[INDOLOGY] Soo che? Saru che... Gujarati

[Adheesh Sathaye]

Dear Daniel,

An interesting question, and I am sure some of our Gujarati-speaking colleagues can provide you an accurate Gujarati original text. However, it might be worthwhile to consider the theoretical principles involved in the exercise of translation here. 

1. Rushdie has published his novel in English, not Gujarati, and has provided an Anglicised text that approximates his impressions of how *Marathi* speakers were pronouncing this anti-Gujarati slur while marching against Gujaratis in post-Independence Bombay during the language controversies in the splitting of Maharashtra and Gujarat.

2. It furthermore is designed to reflect the received impressions of his protagonist, an Anglicised, non-Gujarati and non-Maharashtrian bystander in Bombay hearing Marathi speakers butchering Gujarati (in more ways than one, perhaps, as the “daṇḍā le ke” is in fact Bambaiyaa Hindi, and not Gujarati, as far as I know). 

3. There is, therefore, something intentionally “incorrect” and “ungrammatical” about the hybridized chant, the linguistic violence of which imitates the actual violence on the ground. 

4. wouldn’t it then be prudent to leave Rushdie’s original as it is, in “Anglicised” form, and render his English translation—which attempts to recreate the rhyme of the chant—into rhyming Hungarian?

Just my impressions. 

Best wishes,
Adheesh

----
Adheesh Sathaye
Department of Asian Studies
University of British Columbia

On Jul 25, 2014, at 5.34, Balogh Dániel <danbalogh at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Dear All,
> could someone help me with the Gujarati doggerel in Rushdie's Midnight's Children? A friend of mine is revising the Hungarian translation of the book and we are using a Hungarian phonetic approximation of the indic words rather than the English spelling. So what I'm interested in is the correct Gujarati spelling (if you can write Gujarati in Unicode, I'll be able to read it with a table; or you could use Devanagari or IAST to make my job even easier). If the pronunciation is different from how a Hindi speaker would pronounce the words, please also say a word or two about how this should sound. I'm fluent in Hindi but know nothing about Gujarati. 
> The Anglicised version goes "Soo che? Saru che! Danda le ke maru che!", and Rushdie's translation is "How are you?-I am well! - I'II take a stick and thrash you to hell!" 
> Here's my guess of how this would look in Devanagari
> सू छे? सारु छे। दण्ड लेके मारु छे। 
> But "सारु छे" is the only phrase I've managed to find on the web; "सू छे" is just guesswork and probably wrong, while the latter part is based on Hindi.
> So if any Gujarati speaker can help, your contribution will be most welcome.
> Daniel
> 
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