive, northern, speaker.

A prescriptive, northern dictionary (Phan Văn Giưỡng, 2007) offers the example bên Pháp, in France, for the construction with bên. A man who left the north, he is moreover describing a scene in the south, where he migrated to and fled from.

A descriptive dictionary (William Peter Hyde, 2008), based on a corpus collected around Saigon, offers 2 examples of bên ngoài to mean outside the country. I have not yet thought of a way to say in English both outside,

as if we are in the room, and also over there, evoking from abroad the boundary of the country, the equator, and the line of sunrise and sunset. The first two words of the novel have evoked all those to me.

Oh, all right. Let’s go with the machines for the phrase of location, and use my verb tenses. Outside, it was bright already.

First 2 sentences of the novel:

Bên ngoài, trời dã sáng lắm. Nắng ban mai vượt khỏi ngọn cây, chiếu xiên qua lớp man cửa số trắng đục, chạy dài tới mép giường, soi rõ hai ống chân khảng khiu của Trực vừa thò ra khỏi tấm chăn mỏng.

The Google puts them into English this way:

Outside, it's bright. The morning sun crossed the top of the tree, projected obliquely through the opaque white window mantle, running long to the edge of the bed, clearly illuminating the two shins of Truc who had just poked out of the thin blanket.

And into French:

Dehors, c'est lumineux. Le soleil du matin traversa le sommet de l'arbre, projeté obliquement à travers le manteau de fenêtre blanc opaque, courant jusqu'au bord du lit, illuminant clairement les deux tibias de Truc qui venaient de sortir de la mince couverture.

You get the idea. Sun is waking a sleepyhead.

Spanish:

Afuera, es brillante. El sol de la mañana cruzó la parte superior del árbol, proyectado oblicuamente a través del manto blanco opaco de la ventana, corriendo largo hasta el borde de la cama, iluminando claramente las dos espinillas de Truc que acababan de asomarse de la delgada manta.

I like this better than the English or the French which both offend my sense of the Vietnamese. I suspect this is because I read Spanish as I do Vietnamese, skipping along for the sense and the sound with a loose grasp on vocabulary.

Vietnamese-translation.com returns this Latin:

Erat foris clarissima. Sol matutinus per cacumina perrupit, per pallium opacum album fenestra oblique fulsit, ad marginem lecti protensum, scilicet cruribus Truc invalidi, quae modo e tenui stragulo papaver.

I think the Latin is terrific because is not Latinate. Opacum and oblique are words in the common register in Roman speech rather than school terms as obliquement and opaque are in French. Hm. Translate contemporary Vietnamese fiction into Latin? Now, that would be out there.

Having fun yet? I can do this for years. Have done. Outside, it was bright already.

This is the fourth Viet Nam letter of 6 so far on Cõi Đem by Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn. The first posted on March 23 2022, the second on April 23, 2022, the third on May 25, 2022, then the fifth on August 8, 2022, and the sixth on February 22, 2023.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.