经济学人下载:以孟加拉的罗辛亚人为例:翻译缺失阻滞国际社会的危机援助(1)

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Johnson: Lost without translation
约翰逊：因没有翻译而错失

Language problems bedevil the international response to crises
语言问题困扰着国际社会对危机的反应

Sitting on a muddy floor beneath a tarpaulin roof, Nabila, a 19-year-old Bangladeshi, fiddles with her shoelaces as she listens to Tosmida, a Rohingya woman in her mid-30s. Both are crying. Nabila, a student-turned-interpreter, says awkwardly: “She had it from all of them in her secret place.”
娜比拉，19岁，孟加拉人。托米达，约莫35岁，罗兴亚人（罗兴亚族是缅甸的一个穆斯林族群）。娜比拉正坐在防水帆布屋顶下的泥泞地板上，一边不停摆弄鞋带，一边倾听托米达。两人都在流泪。娜比拉是一名学生译员，她笨拙地组织语言：“在她私密的地方遭遇了他们所有人。”

The struggle to tell the story of Tosmida’s gang-rape is not just an emotional but a linguistic one. Since some 700,000 Rohingyas escaped persecution in Myanmar and fled to Bangladesh over a year ago, many Bangladeshis like Nabila have suddenly found themselves with new jobs, as interpreters. Tosmida’s Rohingya and Nabila’s Chittagonian are related but not identical. Interpreters, quickly trained, must try their best to understand another language, and fill in the gaps left by cultural differences—including taboos about what victims can say.
讲述托米达被轮奸故事的艰难之处不仅是感情方面的，还有语言方面的。自从约一年前约70万罗兴亚人为逃离在缅甸所受迫害逃往孟加拉国，很多像娜比拉这样的孟加拉人，突然就有了新工作——翻译。托米达所在的罗兴亚族和娜比拉所属的吉大港孟加拉人有些联系，但并非完全相同。口译员经过快速训练，必须尽力去理解另一种语言，填补文化差异留下的空白——包括受害者可能说出的忌讳的话题。

The biggest practical issues concern health, says A.K. Rahim, a linguistics researcher working with Translators Without Borders (TWB), a group that helps humanitarian agencies. In Chittagonian, health terms come from Bengali and English; scientific knowledge and vocabulary have trickled down from educated elites. But among the relatively few educated Rohingyas, health terms come from Burmese. Most—especially women, who tend to be cut off from the outside world and denied education—have not been touched by that learning. Instead they have developed their own lexicon. They avoid haiz (menstruation) and say gusol (shower). Diarrhoea, a common camp ailment, was routinely misdiagnosed in the first few months. Many Rohingyas reported, “My body is falling apart” (“Gaa-lamani biaram”), baffling health-care workers.
服务于人道主义机构的“无国界译员组织”（TWB）的语言学研究员A.K.拉希姆表示，最大的实际问题是健康。在吉大港语中，健康术语来自孟加拉语和英语；科学知识和词汇已经从受过良好教育的精英阶层中逐渐流传下来。但在相对受到教育较少的罗兴亚人当中，健康术语来自缅甸语。大多数人——尤其是与外界隔绝无法接受教育的女性——还没有接触到这种健康术语。而他们开发了自己的词汇。他们避免说haiz（穆斯林用语，意为“月经”）而是说gusol（穆斯林用语，意为“淋浴”）。腹泻是一种常见的营地疾病，在患病初期几个月经常被误诊。很多罗兴亚人这样陈述，“我的身体正分崩离析”（“Gaa-lamani biaram”）,这让很多医护人员很迷惑。

Sex is the trickiest minefield. In the Rohingyas’ conservative Muslim culture, women are not supposed to talk about sex or their bodies at all. They employ euphemisms, using different words to describe sex permissible by religion, or illegal sex and sex out of wedlock. Most of these terms are deliberately vague; they refer to “shameful spaces” and “secret places”. For rape, they might use a word that means forceful torture. This has legal consequences. “I cannot imagine a Rohingya woman standing up in court and saying, ‘I was raped’,” says Mr Rahim. Interpreters must be cautioned not to fill in gaps or encourage their subjects to say particular things; that could weaken a prosecution.
性是最棘手的雷区。在罗兴亚人保守的穆斯林文化中，女性根本不应该谈论性或身体。他们使用委婉语，用不同的词来描述宗教允许的性、非法性行为和婚外性行为。这些术语大多故意含糊不清；他们表达为“可耻的地方”和“私密的地方”。他们可能会用一个意为强烈折磨的词来表达强奸。这会产生法律后果。“我无法想象一名罗兴亚女性站在法庭上说，‘我被强奸了’，” 拉希姆说。口译员一定会被提醒不要填补语义空缺或鼓励他们的当事人说一些特别的事情；而这可能会削弱起诉。