Translation is a Tricky and Sometimes Delightful Activity

I have a video tape of one of the farmers explaining in Thai what they were doing in Bangkok. I already put up one video tape of him speaking in Hmong. But for the Thai one I want to have a translation. I've got it pretty much translated, but I'm waiting on a few people to confirm parts I wasn't sure of.

I learned when doing research in China that translation is tricky.

• First, some words just don't have English equivalents. There are words that are similar, but don't convey the original meaning. The concept simply has not been captured by a single word in English. For instance, the formal and informal versions of 'You' in French and German, or the distinction between the word for "I" used by a woman and the one used by a man in Thai. These are still easy to understand, but the question for the translator is whether to just say "I" or "you" or to try to explain the subtlety. Other words, like
  
  
• Second, there are words that can be translated, but the cultural context is so different that the English reader would understand something very different from what the original speaker meant. For instance, 20 years ago in China, 'work unit' had connotations very different from what someone in the US might conceive. Just as we get health insurance through work, at that time in China, people got pretty much everything they needed - housing, use of vehicles, access to things like use of vehicles, and many commodities people in market economies would buy in the market place. Work units also needed to give permission for travel and even to get married. So, just translating 'work-unit' really didn't convey the significance of that word to people not familiar to China then. I would hasten to point out that things have changed a lot in China and work-units are no longer so significant in people's lives as they were before the market reforms. But while there is a lot of private housing available now in large cities, work unit housing still plays a big role.
  
  
• Third, translators might not translate your questions correctly if the translator thinks they are culturally inappropriate. In those cases you get answers that seem strange, because some variation of your question was asked.

In any case, there were a couple of terms that seemed like they needed more than a one word translation. A key one - โฉนดชุมชน (Chanot chumchon) - left me scratching my head and so today, Mi explained it to me and I'll do a post on that. But in the explanation, he used the word

ลง ขัน long khan which thai2english.com translates as

[ V ] contribute ; offer money ; take a share in the expenses

and I'm probably going to translate as 'member contribution' with a link to this post.

But when I looked at the meaning of the two words ลง and ขัน, I couldn't understand how that got to offer money or take a share in the expenses.

ลง translates as:

get down ; get off ; go down ; decrease ; drop ; fall ; reduce ; descend ; put down down ; downward write down ; note down ; register ; publish

ขัน translates as:

amusingly ; funnily ; ridiculously ; absurdly bowl ; water dipper crow ; coo laugh ; tighten ; screw tight ; wrench

So how does that get to contribute? This is where the 'delightful' part of translation comes in. The relevant term here for ขัน is 'water dipper'. As Mi explained it to me, you have your water dipper filled with water and you lower it into the communal water bowl. Or you take your money out of your pocket and put it into the communal pot.

And suddenly it makes a lot of sense.

[Update later that day - there was a water dipper at the gathering I went to tonight, so I was able to add in this picture.]