Housing culture – home imaging

 

“Hidaka’s house wasn’t one of the mansions, but it was definitely large for a couple with no children. Though the peaked gables on the roof gave it a Japanese look, it had bay windows, an arch over the front door and window boxes hanging from the second storey that were clearly Western in design.”*

The task of a translator extends far beyond linguistic matters and necessarily involves creating images. The challenge lies in both visualizing the picture in the original text, obvious to the author, and gracefully reproducing it for the reader unfamiliar with the culture in question. An example of this task is the simple word “house”. While almost all dwellings have at least four walls, they vary in material, dimension, outside façade, inside layout and access to light and air, to name just a few factors. It is clear that the sentence “I loved my parents’ home” may elicit a universal feeling but fails to create a single picture, with each person envisioning the building differently. Often, housing styles may be fairly typical in a given country or region, creating a stereotype for those familiar with them. The actual variances may be quite significant or more subtle as I show in a few examples of “typical” homes.

Spanish houses and apartments, at least in cities, seem to emphasize social space at the expense of the more private spaces. The holiday homes on the Spanish coast have relatively large sitting areas, both outside and inside. By contrast, the kitchen is often quite small, “galley” style in polite terms, often cut off from the social space. Depending on the area, red tiles and arches are quite popular.

·    English dwellings, particularly urban ones, enjoy multiple but small sitting areas, referred to as “cozy”, often leaving me to think that the English like to keep their children’s mess and noise from strangers’ eyes and ears. Curiously enough, the entrance ways are often extremely narrow, barely wide enough for one person to pass through at a time. Based on TV programs, the English appreciate solariums and wooden beams, the symbols of luxury and character.

·    The French are a rather solid people traditionally. The houses are often made of brick or stone, especially in the countryside,  possibly with painted window shutters. Whether urban or rural, the furniture tends to be heavy in line with the style of the walls, with lots of bric-a-brac cluttering the living space. Traditional French dwellings often lack air and light, apparently to reduce the cost of heating the space. French houses are homey but a bit claustrophobic in my eyes.

American West Coast homes are as large as the land allows. The houses are constructed from wood and generally rather standard in construction, but include large rooms, meaningful garden areas, healthy air flow, natural light, central air conditioning and a garage. Ranch house style houses are designed to give the residents space and impress the neighbors. The character and age of the building are not relevant factors. The East Coast has a different tradition but I am not sufficiently familiar to comment.

·    Israeli houses are typical of the Eastern Mediterranean. People are social while the weather is hot. The kitchen and living room, often joined, take proportionally a large part of the livable space, often at the expense of the bedrooms. People seek patio space whenever possible as garden space can significantly raise the purchase price. Upper floors tend to become quite hot and are only practical with air conditioning. The Israeli unique feature is the requirement, both legal and emotional, for some kind of “safe” room, a reinforced area when (not in case) the country is bombed. Many older houses and apartments lack this feature, reducing their desirability. As for color scheme, Israel is a multicultural society, creating a wide variety of furnishing styles.

The translator of the novel cited in the first paragraph was fortunate in that the author himself provided details of the house. Likewise, Honoré de Balzac generally wrote pages about the physical description of the building and each of its rooms. However, most literary translators not only need to be familiar with the architecture but somehow transmit that image. I am quite happy to be a technical translator and not be required to achieve that goal. Yet, the thought does give another meaning to the term “in-house translator”.

* Higashino, K., 2014. Malice translated by A. Smith. London: Abascus.

Heart-felt words, more or less

 

[Hammer and nails*]

Emotions have nuances that must be expressed in some manner by language. Of course, every language has its own strategy for distinguishing levels of attachment, including using completely different words or merely adding describers.  Examples of such important distinctions involve residence, approval and joy, which are reflected in different ways in English, French, Hebrew and Russian.

[Urban houses]

In English, there is a vital difference between house and home. The former is a building, generally not attached to other residences. It can be bought, surveyed, destroyed and repaired, to name a few actions, with very little emotional cost. By contrast, the latter is where, as Pliny said, the heart is. What matters is not the physical characteristics of the residence – it could be an isolated house or a flat in a 24-story building - but instead the memories people have of it. In practical terms, after people leave their childhood home, they look for a house that can become a home. Thus, English uses two different words. French has a word for both meanings, which can be understood by context, maison, but can use a preposition, chez, combined with a name to reinforce the attachment. For example, the English expression “there is no place like home” would be “on n'est vraiment bien que chez soi”. The Hebrew word for home בית [biet] covers both elements but becomes much more emotional in its locative form הביתה [habeita]: אני הולך הביתה. [ani holech habeita] - I am going homeward literally. Russian is similar in that the nominative form дом [dome] applies to both with the locative form домой [domou], implying an emotional attachment. Of course, adding a possessive adjective such as my, his or her before the word for house creates the attachment of the basic word home. Not all houses are homes.

[Loving fingers]

As anybody that has been disappointed in their search for a partner knows, like and love are not identical even if they both technically express a positive opinion. The latter is much more passionate and intense. For example, almost everybody likes chocolate but far fewer truly love it. Again, English, rich in vocabulary, distinguishes them by using two different words making it easy to understand. Russian also distinguishes the mellow from the passionate using two words нравиться [nravitza] and любить[lyubitz]. Likewise, Hebrew uses the rather lengthy מוצא חן בעיניי [moze chen be’aini] or shorter חובב [hovev] to say “I like”, with אוהב [ohev] generally but not always expressing love. The French has the generic and ambiguous verb aimer but can distinguish the lessor form by adding the adverb “bien” as in “j’aime bien le champagne”, which implies that the person won’t refuse to drink the bubbly but won’t buy an expensive bottle at an auction. It is clear that liking is not very romantic.

[Old woman smiling]

Happiness is not so simple either. There is the joy of receiving a wonderful gift but there is a less intensive but longer-lasting pleasure of having made the right career choice even if not every day is a joy. In short, some happiness is momentary while other is much more rooted. English is forced to use a French root to clearly express the second meaning, specifically content, as in “he has never been so content with his life”. French and Hebrew have separate words, content and heureux and שמח [sameah] and מאושר [meushar], respectively. Likewise, Russian has счастливый [schazlivi] and доволен [dovolen], although the difference is often contextual. Happiness, like beauty, can be for a night or constant, if not eternal.

The most difficult and often most important words to translate involve emotions. Some languages use different words to distinguish levels while others merely modify the basic term. Whatever the case, understanding the hidden text is both vital and quite interesting, at least to translators. They need to express their heart, linguistically that is.

* Use picture captions to help the blind. All pictures via the Pixabay site.

House and Home

As is well known, English has an unusually large and varied vocabulary for almost all matters, including the important issue of housing.  After all, shelter is one of the most basic needs.  Opening up the Thesaurus to the word home – noun brings up an impressive list of related words, each with a bit of a different context.

A home is a general word for a permanent place to sleep as compared to lodgings where a hotel guest may stay or quarters or a billet where soldiers spend their nights.  Of course, the home implies some emotional attachments unlike a house, which is merely four walls with some rooms in it. 

On a smaller note, a British flat becomes an apartment, if it is for rent, or a condo, if it is for sale and a bit fancy, on the other side of the Atlantic.  A studio is a fancy word for a small, one room place.  A penthouse has very high class pretentions that do not meet reality in Israel at least. 

The upper part of scale is a mansion, which assumes some staff to maintain all the rooms or possible a residence if it is official, as in the Prime Minister’s Residence, which is really a rather large flat.  Royalty did once live in palaces, but today the term is rather relative, to misquote Einstein, as in moving into a cottage of 240 meters after years in that quaint studio.  It does give the feeling of “making it.”  As that term cottage, it once meant a small country house, a bit like a Russian dacha.  Today, it is used indiscriminately any house with a yard, big or small.

The flip side of the equation is a tenement, a small crowded flat in a poor area.   Some people would call that a dump, but that is being negative.  On the other hand, if you are young, poor, and in love in Paris, you would call the 9^th floor studio with no elevator a loft or even a pied-è-terre, even if it is far from the ground. 

So, as you walk in big cities and see homeless, reconsider your dwelling and remember that home is where the hearth is, no matter how small or big it is.