Translation Studies in the Philippines: Navigating a Multilingual Archipelago [1 ed.] 9781003405603, 9781003811305

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Translation Studies in the Philippines

The contributors to this book examine the state, development, issues, practices, and approaches to translation studies in the Philippines. The Philippines is a highly multilingual country, with many indigenous languages and regional dialects spoken alongside foreign imports, particularly English and Spanish. Professor Moratto, Professor Bacolod, and their contributors analyse the different roles that translation plays across an extensive range of areas, including disaster mitigation, crisis communication, gender bias, marginalization of Philippine languages, academe, and views on sex, gender, and sexuality. They look at a range of different types of translation, from the translation of biblical texts to audio-visual translation and machine translation. Emphasising the importance of translation as an interdisciplinary field, they use a variety of analytic lenses, including anthropological linguistics, language and culture studies, semantics, structural linguistics, and performance arts, among others. A comprehensive resource for scholars and practitioners of translation, as well as a valuable reference for scholars across a wider range of humanities and social science disciplines in examining the culture, language, and society of the Philippines. Riccardo Moratto is Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation, Shanghai International Studies University, China. Mary Ann G. Bacolod is Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistics, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies

Telecollaboration in Translator Education Implementing Telecollaborative Learning Modes in Translation Courses Mariusz Marczak Appraisal and the Transcreation of Marketing Texts Persuasion in Chinese and English Mavis (Nga-Ki) Ho Translating Home in the Global South Migration, Belonging, and Language Justice Edited by Isabel C. Gómez and Marlene Hansen Esplin A Qualitative Approach to Translation Studies Spotlighting Translation Problems Edited by Elisa Calvo and Elena de la Cova Translation and Big Details Part-Whole Thinking as Practice and Theory Jeroen Vandaele Reframing Western Comics in Translation Intermediality, Multimodality and Censorship Nicolas Martinez Translation and Modernism The Art of Co-Creation Emily O. Wittman Translation Studies in the Philippines Navigating a Multilingual Archipelago Edited by Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advancesin-Translation-and-Interpreting-Studies/book-series/RTS

Translation Studies in the Philippines

Navigating a Multilingual Archipelago Edited by Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-52212-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-52214-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-40560-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603 Typeset in Galliard by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

Foreword vii Acknowledgments ix Notes on Editors x Notes on Contributors xi Introduction to Translation Studies in the Philippines: Navigating a Multilingual Archipelago

1

RICCARDO MORATTO AND MARY ANN G. BACOLOD

1 A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines

7

NAIDYL ISIS BAUTISTA AND ANNA MARIE SIBAYAN-SARMIENTO

2 Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines: A Preliminary Country Profile

23

MARLON JAMES SALES

3 Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing: Viewing the World through Theater Translation in the Academe

38

VLADIMEIR B. GONZALES

4 Beyond Constraints: Advancing Linguistic Consensus in Filipino Subtitling

52

MICHAEL MANAHAN

5 Necessary Infidelity: Obligatory Shifts in Translating Audiovisual Texts for Children HONEYLET E. DUMORAN

66

vi Contents 6 Gender Bias in Machine Translation: The Case of Filipino-English Translation in Google Translate

83

DIVINE ANGELI ENDRIGA AND FRANCISCO ROSARIO, JR.

7 The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal: Juxtaposing Filipino/Tagalog Translations of Biblical Passages and Local Views on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

100

JEM R. JAVIER AND MADILENE B. LANDICHO

8 On the Translatability of Filipino Modals and its Impact on Disaster Communication

116

MARY ANN G. BACOLOD

9 Lost for Words: The Untranslatability of Some Tagalog Words and Phrases

135

JESUS FEDERICO C. HERNANDEZ

Index 146

Foreword

The hasty observation that there might not be a lot of translation work being done in the Philippines probably just means that one is looking in all the wrong places. It is true that most of the translation being done in the Philippines cannot be found in literature or philosophy shelves of local bookstores. Powerfully working against the growth and expansion of conventional belletristic translational work in the Philippines is the fact that, differently from most other countries in Asia, the Filipino educated elite continue to read and promote mostly imported English language books. Indeed, arduous translational efforts into Philippine languages are sometimes greeted with deflationary statements to the effect that translations are unnecessary since the reading public which matters, or those who can actually afford to buy expensive books, prefer to read these works directly in English or in English relay translations anyway. Translation is thus rendered almost redundant. A jaded Filipino publisher once told me that works in Filipino which traffic in serious ideas are just too highbrow for a Filipino language readership (because of its content), and too lowbrow for an English language readership (because of the language it is in). The corollary is that translations of artistic and intellectually challenging works into Philippine languages apparently have no audience and are therefore considered unprofitable publishing prospects. This is not to deny the fact that there has been a palpably encouraging surge of translations of foreign literary works, including saleable popular works, into Filipino and other Philippine languages in more recent years. But this is still not the area where most translations in the Philippines are being done. Where then should one look to feel the living pulse of translational work in the Philippines? In a massively multilingual and archipelagic nation such as the Philippines, translation is obviously always taking place everywhere and at all times. It is to the credit of the editors of this volume, Prof. Dr. Riccardo Moratto and Dr. Mary Ann G. Bacolod, as well as of its contributing authors that they have sought out and discovered domains where the practice of translation is necessary, unavoidable, and even urgent. These are the points of intersection where languages pressed tightly together, cheek by jowl as it were, by relentless market logics, pragmatic educational considerations, paramount

viii Foreword religious imperatives, the exacting demands of performance, and life and death responses to natural disasters, generate veritable outpourings of translations. This volume offers several rigorous empirically oriented analyses of the various domains of day-to-day translational practice in the Philippines. While these studies have clearly borrowed productively from the wealth of ideas in contemporary Translation Studies, distinct and original theories of translation in the Philippines can grow only on the basis of these kinds of fertile empirical research. Even reflections on deep philosophical questions regarding the problem of translatability and untranslatability can be more greatly enriched by the material of experience rather than by empty, oftentimes Orientalist, speculations. In other words, this volume now has to be counted as one of the auspicious starting points of Translation Studies coming into its own in the Philippines. Ramon Guillermo Center for International Studies (CIS) University of the Philippines - Diliman

Acknowledgments

We are truly indebted to all the contributors of this volume, who provided the erudition and wisdom of each chapter. Thank you for answering with patience our editorial queries and responding to our suggestions. Working with you has been a pleasure and, notwithstanding the names on the spine of the book, this volume is really yours. We would also like to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to the editorial team at Routledge, in particular Katie Peace, Simon Bates, and Khin Thazin for your unwavering support, and all the copyeditors at Rout ledge. Our immense gratitude also goes to all past and future Filipino translators for your enormous yet oftentimes underappreciated efforts. This volume is dedicated to all of you. Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod To my husband, Allan-Rey, thank you for providing me with the much-needed love, motivation, and inspiration to complete this project, as well as for expertly managing our children and the house while I was fully immersed in this project. To my daughters, Cassaundra and Calliope, whose support and understanding were unparalleled while I devoted myself to my work. To Tatay and Nanay for all the encouragement and the valuable lessons they taught me in life. My appreciation also extends to Prof. Dr. Moratto for spearheading the development of this book and for placing his confidence in me, as well as to my family, friends, and colleagues for their unrelenting support and sound advice. Lastly, I am humbled by the wisdom and strength that God has bestowed upon me, and I am genuinely grateful for the abundance of wonderful people in my life. Mary Ann G. Bacolod

Editors

Riccardo Moratto is Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation (GIIT), Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), Chartered Linguist and Fellow Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL), Editor in Chief of Interpreting Studies for Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press (外教社), General Editor of Routledge Studies in East Asian Interpreting, and General Editor of Routledge Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Approaches to Chinese Literature. Professor Moratto is a conference interpreter and renowned literary translator. He has published extensively in the field of translation and interpreting studies. Mary Ann G. Bacolod is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She has conducted research on various aspects of linguistics, such as the grammatical nuances of Hiligaynon-Filipino translations, the interlanguage grammar between Japanese and Filipino, language and disaster, metaphors, adjectives’ gradability, and conditionals in the Filipino language. Her research interests cover topics such as morphosemantics, language and disaster research, interlanguage, translation, crosslinguistic studies, and lexicography.

Contributors

Naidyl Isis Bautista is Assistant Professor of Italian at the Department of European Languages, College of Arts and Letters, at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Linguistics at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Her research interests are language didactics, materials development, and Philippine linguistics. Honeylet E. Dumoran is a PhD candidate at the University of the Philippines Department of Linguistics. Under the program, she has done grammar work on Mindanao languages. Her current research is on the Bilic languages (T’boli, B’laan, Teduray, and Klata). She has done research work on the analysis of translated work, specifically expanding shift analysis as a framework for the analysis of translated audiovisual text. She is a member of the faculty of the Department of English of Mindanao State UniversityIligan Institute of Technology in Mindanao. Divine Angeli Endriga is Assistant Professor at the Department of Linguistics, University of the Philippines–Diliman. She finished her BA & MA Linguistics degrees in the same institution and is currently taking her PhD in Linguistics. Her research interests and publications are in the fields of typology (structure of Philippine languages), verbal morphosyntax, language documentation, dialectology, Philippine lexicography, Filipino as a second/foreign language, and translation. Vladimeir B. Gonzales is Professor at the Departamento ng Filipino at Panitikan ng Pilipinas (Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature), College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines–Diliman. He teaches courses in creative writing and literature. His research and creative output focus on fan culture, derivative works, playwriting, videogame studies, and theater translation. Jesus Federico C. Hernandez is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the  University of the Philippines–Diliman. His research interests include Philippine diachronic linguistics, folklore, culture history, and the documentation of endangered languages in the Philippines. He is also the convener of The Katig Collective, an initiative that seeks to raise awareness

xii Contributors about the current linguistic situation of the Philippines. Outside of work, he is a part-time hermit. Jem R. Javier is Assistant Professor at the Department of Linguistics, University of the Philippines–Diliman. His research interests include Philippine linguistics, culture studies, Indonesian/Malaysian language and linguistics, and the interface between language and cognition. Madilene B. Landicho is Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthro­ pology, University of the Philippines–Diliman. She conducts research primarily on the anthropology of the body, gender and sexuality, indigenous knowledge systems, and Southeast Asian cultures and languages. Michael Manahan is a lecturer at the Department of Linguistics in University of the Philippines–Diliman. He is currently an MA Anthropology candidate at the University of the Philippines–Diliman Department of Anthropology and is writing his thesis on the analysis of Filipino emotion terms using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. When he isn’t delving into the fascinating intricacies of language, you may find him crafting meticulous subtitles and engaging with audio descriptions for various streaming platforms. With every word and phrase, he bridges the gap between screen and audience, turning every viewing into a cultural exchange. Francisco Rosario, Jr., is Assistant Professor at the University of the Philippines, Department of Linguistics, where he handles undergraduate linguistics courses and Bahasa Indonesia/Malaysia. The focus of his research is mainly on the grammar and structure of Pangasinan and other Philippine languages, as well as on multilingualism and the implementation of the mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) policy. Marlon James Sales is Associate Professor of Spanish and Translation Studies at the Department of European Languages, College of Arts and Letters, at the University of the Philippines–Diliman. He has studied and taught in the Translation and Interpreting program of Monash University in Australia and has done postdoctoral work at the universities of Leuven and Michigan. He sits in the editorial boards of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, The Journal of Literary Multilingualism, and Traduction et Langues (University of Oran 2). Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento is Associate Professor of Spanish at the Department of European Languages, College of Arts and Letters, at the University of the Philippines–Diliman. She obtained her Ph.D. in Didactics of Language and Literature from the University of Barcelona. Her research interests include crosslinguistic influence, translanguaging phenomena, and the teaching of foreign languages in postcolonial contexts.

Introduction to Translation Studies in the Philippines Navigating a Multilingual Archipelago Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod

Translation holds immense significance in the Philippines, a country known for its rich linguistic diversity. It serves as a potent tool for sharing knowledge, culture, and ideas, fostering cultural diversity on a wider scale, and bringing it to a broader audience. However, given the intricacies of this linguistic landscape, deciding which content to translate and which languages to employ can be a daunting task. According to Mojares (2017), translation undoubtedly plays a crucial role in shaping national literature, as it not only integrates foreign works but also reinforces local traditions. In the Philippines, translation studies primarily revolve around literary works. The focus is often on the choice of languages involved, the materials to be translated, the traditions involved, and the intended audience. However, critical elements such as the translation process, the motivations for translating, and understanding the reason behind the translatability and untranslatability of specific terms are commonly overlooked. Additionally, there seems to be a limited emphasis on the practical applications of translation in various domains. Moreover, an evaluation of the current practice and methods of translation studies in the Philippines and translation as a subject and profession as a whole receives little attention. How do scholars of translation view their field today? While specialized courses and programs in translation studies are available, a more practical and interdisciplinary approach is necessary in enhancing the field. Where do translation studies and practice currently stand? How are current practices and methods in translation being analyzed and measured, if at all? This book elucidates various forms of translation and practice employed beyond literature and underscores its significance in diverse fields. It sheds light on the state and practice of translation and translation studies in the Philippines and explores how translation evolved and impacts local perspectives on sex, gender and sexuality, gender bias, marginalization of Philippine languages, and crisis communication. The book discusses issues in a wide range of translation practices, from subtitling movies to machine translation and theater translation. It investigates translation processes and procedures DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-1

2  Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod from various perspectives, including pedagogy, anthropological linguistics, performing arts, language and culture studies, semantics, and structural linguistics. It breaks new ground by looking beyond literature to examine various forms, strategies, and contexts of translation. It takes a different track because it zeroes in on the important aspect of translation: not only the readers, the translators, and the texts, but also the scientific method and analysis of translation, while highlighting how translation is keeping pace with the rapid advances in technology and more pressing and relevant issues. Translation encompasses much more than simply providing linguistic equivalents between languages. It is thus important to continue to understand the significant role translation plays in various domains and practical use in the Philippine context, including raising public awareness about societal and cultural concerns, influencing people’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors regarding significant concepts, deepening comprehension of the connections between words and their context, and enhancing the ability to evaluate and respond to emergencies. Through this book, readers will have the opportunity to witness the immense impact of translation firsthand. To facilitate reading, the abstracts of the authors will be presented below as summary to each chapter. In Chapter 1, Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento argue that the Philippines is characterized by linguistic diversity dating back to the precolonial era. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the communicative practices of indigenous Filipinos would involve organic hybridity through the overlapping of different languages in the construction of meaning, as evidenced by the Laguna Copperplate Inscription from 900  AD, where Old Malay, Sanskrit, Old Javanese, and Old Tagalog were seamlessly interwoven (Postma 1992). With the onset of the Spanish colonial period, however, the communicative practices began to change. Linguistic diversity was deemed problematic by the Spaniards, who wanted to dominate the archipelago’s people and resources. Spanish missionaries, who likewise served as linguists, then turned to translation in spreading their ideology and religion, establishing a mindset of linguistic hierarchy as opposed to equality. Since then, the practice of translation has been one of unequal power relations. The authors hence argue that the practice of translation in the country as we know it today is intimately linked with the periodization of Philippine linguistics, whose beginnings can be traced to the Spanish colonial era. This chapter is a concise history of translation praxis in the Philippines, which aims to look into how translation was initially used to marginalize our own languages and how motivations and intentions changed throughout the years. It concludes with an analysis of the advances made at present in relation to these changes in translation objectives: the establishment of policy, as well as efforts to professionalize and/or intellectualize the enterprise, if any. In Chapter 2, Marlon James Sales contends that although the Philippines, in recent years, has capitalized on the language skills of its workforce as a major selling point that facilitates their insertion into the local industries or the overseas labor market, there is no dedicated university course for training

Introduction to Translation Studies in the Philippines  3 potential translators and interpreters in the country. Since T&I education in the Philippines is usually offered as a series of university electives, many Filipino students who end up doing T&I and T&I-adjacent work are able to do so only by pursuing training outside an existing higher education program. In this chapter, the author constructs a preliminary country profile of T&I education in the Philippines by tracking the professional trajectories of T&I practitioners. By comparing data on the curricular offerings of select universities with information on actual industry prospects, Sales identifies common points of expertise and work prospects that stand in for formal T&I education. The author concludes by reflecting on the disciplinary strengths and weaknesses of T&I in the Philippines that may inform its professionalization. In Chapter 3, Vladimeir B. Gonzales proposes that the processes involved in theater translation can be considered as “performances.” This means that apart from the actual staging of the translated theater text (translation as product), there are surrounding relationships, actions, imbalances, and insights that also translate and manifest into varying forms of disappearance and resurfacing. From these processes and performances, the chapter will explore how translation can be a situationer, as well as a commentary, on power struggles and institutional accountabilities in the academic setting. As guiding concepts, the author will frame the discussions using Hans Vermeer’s studies on skopos and translation as commissioned work, as well as Andre Lefevere’s research on patronage and poetics. The author will also use two stagings of Mal, a translation project based on Euripides’ The Trojan Women, as case studies for this chapter. In Chapter 4, Michael Manahan argues that many scholars have traditionally regarded the translation of audiovisual programs as distinct from conventional translation due to the spatial and temporal constraints unique to the medium. This study reaffirms the role of subtitling as a form of translation, despite the inherent limitations posed by audiovisual media. The focus of the  investigation is on Filipino subtitles and some challenges that authortranslators encounter when adapting timed text content for digital platforms. The analysis examines the linguistic choices available to author-translators that impact their selection of linguistic registers, orthographic variations, colloquial expressions, and adherence to standard rules. It identifies perceived inaccuracies in subtitling while advocating for the acceptability of nonstandard forms and expressions in Filipino subtitles. The argument proposes that these nonstandard variants often offer a more authentic portrayal of the spoken language. This exploration extends beyond identification of these factors to looking into providing an initial analysis that motivates these choices. In the end, the study seeks to open a dialogue toward establishing a linguistic consensus that addresses subtitling challenges while maintaining and choosing a language register that accurately reflects the vernacular of its speakers. It seeks to contribute to the broader discourse on audiovisual translation and subtitling within the Philippine context, specifically in terms of effectively translating linguistic and cultural subtleties.

4  Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod In Chapter 5, Honeylet E. Dumoran argues that audiovisual learning texts for children are described to bear these features: (1) real-time audience participation; (2) narrative-type format with recurring sequences; (3) accompanying theme songs for recurring segments; and (4) lesson delivery in problemadventure-celebration format. In the translation of these texts, it is imperative that these four features are retained. This chapter posits that some shifts that may be optional in the translation of other texts are obligatory for these texts. Six types of obligatory shifts may occur in the translation of these texts: transposition, economy, simplification, adaptation, register conversion, and accommodation. Transposition and economy are formal processes, while the rest are various types of adaptation, which may be culture-centric or audience-centric. These are exemplified by the analyses of various audiovisual (AV) texts translated into Filipino. In Chapter 6, Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr., contend that Google Translate is the most popular machine translation tool available supporting over 100 languages. Its use varies from a starting point for professional translators to a quick search for word equivalents from one language to another by a language user. Despite its popularity and wide use in different sectors, some still raise concerns over how the popular machine translation tool perpetuates gender bias and stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity. In simple terms, gender bias is defined as having preferential treatment for one gender over another. It is said that gender bias occurs in different machine translations when certain gender-neutral words in the source language tend to yield male defaults or gender-specific words in the target language. While there are studies on building Filipino-specific machine translation platforms, there is no systematic research yet on the topic at hand in Filipino or other Philippine languages. It is the aim of this study to contribute to the discourse on gender bias in machine translation by investigating how this issue is observed in Filipino-to-English translation using Google Translate. The corpus is from popular Filipino tabloid newspapers and comics, as well as formulated context-free texts. The sentences contain gender-neutral pronouns, occupations, activities, and adjectives and are tested in the translation platform thereafter. In Chapter 7, Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho explores various mechanisms of expressing and euphemizing linguistic constructs related to sex, sexuality, and gender in the Filipino/Tagalog translations of the Bible. Centuries of colonization in the Philippines have resulted in the sacralization of the Christian text, penetrating different aspects of life in the country—from drafting the Constitution to conducting everyday activities, observing important events, and prescribing various sets of norms. For this study, focus shall be given to how translations of certain passages in the Bible shape and at the same time reflect perspectives on gender, sex, and sexual behaviors. Data were gathered from passages found in the Filipino/Tagalog translation of the Bible, written and published in different versions. Although published at different times, these versions of the Filipino/Tagalog translation of the Bible will be

Introduction to Translation Studies in the Philippines  5 examined synchronically, considering their wide use and circulation throughout the Philippines at present. Translation and interpretation choices shall then inform how Filipino/Tagalog translators of the Bible describe and document Christian sensibilities, values, and biases regarding sex, sexuality, and gender. A close examination reveals that while there are Christian knowledge systems and practices that have been imposed upon the subscribers of the faith, there are communities in the Philippines that negotiate expressions of  their sexuality and performance of their gender roles by adhering to the (sexual) scripts in the Bible and simultaneously subscribing to local (sexual) practices observed in their communities. In Chapter 8 Mary Ann G. Bacolod examines the functions and meanings of modals used to express possibility and obligation in English and Filipino. It will: (1) use semantic analysis to compare the differences between the use and meaning of modals and how they are translated and given equivalents from Source Text (ST) to Target Text (TT); (2) analyze how differences in meaning and use affect the interpretation of the level of risk(s) implied in using these modals in disaster-related contexts; and (3) analyze factors that determine the translatability of modals from English (ST) into Filipino (TT). The study will use select data from disaster-related texts in English and Filipino. It aims to understand how the possibility of risk and the sense of urgency in disasterrelated contexts are communicated using modals. Because modal verbs help to express the required, urgent, and necessary during crisis communication, it is essential to evaluate their function in a sentence and understand the message they communicate from ST to TT. Analyzing the meanings of modals in translated disaster communication could help readers assess the urgency and possibility of the risk communicated. The analysis could help refine translated disaster risk communication for a precise interpretation and more informed and appropriate decisions by target text readers. In Chapter 9, the final contribution of this volume, Jesus Federico C. Hernandez examines the untranslatability of some Tagalog lexical items and phrases. Following Catford’s classification of untranslatability, which he attributed to cultural untranslatability and linguistic untranslatability, the chapter unpacked what these meant to Tagalog untranslatables and reflected on the popular notion of untranslatability often defined as the lack of lexical equivalencies between the source language and the target language. It was observed in the chapter that cultural untranslatability occurred when there are differences in the materiality of the referent, the semantics of the word, and the lexical productivity of a concept, while structural incompatibility between the source language and the target language led to linguistic untranslatability. We would like to extend our most heartfelt gratitude to the editorial and production team at Routledge, in particular Khin Tazin, Simon Bates for his patience, and to all the editors at Routledge. Thank you for your support and invaluable guidance. Last, but not least, we are truly indebted to all the contributors to this volume, who provided the erudition and wisdom of each chapter. Thank you for enduring with patience our editorial queries and suggestions.

6  Riccardo Moratto and Mary Ann G. Bacolod Working with you has been a pleasure and, notwithstanding the names on the spine of the book, this volume is really yours. References Mojares, Resil B. 2017. “The Circuits of Translation: The Philippines and the World.” The Journal of English Studies 16, no. 1: 11–22. Postma, Antoon. 1992. “The Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription: Text and Commentary.” Philippine Studies 40, no. 2: 183–203.

1 A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento

1.1 Introduction Translation in the Philippines began with the advent of Philippine linguistics when Spanish missionaries studied Philippine languages to carry out their bifold task of Christianizing the inhabitants of the archipelago (Rubrico 1998) and teaching these languages to their fellow missionaries (Quakenbush 2005). Prior to the missionaries’ arrival, translational usage of languages appears inexistent. Translation, widely recognized as “an exercise which consists in the attempt to replace a written message in one language by the same message in another language” (Newmark 1988), is not reflected in archaeological evidence, such as the Laguna Copperplate Inscription (900 CE), whose script is a seamless interweaving of Old Malay, Sanskrit, Old Javanese, and Old Tagalog (Postma 1992). Other archaeological articles found in the country manifest the same translingual practice. The fluidity of borders in Southeast Asia during the precolonial era made interinsular contact typical, leaving little room for any sense of linguistic foreignness, nor any urgent need to systematically understand languages that were foreign to their own. We hence argue that the practice of translation in the country as we know it today is intimately linked with the periodization of Philippine linguistics, whose beginnings can be traced to the Spanish colonial era. However, though linguists of Philippine languages unanimously agree that Philippine linguistics is rooted in colonial beginnings, the establishment of periods has not been without contention. Phelan (1955) notes that scholarship on Philippine languages had its “inaus­ picious start” from 1565 to 1593 before reaching its pioneering period from 1593 to 1648. This was followed by a general decline in linguistic studies during the second half of the seventeenth century, while a general filling of the gaps occurred in the first half of the eighteenth century (1955). Another take on the historical timeline division was provided by SpiekerSalazar (1992), whose proposed periodization took into account the change in traditions in the study of Philippine languages: (1) Early Contact: Pragmatic Linguistics (1521–1767); (2) Studies from Afar: From Philology to

DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-2

8  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento Comparative Linguistics (1767–1861); (3) Malayo-Polynesian Comparative Studies (1861–1925); and (4) Comparison versus Description (beginning 1925). On the other hand, in Rubrico’s article (1998), where she documents all publications related to the study of Philippine languages, she maintains that Philippine linguistics may be divided into two periods: (1) the three centuries before Philippine independence from Spanish rule (1565–1898), where efforts were limited to grammars, dictionaries, and vocabulary lists done by Spanish clergy and (2) the hundred years post-independence (1898–1998), when Americans pioneered scientific inquiry of Philippine languages. Under­ standably, Rubrico’s (1998) timeline ends with the year 1998. The most recent proposal is that of Javier and Or (2022), which centers, however, on the historical development of Tagalog linguistics. It is consistent with Rubrico’s (1998) periods, with the addition of a third: the mid-twentieth century onward, the Philippine period (Asuncion-Landé 1970), which is characterized by “the exponential increase of Filipino linguists conducting studies on their own languages” (Javier and Or 2022, 37). In their work they consider not only significant contributions but also motivational forces behind the changes in scholarly direction. Despite their article concentrating on the growth of Tagalog linguistics, their straightforward chronological frame will facilitate our discussion of the entwined evolution of Philippine linguistics and translation praxis in the Philippines. We hence begin with the Pre-Colonial Period, to establish that neither linguistics nor translation existed in the archipelago then, followed by the Spanish Period, where we discuss that the linguistic work of the Spanish priests is essentially translational, incidentally marginalizing the indigenous languages. Next is the American Period, where we review how colonial education introduced Filipinos to linguistics as a field of scientific study on the one hand, and on the other, the delegation of the burden of translation to Filipinos, but still in keeping with linguistic ascendancy. Lastly, we explore the Philippine Period, where we look into Filipinos’ newfound agency, as linguists of their own languages, and as translators who have a hand in nation-building. Discussions on translational practices in each period are guided by the questions raised by Mojares (1990): What texts are translated? From what language to what language? By and for whom? For what ends? We conclude by examining the advances made at present in relation to these changes in translation objectives: the establishment of policy, as well as efforts to professionalize and/or intellectualize the enterprise, if any. 1.2 Pre-Colonial (before the Sixteenth Century) Documentations found, albeit scant, are compelling evidence not only of the existence of pre-colonial literacy, but also of a remarkable linguistic practice that can be described as translingual. Among a handful of discovered artifacts, the three most celebrated archaeological evidences containing ancient scripts

A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines  9 are the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the Butuan Metal Paleograph, and the Calatagan Pot Inscription. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription (LCI) is “the oldest locally written document of the Philippines” (Clavé and Griffiths 2022, 168) published on “Monday, 21 April 900 A.D.” (Santos 1996, 515)1 The LCI, a thin sheet of copper with ten lines of Kawi2 declaring the freedom from debt of a highranking officer and his entire family, is characteristic of the tenth century, as articles of similar nature, material, and script have likewise been found in Asia. However, it has been established that the LCI was locally produced, based on toponyms identified like Tundun (Tondo), as well as the languages in which it was written (Postma 1992, 190). While artifacts found elsewhere were primarily written in Old Java, the LCI uses Old Malay as the matrix language. The LCI features a number of technical Sanskrit words, … and some Old Java words expressing ceremonious forms of address, but the main language of the LCI is clearly Old Malay, containing several words that are identical or closely related to the Old Tagalog” (Postma 1992), some of which are anak (child), dayang (noblewoman), and hutang (debt). The Butuan Metal Paleograph, a strip of unidentified metal with 22 characters inscribed on one side, written in the late Kawi script used from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries (Boechari in Valencia 2021), has yet to be scientifically studied. Aside from a possible Eskayan reading of the script (see Tirol 1990), no other philological attempts as rigorously done as with the LCI have been made to decipher the paleograph. Another archaeological artifact depicting a translingual use of languages is the Calatagan Pot Inscription. Unlike the LCI, however, the exact date of its production is unverifiable due to misuse of petroleum cleansers by the National Museum staff (Guillermo and Paluga 2011, 123). It is typical of fourteenthto-sixteenth century earthenware discovered in the same burial complexes of Calatagan, Batangas; however, it is the only one that comes with an inscription. What scholars have generally agreed on so far, aside from its authenticity, is that the 40 characters etched around the mouth of the pot are of baybayin script, expressing a mix of languages. It starts off with a mantra for Ganesha in Old Malay and Javanese or Balinese (ibid., 150), and the prayer verse continues in Visayan with the word dait or daitan, alternative pre-hispanic Visayan terms for female priest (ibid., 154). Worth including in this discussion are the Ticao Stones found in Masbate. Though, unlike the three aforementioned artifacts, the stones are not considered National Treasures, they are valued as the first stone documents clearly showing baybayin writing (Guillermo 2012, 4). Borrinaga (2011) claims a  conclusive monolinguistic Visayan reading of the stones. However, as Guillermo (2012) points out, one must not be quick to discard the possibility that they were written in Bikolnon, Bisaya, Masbateño, and/or Ticaonon,3

10  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento considering the geographic/regional location in which the stones were found (Guillermo 2012, 22–23). The fruit of an extensive collective effort to transcribe and decipher the stones is a provisional interpretation of the words, some of which are: ba-ta-ha-la (“Bathala” in many Philippine languages, from Javanese barahala), ba-ha-ya (“danger” in Malay, from Sanskrit bhaya), da-i (depicting negation in Bikolnon), and ta-na (possibly “all” in Visayan4). Current findings on the Ticao Stones are far from definitive, as much has yet to be done, not only in terms of understanding the text, but also in establishing its authenticity and date of origin (ibid.). These archaeological finds further lend credence to claims that “[a]t the heart of precolonial Philippines, then, is linguistic diversity” (Martinez 2021, 3). They are attestations of multilingual communities in the archipelago that inevitably engaged in translanguaging as an espousal of linguistic diversity. “This phenomenon, however, is perceived as problematic for the Spaniards because it hindered their conduct of missionary and administrative duties” (ibid.). 1.3 Spanish (1565–1898) Philippine linguistic research during the Spanish colonial period first began for pragmatic reasons before eventually turning to philological impulses (SpiekerSalazar 1992). In order for Spanish colonizers to dominate the local spice trade and exploit the natural resources, natives had to be subjugated and converted into Christians through evangelization (Wolff 2012).5 However, there were some initial hurdles, complicated by the Philippines’ geographic and linguistic situation, as well as the missionaries’ lack of funding and manpower. Recognizing this challenge, the first Synod of Manila in 1582 mandated missionaries to write native language grammars and to communicate with the natives in their own languages6 (Vibar 2021). As a result, in addition to spreading the faith, other core activities of missionary work included learning, documenting, and translating languages (Deumert 2021). With their research goals being driven by the desire to spread the Christian gospel and to save souls, missionaries engaged in linguistic work: they produced pedagogical grammars and dictionaries in the vernacular intended for fellow missionaries, with the goal of translating the Bible and being able to preach in the local languages (2021). Schooled in the humanist traditions of Europe and armed with a great familiarity with the work of classical grammarians, these missionaries carried out the first systematic attempt to commit indigenous languages to alphabetic writing, and endow them with a written grammar based on the rules of Latin.7 (Sales 2018, 55) Among representative grammars8 is the Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala (1610), the oldest extant grammar of Tagalog, by Blancas de San José.

A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines  11 His masterpiece had established him as a grammarian; however, a close look at “the processes he applied in grammatizing Tagalog were, in fact, translational” (cf. Zwartjes 2012, 8 in Sales 2018, 57). As Sales (2018) explains, “[t]he dichotomy between grammar and translation was often blurred in missionary grammars because translation was employed as the necessary heurism on which grammatical rules were based and with which they should be read” (57). The same can be said about vocabulary lists and dictionaries. These missionary-linguists were constrained to apply translational methods as a recourse to analyzing and describing lexicon, not only because it was an efficient means to negotiate meaning but also because they were convinced that it was through accurate Latin or Castilian that souls could be saved.9 San Buena Ventura, for example, author of the Vocabulario de lengua tagala (1613), declared in the front matter that he meticulously corrected every typographical error found in his work due to his belief that language accuracy—which they defined as rendering Castilian concepts into Tagalog and not the other way around10—was of utmost importance in saving souls11 (Wolff 2012). Translation became an instrument of conquest, as clergy made sacred literature and liturgical guides to facilitate their access to the natives, such as the first known published book in the archipelago, the Doctrina Christiana (1593) (Rubrico 1998), a catechism in Spanish and Tagalog, presented in Latin letters and in baybayin. Translation likewise became an instrument of documentation of Philippine folk literature (Lumbera 1986, 1), otherwise confined to oral tradition. It was in the Vocabulario de la lengua tagala (1754) of de Noceda and de Sanlucar where the different kinds of auit (songs) and other literary forms like bugtong (riddles) and tanaga (poems) were described. While not all were provided for with examples, the translation of those that did was done with much less rigor (Sales 2018, 61). Translation would later become part of Philippine literature as Filipinos soon produced their own bilingual work—poetry of alternating Tagalog and Spanish verses—first by Fernando Bagongbanta (1605), and later by Tomás Pinpin (1610) (Sales 2018, 62). Whether they wrote for their countrymen and translated for the Spaniards or vice versa, it is unclear. Nor was it clear which language was the original and which the translation. Translation continued to  move farther away from grammar books, word lists, and liturgical texts as  Filipinos made more literary pieces accessible to other Filipinos, such as Modesto de Castro’s Urbana at Feliza (1854) being translated to Ilocano and Bikol.12 Filipinos would likewise begin to take interest in linguistics. National hero Jose Rizal may be considered the first Filipino linguist after producing a  grammar on Tagalog and a series of essays on Philippine cultural groups (Quakenbush 2005, 4). He was likewise a key figure in translation practice during this time: he translated foreign works into Tagalog, such as Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell and a few tales by Hans Christian Andersen, and in turn, his own writings in Spanish, among which were Amor Patrio and Mi último adiós, were translated into Tagalog (Almario 2009, 24).

12  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento Translation by this time had become a tool for national consciousness, as this period saw the rendering of another important text: the political Ang mga Karapatan ng Tawo (1891–1892), which was translated from the French Revolution’s human civil rights document Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which inspired the Propaganda Movement. 1.4 American (1898–1950s) The history of translational practice in the Philippines continued in a slightly different direction during the American period. Likewise, linguistic trends shifted into comparative and descriptive studies. The focus was no longer on a moral dimension, but on objectified research goals, like the types of sounds, or morphosyntactic phenomena and regularities (Migge 2021). Linguistic works were still being done by “objective” Westerners, many of whom believed that written and oral records of indigenous languages be made in the explicit assumption that these languages would inevitably disappear13 (Rouvier 2017). The intended audience has also varied. While there were still missionary-linguists in the American era who wanted to spread Protestantism (and its various denominations) in the new colony, most of the publications were meant for fellow foreign academics, and with the intention of refining current linguistic knowledge and pushing existing frontiers of knowledge, enriching databases, challenging the novice, and further theorizing about language (Deumert and Storch 2019). One would assume a continuous rise in language documentation (hence, translation) to parallel the advancement of linguistics as a science. While the Americans put a policy in place toward the documentation of native languages in the American linguistic tradition, it had no follow-through beyond the initial stage14 (Blake 1922). On top of that, the said policy centered its attention only on three Philippine language groups,15 demonstrated by the publications they supported throughout the first twenty years of their occupation (ibid.). Thus, compared to the Spanish era, the American era had a comparatively small contribution to the knowledge of Philippine languages.16 This may be attributed to the context of their accession to the Philippines: the Americans took formal possession of the archipelago after signing the Treaty of Paris in December 1898. This was not well received by many Filipinos, who were yearning for independence after three centuries of Spanish colonization. It was around this time changes in translation praxis began taking place. It was no longer just the outsiders, but Filipinos themselves began taking part in translational activities. Translation became a means for rousing feelings of nationalism among their countrymen, as well as a method for a speaker to assert his or her will to dominate speech (Rafael 2016). Thus, alongside the continuous publications of religious translations, the American occupation witnessed an increased production of literary and secular translations (Almario 2009), conceivably geared toward a more liberal narrative. Naturally, translations during this period were originally penned in English or were translated into English from other languages17 before being translated into the vernacular

A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines  13 (but mainly into Tagalog18), while a number of works by Filipino writers (i.e., Jose Rizal, Emilio Jacinto) have likewise been translated into English or Spanish (Almario 2009). From 1899, the Philippine-American war ensued, stemming from the eager desire for independence and the control of the archipelago, and lasted until 1902, when the US declared itself victor (Morley 2011). In an effort to suppress Filipino resistance, the American government prioritized the nationwide establishment of a colonial public school system (Rafael 2016), with English serving as “the mandatory language of instruction from the elementary level to the university level” (Asuncion-Landé 1970, 215). Over three centuries of Spanish colonization did nothing to curb the archipelago’s remarkable linguistic diversity. Practicality—for the American policy makers—became the driving force behind the selection of English as the common language. Rafael (2016) notes that this implied two things: (1) the use of  English allowed Americans to free themselves from the inconveniences imposed by learning Spanish or any of the native languages and (2) in teaching Filipinos English, Americans believed they could reduce social inequality, as the natives would “have something in common not only with one another but also with those who ruled them” (ibid., 53). After all, “in teaching a people democracy, it was wise to use the language to which most democratic principles were native” (Asuncion-Landé 1970, 215), as if such notions were absent in Philippine languages. Perhaps the most striking is the belief that “once fluent in English, Filipinos would become like Americans, relieved from the arduous task of translating” (Rafael 2016, 53). Americans therefore viewed translation as a back-breaking task one must ideally be released from. However, one has no choice but to translate until a certain level of fluency that allows one to directly think in the target language is reached. Curiously, for Filipinos, mastering and favoring a second language meant suppressing the first. Here we see a divergence in the role of translation: from an instrument of awakening and bolstering nationalism from the side of Filipinos, the American notion of translation sees it as nothing more than an instrument for domesticating foreignness and an affirmation of their superiority (linguistic or otherwise). Translation was more of a task that others did, as Americans believed that their language was without a doubt already exemplary in its ability to convey all kinds of meaning. 1.5 Philippine (Mid-Twentieth Century Onward) The Philippine period in the history of Philippine linguistics and translation began in the 1950s. It was only by this time that the interest in linguistics as an academic discipline started to increase, which also resulted in a rise of publications on Philippine languages up until the 1970s. This time around, more and more linguists studying Philippine languages were Filipinos themselves, brought about by an ever-growing national consciousness following the achievement of political independence (Asuncion-Landé 1970).

14  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento The Surian ng Wikang Pambansa (SWP) had already been established previously in 1936 as part of the Commonwealth Government’s nation-building efforts.19 The SWP was mandated to develop and adopt a national language based on Tagalog, and to prepare and publish a dictionary and grammar on it. Translational activities in this period could be seen in the SWP’s lexicographic projects, whose unidirectional dictionaries had Tagalog as its object language with English as the metalanguage (UP Department of Linguistics n.d.). It was only in 1971 that the SWP explicitly outlined its duties and functions pertaining to translation, which was to “design policies aimed at the massive production of books, pamphlets and similar reading materials in the national language in the form of translations and/or original works” (E.O. 304 1971). Most of the Filipino linguists in this era focused their attention on the national language labeled as Pilipino in 1949, and then as Filipino20 in 1973 (Javier and Or 2022). As the standardization of the national language progressed in the next few decades, the administration turned toward other Philippine languages. Thus, in 1987, the SWP was replaced by the Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas (LWP) under Executive Order 117, before finally becoming the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) in 1991 through Republic Act 7104. From developing a national language, the KWF had to undertake and promote research “for the development, propagation, and preservation of Filipino and other native Philippine languages” (R.A. 7104 1991). KWF linguists mainly produced prescriptive rather than descriptive materials to act as guidelines or standards for linguistic forms and expressions. Previous works  published by the then-SWP were reference grammars that promoted and standardized the Tagalog-based Pilipino,21 publications on grammar domains,22 and comparative studies on cognates between select Philippine languages. Regarding translation policies, the KWF was charged with creating a translation division whose task was to encourage through incentives, undertake and vigorously support the translation into Filipino and other Philippine languages of important historical works and cultural traditions of ethnolinguistic groups, laws … textbooks and reference materials in various disciplines and other foreign materials which it may deem necessary for education and other purposes. (R.A. 1704 1991) Such a policy allowed organizations like the KWF to publish dictionaries or mobilize projects that enriched the national language in the Philippines, following the notion that the growth of national identity is always aided by its contacts with regional literatures/languages, with translations functioning as the records of these contacts (Lumbera in Estillore-Gabunada 2021, 251). Other government organizations that encourage translation are the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the National Book Development Board (NBDB). Among the NCCA’s directives is to

A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines  15 “encourage and monitor a comprehensive translation program which shall make works by Filipinos and selected foreign classics equally accessible to Filipino as well as international readers” (R.A. 7356 1992). An important subcommission on cultural dissemination of the NCCA is the National Committee on Language and Translation, tasked with promoting a comprehensive language and translation program (including research, teaching, and grants) in collaboration with government and non-government agencies alike (NCCA n.d.). In line with the KWF’s translation mandate, the NBDB is also instructed to promote the “development of indigenous authorship and of translations among various language groups in the country [as well as encourage] the translation and publication of scientific and technical books and classic works in literature and the arts” (R.A. 8047 1995). Such policies were implemented with the adoption of the National Book Policy (1999) that allowed for opportunities, incentives, and grants, encouraging both Filipino authorship and translation (deemed to hold the same literary value as the original) (Estillore-Gabunada 2021). It is clear that after the mid-twentieth century, the role of translation in a linguistically diverse country like the Philippines is that of nation-building via the development of the national language. As Zafra (2009, 383) explains, translation is a means by which Filipinos can possess foreign knowledge, theory, and experience in their own language, incorporating contributions of various native cultures into the national consciousness as reflected in the national language. However, despite the presence of these laws, further steps still need to be taken especially in terms of creating a systematic translation program and professionalizing translation, as it also requires close collaboration and cooperation among a variety of stakeholders (see Cruz et al. 2020). Furthermore, Estillore-Gabunada (2021) observes a division in language choice in translation from regional languages among Filipino scholars, where one side privileges translating into Filipino, while the other favors English. That a language issue exists is likely a testament to the effects of American colonial education, which made use of English as a medium of instruction. Nevertheless, as evidenced by the outcome of some successful translation projects23 in the past, whether in terms of nation- or identity-building, translation has been fundamental in the invigoration and growth of Filipino—still in its emergent form— by accommodating vocabulary, syntax, and concepts of languages of the original works (whether Philippine or foreign) (Zafra 2009). Contributing to the knowledge and development of other Philippine languages is the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), “a global, faith-based nonprofit”24 founded in the United States. This shows that even after many centuries, religious proselytizing continues to be an important reason for studying endangered languages (Errington 2008). While foreign linguists generally had similar interests in language documentation with Filipino linguists, their interests also diverged (Quakenbush 2005): SIL linguists focused more on language documentation and analysis of the “smaller” languages of cultural communities (Asuncion-Landé 1970; Quakenbush 2005). We see that the

16  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento SIL still continues the core interest of missionary linguistics, which is the identification and description of languages. Apart from academic publications, the SIL also published in the vernacular, like text collections and translation,25 that promote literacy, emphasizing the benefits of language maintenance and diversity (ibid.). Perhaps it is due to SIL’s similar nature with missionary linguistics that translation has once again taken up its role as an instrument of documentation, translation being an inevitable step that ultimately leads to the development of these minor languages. Moreover, in producing written forms of these minor—at times, endangered—languages, translation goes beyond its functional role of knowledge transfer. It offers a means to preserve and promote linguistic diversity and heritage, further enriching the overall identity of the Philippines. 1.6 Conclusion This chapter presented a concise history of translation praxis in the Philippines, whose periodization and evolution are interwoven with the history of Philippine linguistics. Despite few surviving examples, archaeological evidence has shown that during the pre-colonial era, linguistic diversity was widespread. Inhabitants engaged in translanguaging and had no need for translational activities in their daily routine. This changed with the arrival of the Spaniards, who perceived linguistic diversity as a problem impeding the establishment of colonial control. In addressing the issue, missionary-linguists whose objectives aligned with colonial goals of subjugation and conquest did linguistic research. Translation was therefore a fundamental instrument in language documentation. Such grammars and dictionaries were produced through familiar classical frameworks for fellow priests to help them succeed in their mission, while text collections were translations of liturgical texts necessary as materials of conversion. As an instrument of conquest, Spaniards also employed translation to spread their ideology in hopes of exulting their culture, while bringing down another, which is key to staying in power. Toward the end of the Spanish colonial era, and through a fervent desire for independence, Filipino intellectuals took advantage of translational practice as an instrument for the development of national consciousness via literary texts. The American period saw an advancement of linguistics as a science. However, due to differences in colonial goals, research on Philippine languages was not given the same level of precedence as that of the Spanish era, for Americans prioritized the spreading of English through education. The role of translation continues to diverge: for Filipinos who were, yet again, unable to obtain independence from foreign oppressors, translation goals continued in the same vein as before to become an instrument for awakening. American authorities, on the other hand, viewed translation as a means to domesticate foreignness, an activity that the colonized did so that they “remembered their place.”

A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines  17 During the Philippine period, Filipino linguists were more preoccupied with matters concerning the national language and identity. They, therefore, produced works that focused more on standardized language production, unwittingly centering on major Philippine languages. Government organizations like the KWF, NCCA, and NBDB implemented policies that incentivized Filipino authorship, including the translation of regional and foreign works. Translation therefore became an instrument in the growth of Philippine languages, whether the national language, or major/minor languages. As the national language, Filipino is further enriched by the incorporation of vocabulary, syntax, and concepts from various Philippine and foreign languages. For minor languages, translation goes beyond literacy and becomes a tool in preserving and boosting linguistic diversity and heritage. While there may still be several issues surrounding translation (i.e., professionalization, standardization), we may look forward to a succeeding period in which translation in Filipino and in Philippine languages will progressively thrive. Notes 1 As a legal document, it carried the exact date that the debtor was granted amnesty: “Shaka-year 822; the month of March-April; according to the astronomer: the fourth day of the dark half of the moon; on Monday” (Postma 1992, 12). 2 Arabic system of writing appropriated for the written expression of Malay. 3 Guillermo (2012) uses Bikolnon and Bisaya in the general sense of the terms, describes Masbateño as an in-between language of Bikolnon and Bisaya, and clarifies Ticaonon as the language of the Island of Ticao (23). While Masbate, comprised of Masbate, Burias, and Ticao islands, politically belongs to Luzon as part of the Bicol Region, it ethnolinguistically identifies more with the Visayas, with Masbateño having a high lexical similarity to the Central Visayan languages of Capiznon and Hiligaynon (Eberhard et al. 2023). 4 Wolf (1972) explains that ta-na could be “tanan” if an -n is added at the end (Guillermo 2012, 24). 5 Evangelization for them was political: “the relationship between the ruler and the ruled be determined by the uncompromising surrender of both to one God and to His laws” (Rafael 1987, 323). Hence, not only did they need to conquer bodies and minds, they likewise had to conquer souls. 6 Chirino (1604) observed that Philippine languages, though many and diverse, are also similar, so much so that in a few days’ time one can already understand and speak to them, claiming that learning one is practically like having learned the rest (34). Such a belief “that whatever differences there were in these languages could be overcome by knowing their similarities,” according to Sales (2018), “suggests that transcultural and translingual processes were an accepted reality in this highly multilingual environment” (56). 7 Latin was believed to be the perfect language powerful enough to convey the word of God (Wolff 2012). 8 Vibar (2021) has found 124 grammars and 108 vocabulary references on different Philippine languages with varying qualities. Other representative grammars include Alonso Méntrida’s Arte de la Lengua Bisaya-Hiligayna de la Isla de Panay (1617); Francisco Coronel’s 1621 Arte y Reglas de la Lengua Pampanga; Francisco Lopez’s Gramática Ilocana (1627); Diego Bergaño’s 1729 Arte de la Lengua Pampanga; and Francisco Encina’s Gramática Bisaya-Cebuana (1760).

18  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento 9 Totanés, author of Arte de la Lengua Tagala y Manual Tagalog para la Administración de los Santos Sacramentos (1745), explains of the appended prayer in his work: [N]o cometais algun yerro substancial en su pronunciacion, que annule el Sacramento, y pierda la alma de la Criatura. […] Empero, si quisiereis bautizar en vuestra misma lengua Tagala, para obiar aquel tan grande peligro, lo podréis hacer, con solo tagalizar aquella palabra Latina Baptizo, ò la Castellana Bautizo. (Totanés 1745, 59, emphasis in the original)

Translated as Do not commit any substantial mistake in its pronunciation that would nullify the Sacrament and lead you to lose the baby’s soul. … However, if you wish to baptize in your own Tagalog language to avert such a great danger, you may do so by simply putting the word in Latin, Baptizo, or in Castilian, Bautizo, into Tagalog. (Sales 2018, 59) 10 While native concepts were not completely ignored, they were not given the same rigorous treatment as the Castilian concepts. 11 Front matters of the Artes and Vocabularios produced testified to the “‘arduousness” of the task undertaken by these missionary-linguists in their quest to “ayudar a estas almas destos pobrecitos” [save souls of the pitiful] (Blancas de San José, 1610, in Wolff 2012, 39). 12 This was significant, in that efforts were made to translate from Tagalog to other regional languages, since translation work was predominantly done from Spanish to Tagalog, Manila being chosen as capital, where the printing press was located. It is worth noting, however, that two legends from the island of Panay as well as an epic from Bohol were translated into Spanish by Pedro Chirino and Ignacio Francisco Alzina, respectively (Almario 2009, 23–24). 13 Blake’s (1922) recommendation of the government having a more liberal policy in the study of Philippine languages was motivated by this: “In the first place it is important from a scientific point of view that the languages should be registered and studied, just as is being done in the case of our Indian dialects, ere they die out before the advance of English” (168). 14 Languages were documented superficially and codified via incomplete grammar sketches and vocabularies. Even some dominant Philippine languages, such as Bisaya, were essentially left out, as the only publication centering on that language involved a review of an English-Visayan Dictionary from 1909 (Blake 1922). 15 (1) Tagalog, the language of Manila, and the most important language of the archipelago, and Iloko, the most important language of the civilized Filipinos in Northern Luzon; (2) the languages of the Moros or Mohammedan tribes of Mindanao and the Sulu Islands; and (3) the languages of the Igorots of Northern Luzon (Blake 1922, 158). 16 In fact, the most important works on Philippine languages during this period were published without government assistance (Blake 1922). 17 Almario (2009, 25) notes that among the leading works originally translated from English were authored by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, while Philippine language translations of works by Maupassant, Tolstoi, Tagore, Selma Lagerlof, Emperor Matsuhito, among others, were likely based on their English translations.

A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines  19 18 That there was hardly any initiative toward the translation into other Philippine languages (Almario 2009) appears ironic yet unsurprising, especially if translational acts supposedly functioned to gradually increase a sense of national identity. As evidenced in the short-lived Malolos Constitution of 1899, the first framed by Filipinos (Malcolm 1921), the use of native Philippine languages was to “not be compulsory.” Decades later, even the 1935 Philippine Constitution recommended that, until “the development and adoption of a common national language based on one of the existing native languages …, English and Spanish shall continue as official languages” (Section 1.3). 19 See the Commonwealth Act no. 184. 20 The change in name was brought about by Dr. Ernesto Constantino and other University of the Philippines professors who believed that the national language be developed under a universal approach, freeing it from a “purist” framework (Constantino 2015). 21 Lope K. Santos’ Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa (1940); Cecilio Lopez’ A Manual of the Philippine National Language (1940). 22 De Veyra’s 1939 Sobre la “K” y “W” and Sevilla’s 1939 Ang palapintigan ng Wikang Tagalog. 23 Zafra (2009) lists three important projects: (1) Panitikan Series, which was intended to publish or reprint important literary works that must be read by students of literature and Philippine Culture, and organized by the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and De la Salle University; (2) the Proyektong Aklatang Bayan of the UP Sentro ng Wikang Filipino; and (3) the Solidarity Translation Series initiated by the Toyota Foundation. See also Estillore-Gabunada (2021) for literary translation projects in Cebuano from the 1970s until 2010s. 24 See https://www.sil.org/about. 25 Quakenbush (2005) notes that from 1953 until 2002, 32% of SIL’s total publications centered on translations.

References Almario, Virgilio S. 2009. “Pagsulyap sa Kasaysayan ng Pagsasalin.” In Salin-Suri: Panimulang Pagmamapa ng mga Larangan ng Pag-aaral ng Pagsasalin sa Filipinas: Ikatlong Sourcebook ng Sangfil, edited by Galileo Zafra, 19–28. Diliman: UP Sentro ng Wikang Filipino. Asuncion-Landé, Nobleza. 1970. “Theoretical and Methodological Trends in Philippine Linguistics Research: 1560–1970.” Anthropological Linguistics 12, no. 6: 208–25. Blake, Frank R. 1922. “The Part Played by the Publications of the United States Government in the Development of Philippine Linguistic Studies.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 42: 147–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/593618 Borrinaga, Rolando O. “Romancing the Ticao Stones: Preliminary transcription, decipherment, translation, and some notes.” Paper presented at the 1st Philippine Conference on the ‘Baybayin’ Stones of Ticao, Masbate, Ticao, Masbate, August 2011. Chirino, P. 1604. Relacion de las islas Filipinas i de lo qve en ellas an trabajado los padres de la Compañia de Iesvs. Rome: Esteban Paulino. Clavé, Elsa and Arlo Griffiths. 2022. “The Laguna Copperplate Inscription: TenthCentury Luzon, Java, and the Malay World.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 70, no. 2: 167–242. Constantino, Ernesto A. 2015. “Ang ‘Universal Approach’ at Ang Wikang Pambansa ng Pilipinas.” Daluyan: Journal ng Wikang Filipino Espesyal na Isyu no. 1: 13–25.

20  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento Cruz, Frances Antoinette C., Naidyl Isis Bautista, Kristine Cabling, Jillian Loise Melchor, Jean Auguste Dominique Monsod, and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento. 2020. “Policy Outlooks for Translation and Related Language Policies in the Philippines.” UP CIDS Policy Brief 2020–02. https://cids.up.edu.ph/publications-2/policybriefs-2/2020-series/2020-02/ Deumert, Ana. 2021. “The Missionary in the Theatre of Linguistics: Is a Decolonial Linguistics Possible?” In Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes, edited by Anne Storch, Ana Deumert, and Nick Shepherd, 178–98. Oxford: OUP. Deumert, Ana and Anne Storch. 2019. “Language as World Heritage? Critical Perspectives on Language-as-archive.” In Safeguarding Intangible Heritage, edited by Natsuko Akagawa and Laurajane Smith, 102–17. London: Routledge. Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2023. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 26th edition. Dallas, TX: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com Errington, Joseph. 2008. Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning and Power. Oxford: Blackwell. Estillore-Gabunada, Maria Vanessa. 2021. “The Politics of Translation in the Creation, Production, and Canon Formation of Translated Cebuano Literature from the Postwar Period to the Present.” Kritika Kultura (December). https://doi.org/ 10.13185/kk2020.0033/3413 E.O. 304. 1971. “Reconstituting the Institute of National Language and Defining Its Powers and Duties.” March 16, 1971. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1971/ 03/16/executive-order-no-304-s-1971/ Guillermo, Ramon. 2012. “Ang proseso ng transkripsiyon ng mga inskripsiyon sa mga Bato ng Ticao.” Social Science Diliman 8, 1: 1–30. Guillermo, Ramon G. and Myfel Joseph D. Paluga. 2011. “Barang king banga: A Visayan Language Reading of the Calatagan Pot Inscription (CPI).” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 42: 121–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002246341000 0561 Javier, Jem and Elsie Or. 2022. “Tagalog Linguistics: Historical Development and Theoretical Trends.” In The Routledge Handbook of Asian Linguistics, edited by Chris Shei and Saihong Li, 33–46. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10. 4324/9781003090205 Lumbera, Bienvenido. 1986. Tagalog Poetry 1570–1898: Tradition and Influences in its Development. QC: AdMU Press. Malcolm, George A. 1921. “The Malolos Constitution.” Political Science Quarterly 36, no. 1: 91–103. https://doi.org/10.2307/2142663 Martinez, Julius C. 2021. “Recovering Translingualism in Precolonial Philippines.” International Journal of Multilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718. 2021.1932909 Migge, Bettina M. 2021. “Researching Endangered Languages: Critical Reflections on Field and Documentary Linguistics.” In Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Epistemes, edited by Anne Storch, Ana Deumert, and Nick Shepherd, 159–77. Oxford: OUP. Mojares, Resil. 1990. “From Cebuano/To Cebuano: The Politics of Literary Translation.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 18, no. 2: 75–81. Morley, Ian. 2011. “America and the Philippines: Modern Civilization and City Planning.” Education About Asia: Online Archives 16, no. 2. Accessed March 9,

A Concise History of Translation in the Philippines  21 2023. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/america-and-thephilippines/ NCCA n.d. “Language and Translation.” Accessed April 10, 2023. https://ncca.gov. ph/about-ncca-3/subcommissions/subcommission-on-cultural-disseminationscd/ language-and-translation/ Newmark, P. 1988. A Textbook of Translation. New York: Prentice Hall. Phelan, John Leddy. 1955. “Philippine Linguistics and Spanish Missionaries, 1565– 1700.” Mid-America. An Historical Quarterly 37, no. 26: 153–70. Postma, Antoon. 1992. “The Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription: Text and Commentary.” Philippine Studies 40, no. 2: 183–203. Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 2005. “Philippine Linguistics from an SIL Perspective— Trends and Prospects.” In Current Issues in Philippine Linguistics and Anthropology: Parangal kay Lawrence A. Reid, edited by Hsiu-chuan Liao and Carl R. Galvez Rubino, 3–27. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines and SIL Philippines. Rafael, Vicente L. 1987. “Confession, Conversion, and Reciprocity in Early Tagalog Colonial Society.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, no. 2: 320–339. http://www.jstor.org/stable/179101 Rafael, Vicente L. 2016. Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of  Translation. New York: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/ 9780822374572 R.A. 7104. 1991. “An Act Creating the Commission on the Filipino Language.” August 14, 1991. https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/2/ 2743 R.A. 7356. 1992. “An Act Creating the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.” April 3, 1992. https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/ 2/3186 R.A. 8047. 1995. “An Act Providing for the Development of the Book Publishing Industry.” June 7, 1995. https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/ 2/3814 Rouvier, Ruth. 2017. Language Documentation, Revitalization, and Reclamation. Waltham: EDC. https://www.edc.org/sites/default/files/uploads/RouvierWhite PaperFinal.pdf Rubrico, Jessie Grace U. 1998. “Katayuan at ambag ng linggwistiks sa Pilipinas (1898– 1998).” Accessed January 14, 2023. https://www.academia.edu/1362358/Katayuan_ at_ambag_ng_linggwistiks_sa_Pilipinas_1898_1998_ Sales, Marlon. 2018. “Translation and Interpreting in the Early Modern Philippines: A  Preliminary Survey.” Perspectives 26, no. 1: 54–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 0907676X.2017.1342668 Santos, Hector. 1996. “The Date of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.” Philippine Studies 44, no. 4: 514–25. Philippine Constitution. 1935. “Article XIII General Provisions, Section 3.” Accessed March 9, 2023. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/the-1935constitution/#:~:text=defend%20the%20Constitution.-,SEC.,shall%20continue%20 as%20official%20languages Spieker-Salazar, Mariles. 1992. “A Contribution to Asian Historiography: European Studies of Philippine Languages from the 17th to the 20th Century.” Archipel 44: 183–202. Tirol, Jes B. 1990. “Butuan Paleograph Deciphered Using Eskaya Script.” University of Bohol Update (October–December): 6–8.

22  Naidyl Isis Bautista and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento Totanés, Sebastián de. 1745. Arte de la lengua tagala, y manual tagalog, para la administración de los santos sacramentos. Manila: Convento de Nra. Sra. de Loreto. UP Department of Linguistics. (n.d.) “Exploring the State of Philippine Lexicography through the Ages.” Published September 15, 2021. https://linguistics.upd.edu.ph/ news/exploring-the-state-of-philippine-lexicography-through-the-ages/ Valencia, Camille Ann. 2021. “Butuan Metal Paleograph.” National Museum of the  Philippines Archaeology Division. Accessed February 2, 2023. https://www. yodisphere.com/2021/02/Butuan-Metal-Paleograph.html Vibar, Arwin. 2021. “Grammar Writing in the Philippines (1610–1904).” Moenia 27: 1–27. https://doi.org/10.15304/moenia.id6930 Wolff, John. 1972. A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan. New York: Cornell University. Wolff, John. 2012. “The Vocabulario de Lengua Tagala of Fr. Pedro de San Buenaventura (1613).” In Philippine and Chamorro Linguistics before the Advent of Structuralism, edited by Lawrence Reid, Emilio Ridruejo, and Thomas Stolz, 33– 48. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1524/9783050056197.33 Zafra, Galileo. 2009. “Ang Ambag ng Pagsasalin sa Pagpapaunlad ng Wikang Pambansa.” In Salin-Suri: Panimulang Pagmamapa ng mga Larangan ng Pagaaral ng Pagsasalin sa Filipinas: Ikatlong Sourcebook ng Sangfil, edited by Galileo Zafra, 383–90. Diliman: UP Sentro ng Wikang Filipino. Zwartjes, Otto. 2012. “The Missionaries’ Contribution to Translation Studies in the Spanish Colonial Period: The mise en Page of Translated Texts and its Functions in Foreign Language Teaching.” In Missionary Linguistics V/Lingüística Misionera V: Translation theories and practices, edited by Otto Zwartjes, Klaus Zimmerman, and Martina Schrader-Kniffki, 1–50. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

2 Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines A Preliminary Country Profile Marlon James Sales

2.1 Introduction The urgency of expanding research on translation and interpreting education in the Philippines stems from the incommensurability between the many entanglements translation and interpreting (T&I hereafter) have with different sectors of Filipino society and the almost complete scholarly silence on the  training and professionalization of T&I practitioners in the country. Information on Philippine T&I education is fuzzy at best. As we shall see in detail later, higher education institutions and professional schools that convene modern language programs generally focus, if at all, on literary translations as their major T&I-related course offering while paying little attention to researching and teaching T&I subareas outside literature. Further, while various public institutions do have a need for T&I, the Philippine government itself seems largely unfamiliar with the training needs of T&I professionals, the required public policy support, and the necessary regulations for quality control. It would thus seem that what is being done in Filipino T&I education does not match the wide range of demands for T&I in the Philippines. At times, it is even prone to despecializing the discipline by reimagining it as a competency all multilinguals naturally possess. This chapter is an exploration of T&I education in the Philippines. Instead of giving an exhaustive account of T&I education, which a chapter of this length is unable to cover, it provides a broad descriptive overview of T&I education and its intersections with professionalization and public policy. Having worked as a Spanish-English and Spanish-Tagalog translator and interpreter myself before pursuing an academic career, I am convinced that visibilizing T&I as a profession and advocating for the rights of Filipino translators and interpreters should be grounded on a critical understanding of the pathways that led them to T&I. Since T&I educators and researchers are often practitioners themselves (Orlando 2016, 39–40), the knowledge infrastructure that allows T&I to be self-sustaining must also be analyzed, particularly with regard to how it generates opportunities for professional growth, continuing development, and community building. This, in my view, is a crucial gap in the scholarly literature. T&I education in the Philippines today is mostly DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-3

24  Marlon James Sales informed by translation criticism, comparative linguistics, and language education. There are studies using a polysystems approach, such as Stecconi’s essay on translation and the Filipino publishing industry (1999), but the scholarly literature mostly references literary translation with occasional digressions to nonliterary translations. Save for repeated and somewhat tokenistic calls to professionalize the field, there is hardly any systematic attempt to investigate T&I as a profession, nor to identify areas of improvement in training translators and interpreters. Treating T&I as a profession is admittedly market-driven, which does not always sit well with academia (e.g., Koskinen and Dam 2016). But academia’s reticence to engage with industries where there is a demand for T&I makes it more difficult for students to acquire the expertise and familiarity to become professionals. In the Philippine context specifically, it likewise bars potential T&I practitioners from benefiting from opportunities workers elsewhere have. It similarly makes them more vulnerable to abuses in the workplace if and when they find themselves working as translators or interpreters. Simply stated, it is not enough for the T&I profession to exist. A research-driven T&I education that informs and improves existing T&I practices is a minimum requirement for the survival of the profession (cf. Orlando 2016, 81–84 and passim). A definition of terms is perhaps in order at this point. By T&I education I  refer to a series of systematic pedagogical activities offered to multilingual students by trained specialists relating to the conduct of translation and/or interpreting and their various subfields with the objective of using the competencies that will be learned in practical, usually industry-based, applications. Translation means the rendering of a written text from one language into another, while interpreting usually pertains to spoken and signed texts. Although translation and interpreting share common theoretical foundations and disciplinary concerns, the current academic consensus dictates that there are fundamental divergences with respect to “models and methodological approaches and [their] underlying professional orientation” (Pöchhacker 2010, 158). In a country where around 175 indigenous languages are spoken (Blust 2013, 57) in addition to English, which is co-official, and other international lan­ guages, T&I-related concerns are interwoven into public policy. Take for example Republic Act (R.A.) No. 10905 of 2016, which requires broadcasters to close-caption TV shows to make them accessible to the hearing-impaired (Quismundo 2016). The intention of the law is generally laudable despite a dubious catch-all provision exempting producers from compliance when closecaptioning becomes “economically burdensome” (Congress of the Philippines 2016, 2). The legalese, nevertheless, does not contain anything about establishing quality checks or standardizing best industry practices, which have long been a research strand in T&I. Of similar importance is R.A. No. 11106 of 2018, which declares the Filipino Sign Language (FSL) as the national sign language of the Filipino Deaf. Unlike R.A. No. 10905, this law contains provisions about monitoring and implementation, even requiring the development of standards for its use in public offices (Congress of the Philippines 2018).

Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines  25 From the Philippine judiciary comes a 2011 circular authorizing the Office of the Court Administrator to approve requests from lower courts to hire foreign language interpreters whenever the need arises (Supreme Court of the Philippines 2011). Although the Philippine Constitution names the Tagalogbased Filipino as the national language and many people who go to court anyway do not have the level of English to participate in legal proceedings (Jimenez and Ballesteros-Lintao 2020, 128), English is still the preferred language of Philippine courts (Martin 2012, 6). The role of other Philippine languages is also worthy of note (Martin 2012, 8–12), since Filipino multilingualism is often simplified into an operative bilingualism between Filipino and English. Court interpreting in the Philippines is saddled with problems other than language choices, not least of which is the welfare of interpreters who are expected to render eight hours of work daily (Jimenez and Ballesteros-Lintao 2020, 131), which goes against established international T&I standards on rotation to prevent interpreter fatigue. The problem of professionalization is also rampant since anyone who speaks English and Filipino, has a bachelor’s degree, and passes the generic Civil Service Exam may be hired as an interpreter (Jimenez and Ballesteros-Lintao 2020, 131). Job advertisements for translators and interpreters in the Philippines reinforce this disconnect between T&I education and the T&I industry. A cursory perusal on the popular job site jobstreet.com.ph on 7 May 2023 yielded more than 800 search results containing the word “translation.” Several results show a direct connection with T&I through buzzwords such as “Chinese translator,” “Japanese interpreter,” “Korean Translator/Interpreter,” and so forth. A close reading of the job descriptions that go with these results indicates that as in the case of court interpreters, specialist T&I training for these roles is secondary and, at times, even unimportant. Many roles call for proficiency in the working languages or the ability to effectively communicate in them without stating how this will be measured (i.e., a certification, a company-based language test, documented work experience, a professional dossier). Often, there is no specific university degree required; those positions that do need one look for degrees unrelated to languages, such as finance, information technology, engineering, accountancy, and the like. This suggests that T&I is generally not a stand-alone position; it is instead considered just one of several skills an applicant should have to be more competitive in the job market. We can confirm this observation further upon examining search results that do not gesture directly to T&I, marketed under such headings as “bilingual analyst,” “multilingual specialist,” “customer support,” and “localization engineers.” Many of these roles originate from the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. Despite ebbs and flows in revenues, the Philippines remains a global BPO leader, earning around US $29.49 billion in 2021 (Raquiza 2023, 162). BPO companies service offshore markets that do not necessarily share the first language of their Filipino employees. It is hence not excessive to expect that translation is indispensable for working with a diverse and multilingual clientele. Language use in BPOs has been the subject of

26  Marlon James Sales scholarly analysis for almost two decades now, focusing largely on issues and opportunities related to English (e.g., Friginal 2009). Nevertheless, the scholarly literature on Philippine-based BPOs has yet to focus on T&I or on languages other than English. Migration is another sector with a strong T&I component (Polezzi 2012). It is similarly among the top concerns in Philippine public policy, considering that the country is a leading labor exporter in the world (Christ 2016). T&I requirements are integrated in every step of the immigration process, from securing translations of diplomas, driver’s licenses, marriage contracts, work certifications, medical certificates, and the like, to interpreting for various consular proceedings like adoptions, litigations, family petitions, and conferences. Yet the profession of “sworn translator” and “sworn interpreter” is inexistent in the Philippines. No government agency can certify translations or deputize T&I practitioners to certify on the government’s behalf. For this reason, embassies have devised their own arrangements for T&I services. France, for example, directs requests for translations to the local branch of Alliance Française, the cultural arm of its embassy, which has a standardized schedule of payments and turnaround times freely available on its website (www.alliance. ph). Countries like Spain and Italy have a list of local T&I practitioners who are permitted to translate and sign documents for local administrative purposes. Finally, the medical field does not seem to have any governing provisions for T&I, although there are online translation agencies that advertise services for medical T&I in the Philippines. 2.2 Teaching T&I in the Philippines The positionality of T&I in different sectors of Filipino society is ambivalent. On the one hand, many professional sectors affirm that T&I services are vital. There is even a clear financial benefit to be obtained. But the absence of a unified system of professionalization runs counter to the perceived importance of T&I. It is true that T&I-related initiatives have been spearheaded by the staterun Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Filipino Language Commission), various private T&I-oriented entities such as Filipinas Institute for Translation, and language-specific education centers affiliated with a foreign mission, such as the Instituto Cervantes de Manila for Spanish, the Alliance Française de Manille for French, the Confucius Institute for Chinese, the Philippine-Italian Association for Italian, and the Goethe-Institut Philippinen for German. But aside from the fact that most of these initiatives are meant for tourism and cultural promotion and cooperation, a real generational impact can be had only if T&I training is available in the education system to whoever wishes to study it. To be fair, T&I-related content is taught in the current basic education curriculum, even though it is merely incidental to the major pedagogical objectives at hand. One example is the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE), a program implemented by the country’s Department of Education (DepEd) by virtue of R.A. No. 10523, “in which the learner’s

Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines  27 mother tongue and additional languages are used in the classroom” (Department of Education 2016, 2). In the 2016 MTBMLE curricular framework for grades 1 to 3, the DepEd stated that the program would allow students to learn “higher order thinking skills in L1” that they could then “transfer to the other languages once enough Filipino or English has been acquired” (Department of Education 2016, 2; emphasis added). This ability to cross between languages while performing essential tasks taught traditionally in just one language alludes to translation, even though the DepEd memorandum has not made a clear statement to this effect. Translation is also an underlying trope in some senior high school subjects in the K-to-12 curriculum. For instance, in the core subject “21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World,” students are tasked to read “[l]iterary genres, traditions and forms from different national literature and cultures, namely, Asian, Anglo-American, European, Latin American, and African” (Department of Education 2013, 4). There is no explicit mention of translation as a cognitive apparatus for reading these texts, but it would be virtually impossible to teach world literatures in the Philippines without resorting to some form of translation, especially since this subject was meant to be taught in English. It is as if translation could transpire automatically in a text’s afterlife as a form of resurfacing of a latent system of equivalences, wholly unaffected by a translator’s subjectivities and other social and cultural factors. Another notable example from the sector is the Special Program for Foreign Languages (SPFL). First implemented in 2009, the SPFL aims to make Filipino high school students more competitive in the labor market by offering them Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, German, or French as electives. Classes in the public education system are still mostly taught in Filipino and English. Although some schools have already been teaching foreign languages in their programs, such as St. Pedro Poveda College, which teaches Spanish (Blázquez Carretero, Young, and Sibayan-Sarmiento 2023, 160), Chiang Kai Shek College, which teaches Mandarin and Hokkien (Go 2017), and madrasah schools, which teach Arabic in places with a significant Muslim population (Cabling et al. 2020, 196–197), a foreign language course for high school students is generally an exception rather than a rule. Although the SPFL bridges this gap at first glance, important concerns have been raised about the program, especially regarding the selection and training of teachers, who, after just a few weeks of studying the languages ab initio, quickly transitioned to teaching them without mastering the subject (Cao 2018, 102). Similarly problematic were the premise and promise of global competitiveness reinforcing a hierarchical view of languages, as well as the contentious role English plays as a gatekeeping mechanism to the foreign language classroom (Cabling et al. 2020, 186, 200). These points help us understand how T&I is scaffolded in the SPFL. For one, because of limitations in training SPFL teachers, T&I became a means to an end, which is learning a foreign language (e.g., De la Fuente 2021, 22, 47), often replacing methodologies that would have required a firmer grasp of the

28  Marlon James Sales language to be taught. Hardly are T&I presented as a professional career for students who reach a certain level of proficiency. Such a disparity between how foreign language classes understand T&I and what professional T&I skills are needed in the workplace is not exclusive to the Philippines. In his study of T&I education in the European Union, Pym (2014, 192) notes that language schools in Europe generally shy away from translation in their curriculum because of the perception that translating is contrary to the objectives of a foreign language classroom. This suspicion against T&I in language teaching may have been derived from a long-standing critique about the grammartranslation method in language teaching (Benati 2018). But as Pym explains, if the goal of learning a language is to equip students with the skills to mediate an increasingly multilingual world, a concerted effort to teach students T&I should be included in the curriculum. “Rather than replace or compensate for language learning,” Pym contends, “translation is now one of the very aims and applications of language learning itself” (192). In many ways, the fraught positioning of T&I education in the curricular offerings of Filipino schools reproduces the same discomforts it had long before the Philippines became a republic. T&I practices predate the formation of the Philippines as a single political unit, as can be deduced from archaeological evidence of crosslinguistic relations between the inhabitants of the islands and their Asian neighbors like the Chinese and the Malays (Scott 1995, 9–10, 75–76). Yet the theorization on T&I was a product of colonial rule. Translations were produced in the colonial Philippines as a response to the administrative, spiritual, cultural, and social exigencies of colonial administration, for which reason T&I norms were developed for and taught to those who were tasked to mediate the Philippines to its colonial interlocutors. Knowledge about translation was first systematized by Catholic missionaries, who began arriving in the sixteenth century as part of Spain’s colonial project. Spain’s religious aspiration to spread Christianity in its overseas territories shaped how translation figured in the literary production of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Translation knowledge at this time meant “reducing”—that is to say, imposing order on—what the Spaniards regarded as an unordered universe of possible utterances in non-European languages using the grammatical and orthographical rules of Latin, the language of the Catholic church (Sales 2019a, 302). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, translation became increasingly laicized in terms of its agents, aims, and theorization. The political ferment of the age saw the end of Spanish colonial rule and the establishment of a US-sponsored government for the Philippine Islands. The American period saw the consolidation of various literary traditions in the regions in response to the imposition of English as a new colonial language. The idea of a national language was broached in legislation during this time, culminating in a 1937 decision of the Institute of National Language to choose Tagalog to be its basis. On the American side of things, academics did translations to introduce the new colony to the metropolis that had little knowledge of it.

Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines  29 Translators like Austin Craig, Charles Derbyshire, Emma Blair, and James Alexander Robertson were translating texts from Spanish into English, mainly for the benefit of the American public (Sales 2019b, 33–34, 37, 40). Whatever semblance of T&I research their texts had usually advanced the exaltation of American colonialism and a rejection of Spanish rule. But there was also an increase in translations of European literature by Filipino translators. Pascual Poblete, Rosendo Ignacio, Gerardo Chanco, among others (Antonio 1999, 46–50), were bringing these works to Tagalog through an intermediary Spanish version. After a short though violent interlude under the Japanese, the Philippines became a republic in 1946. A significant piece of legislation related to T&I education in the postcolonial period was the so-called Rizal Law of 1956, which stipulated that the works of national hero José Rizal, particularly his novels Noli me tángere and El filibusterismo, should be translated, distributed, and taught to students as obligatory readings (Recto 1990 [1956]). Except for requiring that “unexpurgated” translations should be circulated, no other discussion on T&I could be found in the text of the law. Neither did it recommend any specific translation of Rizal. 2.3 T&I Education Today Evidence of interpreting and non-literary translation is available in the archival documentation. However, whenever an analysis on T&I practices is given in the colonial records, the discussion tends to emphasize literature. Such overwhelming emphasis on literary translation endures in T&I education in the Philippines today, as can be gleaned from the curricula of the four biggest universities in Metro Manila: the University of the Philippines in Diliman (UPD), the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU), the De La Salle University (DLSU), and the University of Santo Tomas (UST). These universities have been selected for this chapter because they have extensive language programs beyond the usual Filipino and English courses. With regard to interpreting, the only interpreting-related course is the sign language program DLSU offers through its College of St. Benilde. There is no other course for spoken or signed interpreting in any of these universities. Even in a place like UPD’s Department of European Languages (DEL), where language proficiency in the undergraduate program is expected to reach a B2 level in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), no interpreting-related training is offered. While mediation, the skillset under which T&I are subsumed, is spread across all CEFR levels, B2 indicators do not match the level required for simultaneous or consecutive interpreting, which is preferably a C2 (Loiseau and Delgado Luchner 2021, 472). As for translation, ADMU’s Modern Languages and English departments do not teach translation, while its Filipino department has one undergraduate translation subject and one postgraduate subject, which is further divided into theory, practice, and criticism. For its part, DLSU convenes one

30  Marlon James Sales theoretical translation subject in its core courses and one literary translation subject as a concentration course within its undergraduate literature program. It similarly offers two postgraduate translation subjects as cognates. Translation is usually deemed as a specialist subject, so it is a pleasant surprise that UST teaches it in two general education subjects, covering literary and non-literary translations. That many of these subjects are convened in a university’s Filipino department signposts an important function ascribed to translation in the Philippines, which is the development of its national language and literature (Mojares 2017, 17–19). In an educational landscape where Filipino and English co-exist as national and co-official languages respectively, translating literature will inevitably revolve around these two. This is not necessarily a bad thing since it facilitates class organization and coordination. Students need to know only English and Filipino to enroll in the subjects, universities do not have to mind fluctuating demands for language combinations as a requisite to offer a translation class, and professors can teach on their own without the help of collaborators. But the trade-off is translation is made to conform to a facile binarism long criticized in Translation Studies (cf. Meylaerts 2010). At UPD, translation classes are offered across various departments to attend to more diverse language needs. DEL teaches a core undergraduate translation class that students majoring in French, Italian, German, and Spanish are required to take, in addition to an elective in non-literary translation. It also offers master’s programs in Spanish and French with the possibility of majoring in translation. The Department of Linguistics (LINGG), which houses Asian languages, has a translation subject in its newly approved Korean track. It also has one in its Japanese track, although this has not been taught for a while. A special-topics course also exists, a recent permutation of which was on the linguistics of subtitling. It also has a translation subject in the MA Linguistics program, which mainly uses Filipino and English as its working languages. The department also offers classes in Chinese, Bahasa, and Thai, but there is no dedicated translation subject in these languages. As with other universities, it is at UPD’s Department of English and Comparative Literature (DECL) and Departamento ng Filipino at Panitikan ng Pilipinas (DFPP) where most translation subjects are found. DECL teaches an undergraduate literary translation class, a postgraduate literary translation practicum, postgraduate classes on relay translation and problems in literary translation, and a doctoral seminar on literary translation. DFPP has an undergraduate translation class that, depending on the professor, may focus on literature or technical texts. It teaches two postgraduate subjects in translation history, divided between the Spanish period and the American period to present. It similarly has a literary translation class and a technical class in both its master’s and PhD programs, as well as a doctoral seminar on Philippine translation traditions. UPD translation subjects address different learning needs, which then determine how the content is developed and sequenced. DFPP’s thrust is the

Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines  31 development of the national language, so students are expected to work on a variety of literary and non-literary texts in a bid to expand and intellectualize Filipino. In LINGG’s Korean translation class and in DEL translation classes, translation is a tool for language learning, specifically aimed at expanding vocabulary, improving style, and studying different registers. DECL seems to focus on translation theory and its applications to comparative literature, while LINGG uses its translation classes to delve into linguistic theory. Translation technologies are barely discussed in the curriculum. While the existence of translation memories and CAT tools is known to the professors, most do not have any specific training in translation technologies. More importantly, because of exorbitant costs in purchasing licenses for CAT tools, those who include technology have to make do with freeware. 2.4 T&I Voices from the Ground How relevant is T&I education in the careers of T&I practitioners in the Philippines? Where can aspiring Filipino T&I practitioners receive training and continuing education? In which languages, directionalities, and fields do they usually specialize? To answer these questions, I have conducted individual online interviews with four practitioners to learn about their professional trajectories (Table 2.1). Given the difficulty in arranging interviews and the Table 2.1  Summary of Informants’ Profiles

Nationality L1 LOTE Language combination Years of experience Current main employment Previous employment Education

I1

I2

I3

I4

Half-Filipino Italian Italian IT-EN

Filipino Cebuano Spanish ES-EN

Filipino Filipino German DE-EN

Filipino Bicol French FR-EN

>25 Years

≈20 Years

>25 Years

>25 Years

T&I

Academia

Academia

Multinational

Business

Academia

Academia

Academia

Japanese Studies No

Mathematics Education No

Communication French Literature Yes Yes

Some form of formal T&I training? Resided/studied Yes No overseas? Interprets? Consecutive (Tourism) and Simultaneous Can sign sworn Yes, but for No translations? local use only

Yes

Yes

Yes, but prefers not to

Yes, but is no longer active

Yes

Yes

32  Marlon James Sales reluctance of some T&I practitioners to participate, these four have been identified through snowball sampling. Their answers are not representative of the profession; one major limitation arising from the sampling scheme is that all four participants translate to and from a European language. A needs analysis by Fajilan (2021, 83) shows there are several Filipino translators working with Asian languages such as Korean, Bahasa, and several Philippine regional languages including Asi, Bicol, Binisaya. Chabacano, Hiligaynon, Ibanag, Iloko, Itawit, and Onhan, none of which is represented in this study. Despite this limitation, the information presented here provides valuable insights into the local T&I industry and its intersections with education and training. I am using “industry” here rather loosely to refer to T&I activities from which practitioners can obtain some form of financial remuneration. The term is admittedly misleading since it implies that there are governing professional structures for vetting membership, standardizing pay rates, stabilizing demand, and ensuring proper work rights for all, which are still nonexistent in the country. Nevertheless, for my purposes here, the term captures a system approach that links education with profession. The major divergence between education and industry is language choice. Although universities consider Filipino to be a key working language in the pedagogy, all four informants barely use Filipino or any Philippine languages in their work, with one even saying that the former is mostly for literary translation, which rarely pays the bills. As such, the long-standing categories of A, B, and C languages in T&I education (Loiseau and Delgado Luchner 2021) may have to be adjusted to account for the realities of the T&I industry in the Philippines, where practitioners do not operate in an idealized L1-L2 setup. For informants who speak a regional language as L1, the discussion on whether they should translate from or into L1 is immaterial, given that their tools of the trade are non-L1 languages. Also, given the prominence of English in the Philippines, there are highly competent users of the language capable of translating from and into it. Referring to English as an L2 or as Language B, therefore, privileges unchecked visions of nativism as a predictor of translatorial competence, which in turn may not be compatible with the Philippine experience. The exclusion of Philippine languages from the mix also makes the abbreviation LOTE, or language/s other than English, a meaningful analytical category because non-literary T&I in the country generally involves going into/from English. One striking commonality among the four informants is their pathway to T&I. None pursued it as a deliberate career choice. Although I3 and I4 studied related subjects in countries where their LOTE are spoken, nobody among the four did a full T&I program. This is understandable because there still is no formal T&I program in the Philippines and the opportunities to pursue T&I education overseas remain scarce. The informants’ work in T&I is instead the logical outcome of mastering a LOTE then finding themselves in situations requiring their services. Before entering T&I, I1 had a business while the rest were in academia. Only I1 regards T&I as their main livelihood at present,

Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines  33 while the rest do T&I as a supplementary source of income. I2 and I3 remain in academia, while I4 has changed careers and joined a multinational. It is similarly interesting to note that a course outside languages can be a springboard to T&I. I2 majored in teaching Mathematics and spent the first two years after graduation teaching this in schools. I1, on the other hand, did Japanese Studies but did not do anything related to this field. All four say they learned T&I “on the fly” while doing their first commissioned works, building up their knowledge while accumulating actual work experiences. I4 also shares that their first interpreting job was for an international conference in Manila and that they prepared for it by just reading the pre-conference notes. What seems crucial in improving one’s T&I skillset is residing in a country where LOTE is spoken. Of the four informants, only I2 does not have this. For I1, who was born in Italy and raised speaking Italian as L1, this meant coming to the Philippines to study English. For I3 and I4, this meant living and studying graduate degrees in Europe. All informants agree that living overseas is necessary for immersion. According to them, the reason they understand the nuances of language and employ the appropriate linguistic register is that they are exposed to the textual cultures of the countries where their translations will be used. Extrapolating this to T&I education in the Philippines, an immersive overseas experience may prove to be too big of a hurdle, given the prohibitive costs of migrating to another country for the sake of learning a language and the incommensurate return of investment for T&I work (i.e., the cost of living abroad is higher than the expected income from T&I). All four informants are engaged in translating public documents. However, because there is no formal T&I credentialing system in the Philippines, the transactional value of their translations varies across target end-users. I3 holds an official accreditation from Germany and is authorized to sign translations. I1 can sign translations from and into Italian for local use. But if the request is for a translation for Italy, I1 refers clients to a contact in Milan, who is a sworn translator under the Italian system. Meanwhile, because of a memorandum between the Alliance Française and different embassies in the Philippines where French is an official language, I4 can sign translations, which the Alliance Française then certifies. I4, however, is unsure if their translations are recognized in all Francophone countries. I2 is not included in the list of translators of the Instituto Cervantes but reports a translation experience that is context-specific to Spanish in the Philippines, which is translating colonial-era land titles, officially known as Transfer Certificate of Title (TCT). Again, because there is no credentialing system, I2’s translation of land titles may be used for real property negotiations for as long as the intended government office accepts it as valid. With regard to interpreting, I3 and I4 consider themselves interpreters but have not accepted interpreting work for a long time. I1 is a regular on-call interpreter for the Italian Embassy in Manila and frequently renders consecutive and simultaneous interpreting services for diplomatic and cultural events. I2 does not work as an interpreter in the strictest sense of the word but does interpreting-related work as a tour guide for Spanish-speaking visitors in Cebu.

34  Marlon James Sales As with BPOs, interpreting is subsumed under I2’s other responsibilities for the role. It is thus worth investigating how the usual ethical caveats on role boundaries, which remind T&I practitioners to refrain from any personal involvement with the clients, are defied or affirmed in similar para-interpreting contexts in the Philippines. None of the informants use technology in their translations other than Google Translate and/or Linguee for discipline-specific terminology. Like their university counterparts, the cost of purchasing a license makes CAT tools unsustainable and therefore unappealing to T&I practitioners. I1, I3, and I4 add that since the requests they receive are commonly for public documents, they already have an existing template they can rehash, keeping an eye out for only specific changes in the content. The four informants say it is of utmost importance for the Philippines to figure out a way to maintain quality standards in T&I. According to them, the professionalization of the industry will entail putting up a certification program that can determine the minimum conditions for a person to become a T&I professional. Responses vary on how such a program should be conducted. I1 imagines it to be like a professional organization made up of accredited members from different language combinations who will get together periodically to discuss best practices and set professional norms. Banking on its reputational capital, the organization itself will be permitted to certify translations. For I3, the starting point should be a state university like UPD, which should expand its current curricular program and push for the creation of a professionalizing T&I course. As for I4, an office in the national government, such as the Department of Foreign Affairs, must be the coordinating agency. Active T&I practitioners can come onboard as language testers. Finally, I2 is more concerned about diffusing T&I practices in Metro Manila by bringing more language classes to the provinces. I2 points out that for those outside the national capital, the preoccupation is not yet on T&I professionalization but rather on how they themselves can learn foreign languages. 2.5 Conclusion To speak of a T&I industry in the Philippines requires acknowledging systemic challenges that hamper its professionalization. While T&I have historically been practiced in the country, one of the most glaring limitations emerging from this exploration is the lack of a strong organizational structure that can guarantee continuity, sustainability, quality, and availability. Each sector in the country that avails of T&I services has its own regulations for recognizing professionals and validating their work. While this freedom appears at first glance to democratize T&I by allowing multilinguals to carry out T&I work if they so wish, it ultimately makes the profession invisible in the public sphere, conflating it with other skills multilingual workers are expected to have. A shared desire to professionalize is perhaps the most powerful justification for T&I education. Unfortunately, this is still not a reality either in the

Translation and Interpreting Education in the Philippines  35 Philippines. Interpreting education is virtually null, while translation education overwhelmingly focuses on literature, at least in the universities included in this chapter. Literary translation is a necessary intellectual pursuit that contributes to national life, but many potential applications of T&I in the workplace require certain competencies not subsumed under literary translation. Current professionals have followed different pathways to get to T&I, often involving living and studying overseas. They also have different statuses relative to their industry interlocutors. Some are fully authorized to translate, while others have varying levels of authorization. Moving forward, it may be worth analyzing how discrete pedagogical efforts to teach, research, and practice T&I can be cohered into a cogent professionalizing program, especially in a public university like the University of the Philippines, where various language courses are already in place. Perhaps, instead of various departments teaching multiple courses on theory and criticism, research and teaching capabilities can be directed to growth areas, including interpreting education, translation technology, audiovisual translation, and the T&I industry. There also needs to be a way to spark interdisciplinary conversations among T&I educators, practitioners, and end-users to ensure that, among others, the profession itself is demystified. Finally, T&I education should open a space for investigating the practitioners themselves. The importance of their professional views has been argued quite convincingly by Chesterman, who called for the inclusion of Translator Studies in Translation Studies (2009). This shift in perspective leads us to ask a different set of questions beyond T&I processes and products, emphasizing the labor of T&I practitioners and the rights and responsibilities attached to it. Acknowledgments My sincerest thanks to Mary Ann Bacolod, Farah Cunanan, Michael Manahan, Ma. Luisa Young, Kyung Min Bae, Wennielyn Fajilan, Isis Bautista, Schedar Jocson, Judy Ick, Anna Melinda de Ocampo, and Patrick Capili for their help. I am also very thankful to my T&I informants, whom I am unable to name for reasons of confidentiality. References Antonio, Lilia F. 1999. Apat na Siglo ng Pagsasalin: Bibliograpiya ng mga Pagsasalin sa Filipinas (1593–1998). Quezon City: Sentro ng Wikang Filipino. Benati, Alessandro. 2018. “Grammar-Translation Method.” In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, edited by John I. Liontas and Margo Delli Carpini, 1–5. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Blázquez Carretero, Miguel, Ma Luisa P. Young, and Anna Marie Sibayan-Sarmiento. 2023. “Enseñar español en Filipinas: de idioma oficial a lengua extranjera.” In Atlas de ELE. Geolingüística de la enseñanza del español en el mundo, 149–182. Madrid: EnClaveELE.

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3 Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing Viewing the World through Theater Translation in the Academe Vladimeir B. Gonzales 3.1 Theater Translation in the Academe: Notes on Intention, Patronage, Refraction, and Poetics The theater translator can be described as someone who faces a “superhuman” task. They are required to translate a text that is “incomplete” or “partially realized” (Bassnet 1991, 99–100). They are tasked to put into another language a text that is yet to be staged, and melded with other theatrical elements like sound, lighting, movement, and acting. At the same time, their own intentions and decisions in retaining or changing elements of the original also shape the creative process. When the translated performance text is released, it goes through readings by the actors and artistic staff, and will be staged with an audience for educational, entertainment, commercial, and other purposes. The entire production thereafter receives criticism through written reviews, as well as informal notes derived from a variety of sources like social media posts, program notes, and other responses that comment on both the translated script and its staging. As a medium that continuously interacts with other dynamic components, it carries the possibility that no two performances are the same. The translated script, like all performance texts used for theater, will become open to restagings and reinterpretations either by the same group that originally staged it or another company entirely. However incomplete or superhuman the task of translating theater may seem, one important element—the process of commission—must be accounted for. The translation relationship usually begins when a person, group or institution “hires” an expert for a particular commissioned translation project. This translational action emerges as a movement from a source text with a particular skopos or intention in mind. The translator is commissioned to produce a target text, with the assumption of their expertise in the translational action. Deviations from the original text may happen in the translation project; in some cases, a faithful transcoding might also take place, as agreed upon by the participants of the commissioned work. Whatever direction the translator takes, he must be mindful of the agreement with the commissioning body while still asserting his expertise, and considering the effects and consequences of each translation decision. In studying skopos-based translational projects, DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-4

Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing  39 therefore, it is not only the end product (the translation) that matters; the creative choices and the relationships within the process of translating are also taken into account (Vermeer 2000, 221–222). In commissioned works, adequacy takes precedence over equivalence. One reason for preferring the latter over the former is that equivalence may mean a lot of possibilities in translation work—equivalence in meaning, language, linguistic units, style, genre (Reis and Vermeer 2014, 120). An adequate translation seems more tangible, especially if the adequacy is based on how the agreed objectives of the commissioned work are satisfied (Reis and Vermeer 2014, 123). Finding the adequate decisions in the translation process could reach its optimum levels if all members of the translation project are open about, and clear with, their intentions. They are expected to gain some awareness of all  materials and parameters—differentiation of intentions, target deadlines, source material, context of intended audience, even matters such as appropriate fees, copyright, and the like—while identifying the gaps in attempting to fully realize their objectives. The translator as expert enters into different levels of negotiation to ensure the creation of the optimal translation product. If a commission cannot be realized, or at least not optimally, because the client is not familiar with the conditions of the target culture, or does not accept them, the competent translator (as an expert in inter cultural action, since translational action is a particular kind of intercultural action) must enter into negotiations with the client in order to establish what kind of “optimal” translation can be guaranteed under the circumstances. (Vermeer 2000, 230) The translator for theater must also remember that he is negotiating within a system that does not end with the production of the translated theater text. As a product working within a literary, school-based system, the translated theater text will always be non-neutral and subject to the reception of readers who will interpret it and perhaps generate new forms of expression. Literature is not only the text, but also its different forms of creators, readers, and translators (Lefevere 1992, 12–14). Most theater productions staged in the academe are informed by a continuous series of writing/translating, reading, and rewriting. These plays, usually translated works, are taken from what the academic institutions consider as part of the literary canon; the productions serve as school requirements that are part of classroom discussions, reflection papers, and other outputs described in the course syllabus; the audience may write new works inspired from what they’ve watched, discussed, and read. Within a system that has many participants with various possible objectives in their reading of a translated work, the translator may view their work as a process that deals and negotiates with different limitations, constraints and demands. Depending on a translator’s intentions with regard to their translation work, they may

40  Vladimeir B. Gonzales conform with or may attempt to find ways of challenging what is considered acceptable in a particular literary system. In the commissioned translation work, the translator discovers and reinforces a sense of poetics articulated in negotiation with the constraints of the commissioning body and the literary system. This poetics may mean what the translator advocates in terms of form—preferred literary devices, genres, motifs, situations, and symbols—and also the translator’s perceived stance concerning what the translation project should promote, as well as its place and contribution in challenging and changing the literary system (Lefevere 1992, 27). However, the commissioning body usually acts as a form of patronage, an agency that dictates what is permitted and what is allowed to be written in a literary system (or in this case, a theater translation project). The translator may defy or yield to his patron’s poetics, depending on the economic or status-based benefits that may be given or forfeited in the process (1992, 15–16). All these readings, writings, rereadings, and rewritings within various systemic constraints become revealing of how the translator sees the world. These refractions may also influence others as to how to perceive the translated work. First of all, let us accept that refractions—the adaptation of a work of literature to a different audience, with the intention of influencing the way in which that audience reads the work—have always been with us in literature. Refractions are to be found in the obvious form of translation, or in the less obvious forms of criticism (the wholesale allegorization of the literature of Antiquity by the Church Fathers, e.g.), commentary, historiography (of the plot summary of famous works cum evaluation type, in which the evaluation is unabashedly based on the current concept of what “good” literature should be), teaching, the collection of works in anthologies, the production of plays. These refractions have been extremely influential in establishing the reputation of a writer and his or her work. (Lefevere 1992, 235) As a translator for theater, I have been in my practice mostly focused on translating work for school-based theater groups. Since 2012, I have been commissioned by teachers and students to do translation work for projects that range from direct translations of contemporary plays to very loose adaptations of classic theater works. From each commissioned project, I have derived various insights about the dynamics of intention, constraint, negotiation, and rewriting in each attempt to come up with an adequate, optimal translation. In the subsequent sections of this chapter, I elaborate on the previously described translational process by sharing my experiences in my theater translation project entitled Mal, and its two subsequent stagings.

Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing  41 3.2  Mal: Negotiating the First Evil Mal is a play based on Euripides’ Greek Tragedy The Trojan Women. First written in March 2014, Mal can be described as a very loose translation of the original, commissioned for eight student-actors of the Certificate in Theater Arts (CTA) program in the University of the Philippines–Diliman. As Theater Arts majors, these students are required to mount a play that would serve as culmination of their training. The plays—canonical in World Theater—are usually chosen in consultation with their respective program advisers, who then commission writers in the Filipino language to translate the chosen pieces  into the vernacular. This translation project is staged under Dulaang Laboratoryo (Laboratory Theater), a sub-group of the University’s official theater group, Dulaang Unibersidad ng Pilipinas or Dulaang UP (University of the Philippines Theater). Dulaang Laboratoryo was created to differentiate student-led productions with the productions of Dulaang UP that predominantly feature, cast, and are managed by professional theater practitioners. Dulaang Laboratoryo productions are plays that are intended as final requirements for the major subjects and thesis projects under the Theater program of the UP Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts (Cortez 2006, 80–82). Under this department, the two theater groups are guided by these objectives: 1. To produce and perform translations of world drama in order to supplement [sic] classroom situation. 2. To include a repertoire of original Filipino plays which can serve as models for budding playwrights. 3. To serve as [sic] training ground for students of the DSCTA enrolled in the Theatre program and other Theatre enthusiasts. 4. To expose the student body to a variety of styles in production by inviting theatre practitioners who have excelled in their respective fields, both here and abroad. 5. To bring choice productions to other schools outside Metro Manila by way of tours and lecture workshops. (Cortez 2006, 85) In terms of skopos and theater translation, there is very little to explain the department’s intended agenda behind the translation of classics into local languages. It could be assumed that plays and translated drama pieces are designed to introduce the concept of world “classics,” supplement classroom discussions, and prepare the students for professional theater work. Thus, as the translator and writer of Mal, I was to negotiate whatever changes and advocacies that I have with the guiding objectives of the students’ department. In the original The Trojan Women, the character Hecuba waits, along with her fellow women of Troy, for the triumphant Greeks to capture them after

42  Vladimeir B. Gonzales the Trojan War. This tragedy explores the different roles women play in a once glorious kingdom, and the ways through which the gods observe and play with these humans from a distance. For the commissioned translation project, Mal anchored itself on these ideas and expanded on certain ethical and moral questions about war and its stakes—who are the real winners and losers? Who and what gets left behind? How is everyone remembered? At the same time, Mal sought to articulate these questions within the brutal experience of state-enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings in the Philippines. It bears mentioning that the stories and experiences of the victims of enforced disappearances—known as the “desaparecidos”—and their loved ones have been the subject of my earlier research and creative projects. Thus, my agenda for the translation was clear—to attempt to integrate and make visible the narratives of the desaparecidos in a translation project based on a known “world classic.” I conceived of Mal as a creative platform in which to introduce a virtual world, a realm built on information so vast and ever-changing that instead of providing a space to remember, the opposite happens. Everything decomposes to nothingness, to being forgotten. This space was initially inspired by the “Trojan Horse” virus, a malicious software that enters a computer and corrupts its contents through a processual series of erasing, updating, and replicating. The story of Mal begins in this place of memory/no-memory, with a barrage of video clips and sound bites that change at a rapid rate. After a while a character enters, a person labeled as “Ina” (Mother). She enters the virtual world not knowing who she really is, where she came from, or what her purpose is. Amid the chaos and confusion, she utters the line “hindi ito ang mundong kinagisnan ko” (this is not the world that I have known). The initial stage directions for the translation project intended to paint the chaotic landscape of the Mother’s world. The play begins with electronic sounds and flashes of lights. The performance space is quickly filled with images and sounds that at first seem to be indistinguishable but later on become more distinct—sounds of a dial-up modem, taglines for videogames, ads for cable and DSL-based Internet connections, glimpses of diskettes and flash drives, laptops and tablets. Characters who serve as references to digital/Internet culture quickly enter and leave the performance area, creating a web of neverending Web culture—dancing baby memes, Bert is Evil, Ermehgerd Girl, …, Nyan Cat, Wow Doge… (Gonzales 2014, translated from Filipino) This barrage of images will be replaced by clips from contemporary Philippine political events—from former Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s viral “I am sorry video,” which indexed the corruptions issues between her as then president of the Philippines and the National Broadband Network, the Visiting Forces Agreement between the US and Philippine governments, to the Philippine

Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing  43 government’s dismal response to the destruction in the wake of Typhoon Yolanda. The idea was to open the play with a display of the struggle between stories that are seen and heard, and those that are overwritten, erased, forgotten. The Mother, together with other characters in this virtual world—Kabiyak (the Lover), Mutya (Muse), Buwang (The Mad), Binhi (The Seed)—will have alternate vignettes that interface with characters in the “real world,” such as the Mag-aaral (The Student) and the Magsasaka (The Farmer). The characters from the real, physical world are characters who will eventually be victims of state-sponsored disappearances. All of these people and stories are observed by two god-like narrators—the Diyos ng Wala (God of Nothingness) and Diyos ng Mayroon (God of Existence), with their lackey the Tagapagtawid (The Mediator). The characters are all based on characters from Trojan Women, reconstructed to populate an interspersed narrative of war that takes place not only in the physical sense, but also within the terrain of memory. In response to the first draft, thesis adviser Professor Dexter M. Santos requested revisions that would focus on how the new work refers to the original Greek tragedy. He also noticed that the draft still focused more on the Hecuba figure, and thereby needed to provide more acting scenes for the other characters. Santos also put emphasis on the need to return to elements attributed to the staging of Greek tragedies—a chorus, for example, that navigates a clear prologue, climax, and catharsis (Razon 2014a). Along with Santos’ comments, the play’s director, Mara Paulina Marasigan, conducted preliminary workshops on movement and scene reading. These pre-rehearsal workshops were conducted for about a month, while the revisions were being made (Razon 2014b, 4). While the professional members of the project reiterated the need to return to some elements of the original work and allow the showcasing of skills honed by the curriculum of the academic program, they had no objections to the presence of the desaparecidos theme in the translated work. I was in fact regularly invited to rehearsals to explain and make clarifications about enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings. There were periodic revisions based on the discussions and interactions that transpired during the rehearsal period, some of which were directed to ensuring that the production would satisfy the requirements of the academic program. This series of workshops, rehearsals, and revisions culminated with Mal’s premiere on 17–18 May 2014. The message of disappearance and the war on memory in Mal was not lost on some reviews. The play was praised for its depiction of symbolic violence against remembering in the digital age: The War is the narrative, the utterance, the image, the fabulation that is ushered to presence and forced to absence in the labyrinthine play of significations that suffuses this purgatory located, the play suggests, in the realm of virtuality. Here, in this realm where two deities, who anointed themselves as the God of Presence and the God of Absence,

44  Vladimeir B. Gonzales through their casual arrogations of significations, handle, manipulate and construct reality/ies through the virtual control of their joystick. Four women who survived the devastation of the (imagined) War— Ina (Mother), Kabiyak (Wife), Mutya (Muse), Buwang (Lunatic), each identified according to the signifying schemes of Tagapagtawid (Messenger)—find themselves trapped uncertain waiting, anticipating a mysterious judgment as prisoners of War. Their purgatory is a cyberterritory where the syntactic orders of temporality and spatiality are disjointed, jolted and demolished by the multiplicities, overlaps and hauntings of conjured realities. (Castillo 2014) As for the student-actors, they were required to write notes in an “actor’s notebook” to recount their experiences and reflections about the production. Some of the notes described inspiration for a particular scene, such as an interrogation done by a military agent. To assume the role of the military conversing with the Magsasaka, I thought of how interrogation scenes take place and how the military hold their stances and how they act when they are terrorizing the people. I then looked back to when I was undergoing Citizenship Advancement Training in high school, wherein we had military-like training. I put my hands at the back, straightened my back and held my chin high to differentiate my stance and to help me change into the character. (Esase 2014, 21) Other reflections were about rehearsal exercises that focused on making sense of the history and context underlying the translation project. There was an exercise done by the student-actors that began with the question “Who am I?” They responded with the imagined biographical details of the characters they were to portray. Who am I?

As Nanay I am Erlinda Corpuz and I am 59 years old. I’m a mother of an only girl, Laurena Corpuz, who’s been missing for almost 8 years now. She’s been abducted by the military in one of her immersions in Bulacan, which is actually near our hometown, as she was suspected to be a member of the National People’s Army and a part of the movement against the current administration. It is her last immersion before finally finishing her thesis in our humble home in Bulacan. In the midst of my missing daughter and my quest to find her and justice, I’ve been in and out of my sanity as any mother’s care and worry would extend or reach the depths in search [sic] her missing child.

Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing  45 As Buwang I was named as Buwang as soon as I arrived with Tagapagtawid in the limbo. I was referred to as an insane person by the few people in the limbo namely, Ina, Kabiyak, and Mutya as I started questioning and uttering deep, meaningful verses subjecting to memory and loss, I also knew who they all were in the limbo right away. I’m the only one in that realm who remembers or has the clearer grasp of her own memories while I was still a mortal and I’m mindful of the gods and their tricks and plans in our stay there. (Baggao 2014, 15–18) The formal reviews and the students’ written reflections served as refractions of how the translation project may be received, and what constraints that existed in the first staging can be improved on, if ever the play is to be restaged. 3.3 Rewriting Disappearance and Resurfacing: Evils of the Second Mal Mal’s restaging/retranslation process began in March 2017, after a conversation with Jeremy dela Cruz, a theater professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He was looking for a theater text that could be used for his classes in Thea 107 (Theater Communication), and Thea 114 (The Dynamics and Aesthetics of Community Theater). Dela Cruz requested a text flexible enough to accommodate revisions based on the required immersion activity for his community theater class. The course syllabus for Thea 114 explicitly states the required community immersion activity for this class, as well as the specific target area for the requirement—the CALABARZON region (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon). In this course, the students are expected to devote their time in understanding and engaging to community theatre aesthetics in Western and  Philippine perspectives, modular discussions on community theatre  researches and cultural mapping of community theatre in CALABARZON. Quizzes and Exercises Modular Discussion Report Final Exam Cultural Immersion and Immersion Portfolio

10% 30% 20% 40%

(Dela Cruz 2017b, 1) During Mal’s 2014 run, we had to set a one-month workshop for the student-actors to extract the play’s possible themes, and hopefully deliver more natural, believable performances that would balance the requirements of their curriculum with the translator’s sense of poetics. The workshops, however, did not require the student-actors to seek out actual victims of state-enforced

46  Vladimeir B. Gonzales violence or to talk with the families of the victims or even reach out to related advocacy groups. There was no required interaction with the people and community that inspired the material. It was not part of their program’s design. The explicitly required community engagement in the production of Mal for UP Los Baños therefore was a marked difference from the earlier staging. In the course syllabus, the biggest chunk of the student’s grade goes to the cultural immersion and immersion portfolio. The next highest percentage goes to the discussion of the immersion activities, followed by the final exam or the staging of a play based on this community engagement. While Mal’s 2014 run focused on erasures brought about by state-enforced disappearances, the modifications for the 2017 staging integrated the immersion notes from their engagement in Sitio Buntog, Hacienda Yulo, Canlubang, Laguna. Since the 1970s, this 452-hectare farmland has been a site of struggle between the farming residents and the Yulo clan, who intends to turn the agricultural lands into subdivisions. From the immersion activity, the students listed seven essential issues experienced by the residents of Sitio Buntog: . Destruction of trees and crops. 1 2. Hamletting or the act of blocking off access to and from the place, hence blocking off the residents from continuing their livelihood. 3. Explicit display of violence and fearmongering; physical, verbal, emotional and mental attacks. Threatening residents, regardless of age, with firearms. 4. Bringing in huge firearms and firing rounds of ammunition around the community, to build tension. 5. Not acknowledging the authority of the local government. 6. Visible military presence within the nearby mountain villages. 7. Making the elders of the town sign documents against their will. Aside from the military, privately hired security agents were identified as perpetrators of these abuses. The immersion notes also identified a variation of the policy on enforced disappearance, which involved a kind of spatial erasure; here the residents are promised “relocation sites” in exchange for surrendering their rights to their land in Sitio Buntog, only to find out that the relocation sites are not real and do not exist in the town’s development map (Dela Cruz 2017a). These immersion notes were used to rewrite and reshape Mal into a version that foregrounded the plight of the farmers of Sitio Buntog, an attempt to make visible and resurface a sector that has been a constant target of enforced disappearances and erasure. A sample of this is reflected in the monologue of the character Mag-aaral (The Student): Their life seemed to be a fairytale. The first residents of Sitio Buntog, most of them were refugees from Taal. The volcano erupted and the people needed a place to escape to. They discovered Sitio Buntog, and there they planted their coconuts, lanzones, bananas, rambutan. The

Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing  47 land was rich and fertile with hope, that was how they described it. So they stayed here, and here they had their children, their grandchildren, and so on and so forth. One day, a visitor arrived. The visitor offered entertainment to the people of Sitio Buntog. He introduced them to movies, had them play horse races, gave them rice and sugar, showered them with gifts and sold them attractive merchandise for a cheap price. He held small contests that paid cash prizes. That’s life, he said. He owned a piece of land near Sitio Buntog, and told them that neighbors should be kind to one another. The residents described the experience as something similar to living inside a golden cage. Whatever they needed was already inside. Then, one day, the air rumbled with the sound of tractors. The “friendly neighbor,” with a change of tone, declared that the residents do not own their land. They were shown permits, titles, maps. The townspeople were shocked and confused, for in those titles, permits, maps, they could not find any trace of themselves. (Gonzales 2017, translated from Filipino) Mal’s run at UP Los Baños was therefore guided by the course’s syllabus, which emphasizes the importance of community immersion and engagement in the mounting of the production. The Thea 114 course requires its students to conduct a community immersion activity, create an “immersion portfolio” containing notes and reflections, and a production book, a document that collects all relevant materials in staging the play before, during, and after its staging. Some of the included materials are technical documents (permits, reservation slips, budget breakdown, production calendar), reflection notes on the immersion activity, and reflection notes focusing on the impact of the immersion activity in the mounting of the adaptation. The collected notes displayed the crucial role that the required immersion activity played in guiding the students toward a more profound and substantial understanding of the performance text. The community interaction embedded in the course syllabus provided the students with contextual information and grounding that allowed them to render their production more meaningfully. Compared to its 2014 staging, the 2017 version of Mal and its message concerning the violence of state-enforced disappearance became clearer, more tangible, even in its preproduction stage. The students, through their written reflections about the production, were visibly more aware and much more confident in articulating what Mal means to them, and what erasures of truths the project was trying to resurface. The community engagement occasioned opportunities to talk about issues of land-grabbing, human rights abuses, and the erasure of certain sectors in the contemporary Philippine context. Most of the lines were metaphorical and that allowed the audience to have a deep interpretation of the play. The context is very appropriate with the country’s current issues such as concealed inhumane [sic] and

48  Vladimeir B. Gonzales marginalization of the lower classes. The plot was a bit confusing but when scrutinized well, portrays a series of related events. MAL was perfection because the actors portrayed each of their roles with so much passion, and because the people behind the production executed their work well. MAL was successful because everyone who helped put it up wanted the same thing and had the same goal: to send the message of the story. The actors and the staff were determined to explain to the UPLB community what the play was for. Para sa bayan (for the motherland, translated from Filipino). (Perez, “Insights Thea 107 YZ,” Mal Production Book for Thea 107 YZ and Thea 114 GH, Second Semester 2017, 2017) Both theater classes that organized and staged the 2017 production expressed appreciation for the advocacies advanced in this Trojan Women adaptation and articulated its importance as a school-based production. However, the production book also revealed a criticism of the play based on the course syllabus’s intentions. While the project succeeded in understanding, integrating, and performing a community’s plight through a theater translation project, the question of how production “gives back” to the said community rose to the surface. In other words, there was no clear activity in the course that required the class to perform the play and gather feedback from their chosen community. I thought what the class will do is to use a creative work written by a community-based theater group. But that wasn’t the case. I felt a bit sad because instead of bringing the play to the community, it remained confined in a traditional theater form and became a mere school project of the two theater courses. It’s also sad that only the middle class and elite became the audience of this play. While I understand that the reason for performing in an elite crowd is to make them aware of our farmers’ plights as well as corporate greed and violence that comes with land-grabbing, I just wish that we could have delivered our theatrical production to the community. Not [sic] it seems that we used a community’s life and situation just as a requirement to pass a subject. (Silvano, “Insights Thea 114 GH”) These are important observations, as these comments opened the discussion on the limits of the theater genre and the art of translation, particularly when the material articulates a socially relevant, or more so, politically committed message. The reflections performed the possible dangers in translating community-based issues into classroom learning materials. While a translation project may allow theater to depict local community concerns, the project also makes the participants of the translation project more aware of the gap between academia and the larger community outside the classroom walls. Concerning

Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing  49 Mal’s 2017 run, relevant questions had to be asked: What was lost when the source material was not part of the receiving end of the translation project? What could have been gained if drafts of the performance text, the translation piece, were given to, and consulted with, the community it was based on, before the text was given the green light to be rehearsed and performed onstage? How could the translation project and the art of theater further have improved, had the production returned to its source? The gaps and questions may not have been directly addressed by UPLB’s Mal, but having these notes provided the theater courses concrete points to ponder on. Mal may have ended in 2017, but it paved the way for future productions to be more mindful of their immersion work, their target communities, and imagined audience. Another reflection from Mal’s 2017 run summarizes this point. The process for community theater is a long way, because several studies and readings must be accomplished. Community theater does not only mean involving the community, staging a play in the community, etc., but hearing the voices of the community and help [sic] them shout their protests and stories to the public. These voices are the unheard and disregarded. As the students of the BA Communication Arts program, these pleads [sic] and cries must be put into art as to where more people will likely be interested to listen and simply be informed. (San Luis, “Insights Thea 114 GH”) And while there were no formal reviews, the production made use of a hashtag for publicity purposes. This hashtag became a repository for the audience’s reception of the production. The Facebook page of Mal’s 2017 run collected feedback from the hashtag #MALatUPLB and shared the collected screenshots to its followers. In the Facebook post entitled “Narito ang ilang feedback ng ating mga manunuod noong May 9 at 10” (“Here’s some of our audience feedback from our May 9 and 10 shows”) (Figures 3.1 and 3.2), the translation project was praised for the message of the script, brilliant acting, and direction. It was “hauntingly beautiful” and regarded as one of the best productions in UPLB.

Figure 3.1 A sample feedback from Mal’s Facebook page.

50  Vladimeir B. Gonzales

Figure 3.2 Another captured reaction from the audience, which was gathered in UP Los Baños’ Mal Facebook page.

3.4 Theater Translation: What Needs to Be Seen The processes involved in the two stagings of Mal could be read as performances of the playwright-translator’s intentions and poetics within the constraints of the academic system. The very loose translation of a world classic is a combination of concrete requirements such as the number of required performing roles and the need for equal exposure as part of an academic requirement, the playwright-translator’s vision of what a translated piece should be, and the curricular structure of the commissioning unit. The experiences in mounting the two versions of a translated material, through written reviews and required reflection activities, demonstrate the negotiations involved in making a translated product that is optimal for the needs and objectives of all the collaborators in the commissioned project. Another important point foregrounds how translating for school-based theater reveals the gaps within the academic system, artistic production, and community engagement. It exposes the objectives that need to be upheld in an institutional level, emphasizes the crucial role of learning beyond the classroom, and reiterates the need for a constant reassessment of one’s motivations for pursuing the craft. The translator chooses and fights for what is to be seen, and in the process exposes what is erased or hidden. Whatever was missing or erased—consciously or not—in their previous attempts will resurface in one form or another. References Baggao, Fatima Ivy. 2014. Special Project Paper for Theatre 198, University of the Philippines Diliman. Bassnet, Susan. 1991. “Translating for the Theatre: The Case Against Performability.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction. Vol. 4, No. 1, 99–111. Castillo, Laurence Marvin. 2014. “Virtual Inferno.” Academia.edu. Accessed 4 April 2019. http://unimelb.academia.edu/LaurenceMarvinCastillo Cortez, Alexander C. 2006. “Dulaang UP (1976–2006): Theatre in the Academe in the Philippine Setting.” PhD Dissertation, University of the Philippines, Diliman. Dela Cruz, Jeremy Reuel N. 2 April 2017a. “Datos mula sa Sitio Buntog,” E-mail messsage to author. ———. 2017b. Syllabus for THEA 114: The Dynamics and Aesthetics of Community Theater, Second Semester 2016–2017. University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines.

Performing Disappearance and Resurfacing  51 Esase, Fritz. 2014. Special Project Paper for Theatre 198, University of the Philippines Diliman. Gonzales, Vladimeir B. 17 May–18 May 2014. Mal. Adapted from The Trojan Women. Euripides. Dir. Mara Paulina Marasigan. Teatro Hermogenes Ylagan. ———. 9 May–10 May 2017. Mal. Mal. Adapted from The Trojan Women. Euripides. Dir. Jeremy Reuel dela Cruz. Makiling Ballroom Hall, Student Union Building, UP Los Baños. Lefevere, Andre. 1992. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge. ———. 2009. “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, system and refraction in a theory of Literature.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2nd Edition). Baker, Mona and Saldanha Gabriela (eds.). 233–249. Routledge. Mal. 2017. “Narito ang ilang feedback ng ating mga manunuod noong May 9 at 10.” Accessed 12 May 2017. https://www.facebook.com/MalUPLB/posts/191482 4672135995 Perez, Rey L. 2017. “Insights (Thea 107 YZ).” Mal Production Book for Thea 107 YZ and Thea 114 GH, Second Semester 2016–2017. College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Humanities, University of the Philippines Los Baños. Razon, Roberta. 28 March 2014a. Facebook message to author. ———. 2014b. Special Project Paper for Theatre 198, University of the Philippines Diliman. Reis, Katharina and Hans J. Vermeer. 2014. Towards a General Theory of Translation: Skopos Theory Explained. Routledge. San Luis, Loreine. 2017. “Insights Thea 114 GH.” Mal Production Book for Thea 107 YZ and Thea 114 GH, Second Semester 2016–2017. College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Humanities, University of the Philippines Los Baños. Silvano, Alyssa Pamela F. 2017. “Insights Thea 114 GH.” Mal Production Book for Thea 107 YZ and Thea 114 GH, Second Semester 2016–2017. College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Humanities, University of the Philippines Los Baños. Vermeer, Hans J. 2000. “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action.” The Translation Studies Reader. Lawrence Venuti (ed.). 221–232. Routledge.

4 Beyond Constraints Advancing Linguistic Consensus in Filipino Subtitling Michael Manahan

4.1 Introduction In the era of globalization and digital media, audiovisual content has emerged as a powerful medium of communication, transcending geographical borders and linguistic and cultural boundaries. As this content traverses diverse audiences, the role of audiovisual translation (AVT) becomes increasingly crucial. The primary objective of this investigation is to preliminarily explore the intricate dynamics of a particular form of audiovisual translation known as subtitling, specifically in the context of interlingual translation, with a specific emphasis on Filipino subtitling. 4.1.1 Understanding subtitling

The realm of audiovisual translation comprises numerous subfields, forming a vast universe within itself, and it is therefore important to locate subtitling in this field. Among the extensive typologies proposed, the classifications put forth by Chaume (2013) and Díaz Cintas (2020) stand out as notably recent and comprehensive in nature. These typologies were considered by Díaz Cintas and Remael (2021, 7) in identifying two fundamental approaches in audiovisual translation (AVT) regarding the substitution of the original dialogue soundtrack. The first approach, known as revoicing, involves replacing the original soundtrack with a newly recorded or live soundtrack in the target language (TL). Revoicing includes simultaneous or consecutive interpreting, voiceover (VO), narration, dubbing, fandubbing, and audio description (AD). The second approach, known as timed text, involves converting the original dialogue soundtrack into written text that appears on the screen. Timed text includes the focus of this study, namely interlingual subtitling. Other timed text modalities include audio subtitling (AST) or surtitling, subtitling for people who are D/deaf or hard-of-hearing (SDH) or captioning, and live subtitling. These two approaches, as Díaz Cintas and Remael (2021, 7–10) put it, serve as essential methods for achieving effective communication in AVT. Interlingual subtitling is defined by Díaz Cintas and Remael (2021, 9) as a translation practice involving the presentation of written text that is typically DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-5

Beyond Constraints  53 positioned at the lower part of the screen or the material. Interlingual subtitling aims to provide a textual account of the original dialogue exchanged among the different speakers, as well as conveying other verbal information that is visually transmitted, such as letters, graffiti, text messages, inscriptions, placards, and similar elements, along with any aural elements such as songs and voiceover narration. In the context of Filipino subtitling, subtitles are conventionally positioned at the lower part of the screen. However, in certain instances where a subtitle interferes with important on-screen text, subtitles may be positioned on the upper part of the screen to avoid obstructing plot-relevant information. This approach ensures that both the subtitles and the displayed text are effectively conveyed to the audience without compromising the comprehension of either. According to Díaz Cintas and Remael (2021, 9), subtitled content consists of three primary elements: the “spoken word, the image, and the subtitles themselves.” The interaction between these components, along with the viewer’s capacity to read both the visuals and the written text within a specific timeframe, as well as the actual screen size, collectively define the fundamental characteristics of the audiovisual medium. Subtitles are required to be synchronized with the images and dialogue, ensuring a semantically accurate rendition of the source language (SL) dialogues, and remain visible for an adequate duration, allowing viewers ample time to read and comprehend them. 4.1.2 The unseen in subtitling

In September 2021, the highly anticipated South Korean survival drama series Squid Game made its debut on the popular streaming platform, Netflix. Since its release, it has garnered significant attention and has achieved remarkable success. In fact, Squid Game currently holds the top position in the list of most-watched Netflix television series in its first 28 days, with a total of 1,650.45 million viewing hours.1 This achievement solidifies the immense popularity and global impact of the show. Nonetheless, the success of Squid Game has not been without its own challenges, and one is that of its subtitles. The quality of the English subtitle translation of the show has sparked debates on social media platforms. Some bilingual and multilingual Korean speakers have expressed concerns that the English translation fails to capture the brilliance of the show’s intricately crafted stories, clever dialogue, and script. In fact, some argue that watching the show with English subtitles does not truly capture its essence. 2 These discussions surrounding the quality and cultural sensitivity of subtitling serve as valuable contributions to the field of subtitling by shedding light on the importance of maintaining a faithful representation of the original content and upholding the artistic integrity of the series through its translation. In a way, this also serves as an avenue to elicit viewer reception toward the show.

54  Michael Manahan Yet, in contrast, subtitling goes beyond the translation process of transferring words from one language to another; it is an art form in its own right. It involves elements such as cultural context, idiomatic expressions, and subtle nuances of the source language that often remain unseen in a direct, wordfor-word translation. In addition, there are also very concrete technical aspects to subtitling. These involve spatial and temporal constraints, factors that are hidden from the viewers’ sight but critically shape the translation process in subtitling. For instance, subtitles must be concise enough to fit within the limited space on the screen and timed perfectly to align with the audio. These constraints demand careful consideration and skill from the author-translator, as they must find a balance between linguistic accuracy and brevity. Moreover, the author-translator must ensure that the translated text appears and disappears at the correct moments, matching the pacing of the spoken dialogue. These hidden technical challenges underscore the complexity of subtitling as audiovisual translation, demonstrating that it is not just an art but also a science. Thus, effective translation in subtitling requires a delicate balancing act. On one hand, it must shine a light on the core message, conveying it accurately and compellingly through the language used. It should render the essence of the original dialogue, taking into careful consideration its cultural context and idiomatic nuances. On the other hand, it must artfully conceal the technical challenges inherent in the process, such as the spatial and temporal constraints of subtitling. This involves ensuring that the subtitles are concise enough to fit within the allotted screen space, do not intrude into shot and scene changes, and are paced to match the dialogue while remaining unobtrusive to the viewer. 4.2 Subtitling into Filipino The goal of subtitle translation is to accurately convey a message originally created in one language (the source language, or SL) into another language while seeing to it that no misinterpretations or misunderstandings occur in the process. In order to facilitate this, digital content producers and streaming platforms often have their own in-house guidelines and style guides, as with the case of Netflix. These guides are not just about translation rules, but also cover technical elements like timing, text placement, and readability. These serve as a roadmap for subtitlers, helping to standardize the process and ensure consistency across different programs and languages. They act as a framework, adding another layer of complexity to the subtitling task. Despite the challenges, these guidelines are believed to be crucial in maintaining a high-quality viewing experience for all users, regardless of their language of choice. 4.2.1 The Netflix Filipino Timed Text Style Guide (TTSG)

Unquestionably, Netflix holds a significant lead in the streaming landscape within the Philippines in terms of timed text, offering a wide range of content

Beyond Constraints  55 with Filipino subtitles. Amazon Prime Video, while also providing Filipino subtitles, does not have a publicly accessible Filipino style guide online. This delimits this inquiry to the available resources for understanding and opening conversations on subtitling practices across digital content platforms. Given this situation, this study will primarily reference the style guide provided by Netflix. As a dominant player in the industry and a key provider of Filipino-subtitled content, Netflix uses its guidelines to offer valuable insights into the current standards and practices for subtitling in the Filipino context. Although this may not encompass the full breadth of subtitling practices across all streaming platforms, it provides a basic foundation for analyzing and understanding the complex process of subtitling in Filipino. The Filipino Timed Text Style Guide (Filipino TTSG) developed by Netflix provides specific guidelines for creating the Filipino language timed text for Netflix shows and content. This comprehensive guide is readily available online and offers valuable instructions for subtitlers working on content for the Filipino language in the platform. The Filipino TTSG prescribes various reference manuals for subtitlers working in the language. These go-to resources include “Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa” (Grammar of the National Language), “Manwal sa Masinop na Pagsusulat” (Manual of Correct Writing), the “KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino” (KWF Dictionary of the Filipino Language), and the online Filipino dictionary, “diksiyonaryo.ph.” These references serve as tools for ensuring linguistic and technical accuracy of the Filipino language in Netflix subtitling projects. Hence, the Filipino TTSG can be categorized into two sections: one dedicated to linguistic standards and the other to technical standards in subtitling. Relevant points pertaining to the linguistic standards outlined in the Filipino Timed Text Style Guide (TTSG) are selected and discussed in the succeeding section. The technical aspects of subtitling, however, will not be addressed within the scope of this research. 4.2.2 The linguistic standards in Filipino subtitling

As part of its guidelines, Netflix enforces specific linguistic standards such as the items below.3 (1) Names: Proper names and organizations should not be translated unless an official translation exists or approved by Netflix. Historical or mythical names, e.g., bampira and sirena, can be translated into language-specific versions if available. (2) Documentary/Unscripted titles: Speaker’s titles should only be translated if an official Filipino equivalent exists. (3) On-screen text: In modern or contemporary titles, there is no need to translate the following as they are understood by the majority of the population such as dates, e.g., September 8, 1979, and institution names, e.g., Hawkins High School. In period or historical titles, translate to match the

56  Michael Manahan tone of the original content, e.g., ika-8 ng Mayo, 1813, W. Davis at mga anak, and Palimbagan at Imprentador. (4) Foreign Dialogue: Foreign dialogue should be translated only if it was intended to be understood in the original version. (5) Repetitions: Avoid verbatim repetitions in dialogue. For song lyrics and TV show/theme song lyrics, repetition is allowed. (6) Translations: Dialogue should be translated in a way that is grammatically correct and retains the original meaning. For modern or contemporary titles, the subtitles should reflect the language that is used by native speakers on a daily basis: easy to use and familiar, not outdated nor overly formal. The form of Filipino to be used should be open to borrowing words from the English language to reflect how Filipino speakers communicate every day. For period or historical titles, formal Filipino should be used. Dialogue (including expletives) should be rendered as faithfully as possible, without using dialect or words that would otherwise introduce a level of obscenity not implied in the content. Always match the tone of the original content, while remaining relevant to the target audience (e.g., replicate tone, register, class, formality, etc., in the target language in an equivalent way). Spelling may be revised to match the tone and formality of the speaker, e.g.: Informal: “Wag mo ‘kong hawakan!” Formal: “Huwag mo akong hawakan.” (7) Avoid colloquial terms, slang, regional dialect, and emotive elements, unless to convey specific meaning, or to match the tone and intention of the original dialogue. (e.g., swardspeak). (8) Do not transliterate. Maintain the original spelling of English words. For example, okay not okey, basketball not basketbol, computer not kompyuter, and truck not trak.

4.3 Some challenges in Filipino subtitling Despite the aim of ensuring a high-quality viewing experience, the very guidelines set in place for subtitling can sometimes become the root of perceived mistakes by the subtitle checkers or quality controllers. For instance, in striving to adhere to these standards, subtitlers may inadvertently introduce errors in grammar or spelling conventions, which can be jarring for some viewers. Moreover, these guidelines can unintentionally lead to subtitles that do not accurately reflect the language as it is currently spoken. For example, they may enforce formal language rules or outdated terminology and expressions that feel unnatural or out of touch to a contemporary audience. This poses a unique challenge for subtitlers in remaining true to the spirit of the spoken language

Beyond Constraints  57 while also adhering to the prescribed standards and references. Balancing the often conflicting demands of following the guidelines while using more accessible language is a key aspect of the art and science of subtitling. The succeeding sections discuss some challenges brought about by subtitling in Filipino. While it can be seen that Filipino subtitles are improving, this conversation is a much-needed one considering the amount of content that is being produced and reintroduced, that is, previous or old shows being made available again, across various streaming platforms.

4.3.1 Okey is okay, so is OK

Item 8 above expressly prohibits the transliteration of English words. Despite this, the two dictionaries recommended by the Filipino TTSG—the KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino4 and diksiyonaryo.ph5—accept the variations okay, okey, and OK, basketball and basketbol, and truck and trak. Inter­estingly, kompyuter is not listed as an entry or an alternative form on diksiyonaryo.ph, whereas it is found as an entry in the KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino. This highlights some of the complexities and contradictions within the process of subtitling, as subtitlers navigate between rules and the realities of how language is used in daily life. A comparison was made between the usage of “okay” and “okey” through the Tagalog (Filipino) Web 2019 corpus in Sketch Engine,6 a resource that encompasses 232,854,660 tokens and 198,303,250 words. The term “okay” was found to appear significantly more frequently, with a count of 33,486, while “okey” was seen only 6,136 times. This indicates a higher prevalence of the term “okay” in the corpus, suggesting that it may be the more commonly used form in contemporary Filipino language. These findings may help illustrate the importance of considering actual usage patterns when developing subtitling guidelines, as it provides valuable insights into the target language. The lower frequency of “okey” compared to “okay” in the corpus suggests that “okey” might be considered less standard in usage. However, the fact that it appears over 6,000 times indicates that it is still used to a certain extent in the language community. The presence of this variant may imply several things: a. The variant “okey” may be a reflection of the multilingual nature of the Filipino speech culture, where English and Filipino intermingle and influence each other. This influence could lead to the creation of alternative spellings for borrowed words. b. “Okey” may be associated with different levels of formality or different registers. For example, it may be used more in informal or colloquial contexts compared to “okay.”

58  Michael Manahan It is also worth pointing out that the variant “okey” is used in the Filipino subtitles for the 2023 movie “Air,” which is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.7 This instance demonstrates how the variant is used in actual subtitling practice. Further analysis of the corpus with regards to the identified pairs of words in the Filipino TTSG reveals that the English words “truck” and “basketball” appear more frequently than their Filipino counterparts “trak” and “basketbol.” Specifically, “truck” appears 5,524 times, while “trak” appears 2,447 times. Similarly, “basketball” is found 4,480 times, while “basketbol” is found 768 times. These findings may suggest potential interpretations that the use of English terms “truck” and “basketball” might indicate a preference for the English spelling in certain contexts or genres, such as sports or technology. It could be that these English words have gradually become part of the vernacular and are widely understood, making them the preferred choice for a number of speakers whereas “trak” and “basketbol” might be used in more informal or local contexts. However, the higher frequency of “kompyuter” (2,264) compared to “computer” (1,895) in the corpus, despite being seemingly counterintuitive, offers some interesting insights. This may suggest a strong localization or “Filipinization” of English terms in this particular instance. Even though “computer” is an English term and widely understood and basing on this evidence, Filipino language users may prefer the localized “kompyuter” when communicating in Filipino. It may also indicate that transliteration, or the process of phonetically converting words from one system of writing or script to another based on phonetic similarity, is accepted and commonly used in the Filipino language. “Kompyuter” is essentially a phonetic representation of “computer” in a way that fits with the Filipino language’s phonetic and orthographic system. This is also evidenced by the word’s entry in the KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino. The corpus data may be highlighting a trend that concerns change where the adapted word “kompyuter” is gaining more popularity than the original English term “computer” within the context of Filipino language use and this could also be a reflection of cultural preferences, where using a term that appears more “native” to the Filipino language is utilized in certain linguistic contexts. For instance, the term “kompyuter” might be used more frequently in Filipino news sites, tabloids, and blogs, which are the primary sources of the corpus data. This phenonemon may be further investigated in the realm of Filipino subtitles. 4.3.1.1 Is it really okay?

This leads us to ask: in what situations is it appropriate to use “okey”? When should “okay” or “OK” be used instead, and in which contexts might they be more appropriate? Reflecting on the discussions in the previous sections, it might not be beneficial to limit the usage to just the English-based form as the guidelines prescribed. But what are the implications of this for translation, especially considering that these terms may be used differently across various registers, environments, dialects, or sociolects, as previously noted?

Beyond Constraints  59 In essence, the choice between “okey,” “okay,” and “OK” in translation should not be dictated solely by prescriptive guidelines but should consider the nuanced dynamics of actual language use. Each variant may have its own connotations and usage patterns, which may vary depending on the context, the language user’s background, and the audience’s expectations. These nuances may be considered when adding a linguistic dimension to the material’s content, genre, setting, and/or character portrayal. Therefore, it is crucial for author-translators to be sensitive to these factors when translating and deciding on which variant to use in their subtitles with the goal of elevating the quality of subtitling, and in effect enriching the overall value of the content. However, while keeping these considerations in mind, the author-translators are also expected to maintain a consistent usage pattern throughout the material. Expanding on the idea, the existence of such linguistic variations serves as a valuable tool for author-translators. Subtitlers can strategically employ these variants to further elevate the quality of translation, particularly through careful attention to the language register of the characters portrayed in the shows. By extrapolating from this representative sampling to encompass other similar translation situations, the hope is that author-translators and those responsible for ensuring the quality of Filipino subtitles will leverage this feature of the Filipino language to their benefit and adopt a more open stance toward acceptability. 4.3.1.2 OK then

These insights not only demonstrate the fluidity and adaptability of the Filipino language but also underscore the importance of nuance and context in translation. The choice between “okey,” “okay,” and “OK” is not simply about adhering to rules, but also about capturing the intended meaning, tone, and style of the original content. Moreover, it’s about being true to the way language is actually used by the intended audience. In a broader context, these findings shed light on the complexities of language localization. They highlight the ongoing interplay between languages in bilingual or multilingual societies like the Philippines, where Filipino, English, and various Philippine languages coexist and continually influence each other. This blending of languages has led to the creation of unique linguistic variations, which can be a rich resource for translators. Subtitlers, therefore, are expected to be well versed in both the formal rules of language and the informal, everyday usage of words. They need to understand the cultural and societal nuances that shape language use, and to consider these factors when choosing which words to use in their translations. As seen in the comparison between “okey,” “okay,” and “OK,” “trak” and “truck,” “basketbol” and “basketball,” and “kompyuter” and “computer,” the most used or accepted form is not always the one prescribed by official guidelines or dictionaries. Thus, author-translators must be adaptable and flexible, ready to balance the demands of accuracy, authenticity, and relatability in their work.

60  Michael Manahan In essence, the art of interlingual subtitling goes beyond the mere conversion of words from one language to another. It is about conveying the spirit of the original text even through the target language’s orthography, capturing the nuances of meaning, and resonating with the cultural and linguistic realities of the audience. In this regard, these variations in language usage should not be challenges to be overcome, but valuable tools to be harnessed with the goal of enhancing the richness, authenticity, and relatability of the translated work as mentioned previously. 4.3.2 Bridging linguistic eras

Item 6 in the Filipino TTSG section above underlines the significance of reflecting the everyday language in the subtitles when dealing with modern or contemporary content. The goal is to use a form of Filipino that resonates with speakers, avoiding the usage of outdated or excessively formal language. Contemporary Filipino language often integrates words from other languages, particularly English, into routine discourse. It is therefore reasonable and appropriate that this linguistic phenomenon is mirrored in the subtitles when deemed suitable for the content. Conversely, when it comes to historical or period titles, a more formal version of Filipino is advised. This identified distinction acknowledges the diverse registers of the language and the need for subtitles to appropriately match the language style of the content they accompany. While Item 6 from the Filipino TTSG section encourages the use of everyday, accessible language in subtitles for modern content, Item 7 seems to contradict this by recommending avoidance of colloquial expressions, slang, regional dialects, and emotive elements, unless they serve a specific purpose or align with the original dialogue’s tone or intent. For instance, the use of swardspeak, a sociolect used mainly by the Filipino gay community, might be encouraged if it accurately reflects the characters’ speech in the content, such as in Queer Eye (2018).8 This juxtaposition between the two guidelines leads us to revisit some of the linguistic points that constitutes “formal” Filipino and what makes Filipino “colloquial.” Moreover, this leads us to question if there are clear boundaries between these two language registers or is there a spectrum of formality in Filipino language use being exhibited in the Filipino subtitles that we see in Netflix shows. Also, how should these considerations influence the subtitling process? The answers to these inquiries are critical for producing accurate, effective subtitles that respect both the spirit and the letter of the source material while remaining accessible and engaging for the audience. 4.3.2.1 Language bridges in Bridgerton

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023)9 is a limited series from Netflix that is set against the backdrop of the late 1700s in Great Britain. The series forms a part of the larger Bridgerton fictional universe. In this context, the subtitled

Beyond Constraints  61 scenes from the fifth episode of the series provide noteworthy instances for our discussion. Exploring particular translation examples within the scope of a historical yet fictional content can present distinct hurdles in the subtitling process due to the complexities of language register and cultural nuances. These challenges arise as the translation process for this seems to require not only linguistic accuracy but also an understanding of historical idioms, customs, and social manners that are intricately woven into the dialogue. This type of content necessitates a nuanced approach where the subtleties of the period language and the cultural references need to be skillfully navigated to create subtitles that are faithful to the original content and simultaneously accessible to the contemporary audience. Presented below are actual Netflix Filipino subtitles from Queen Charlotte that pivots from the original English subtitles (emphases added): Event In-Timecode Out-Timecode Filipino Subtitle 1

0:07:27.48

0:07:31.03

2

0:10:14.36

0.10:16.57

3

0:23:02.00

0:23:04.63

4

0:27:29.39

0:27:32.73

5

0:42:11.61

0:42:15.40

6

0:53:33.71

0:53:36.88

7

1:05:23.75

1:05:27.42

(FIL) Hindi nakakagulat na ipinagluluksa mo siya. Asawa mo siya. (EN) It’s not surprising you should mourn him. He was your husband. (FIL) Nakatitiyak ako. (EN) I am precise. (FIL) para maganda pakinggan sa halip na nakakahibang. (EN) so it would sound picturesque instead of insane. (FIL) Isang nakakaakit na hardin na maraming uri ng bulaklak. (EN) A luscious garden with many varieties of flowers. (FIL) Nakatutuwa na binisita mo ang iyong kapatid. (EN) It is just so lovely of you to pay your sister a visit. (FIL) At alam kong nakakatakot na iwan si Inang nang ganito. (EN) And I know it must be very frightening to leave Nanny like this. (FIL) At ang mga pagtatampong ito ay magiging nakakahiyang alaala na lamang. (EN) And these youthful fits will become mere embarrassing memories.

The Filipino subtitles presented in the table corresponding to Events 1 through 7 (emphases added), underscore two linguistic constructions in Filipino but convey the same meaning which is “causing or serving to produce what the base designates” as mentioned by Schachter and Otanes (1972, 227– 228) in their discussion of derived adjectives in Tagalog. They identified two

62  Michael Manahan forms that are freely interchanged in all cases. The first form involves na-+ ka-+ the repetition of the initial consonant and vowel (CV) of the root word such as in Event 2 for nakatitiyak and Event 5 for nakatutuwa. On the other hand, the second structure employs the na-+ ka-+ with the ka- part of the affix being reduplicated such as in Events 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7 for nakakagulat, nakakahibang, nakakaakit, nakakatakot, and nakakahiya. Their counterparts nakakatiyak, nakakatuwa, nakagugulat, nakahihibang, nakaaakit, nakatatakot, and nakahihiya mean the same thing. Gallego (2016, 83–84) highlights that both forms are permitted, yet there exists a distinction in their usage based on the linguistic register. The reduplication of the initial consonant and vowel (CV) of the root word is typically found in literary works, while the reduplication of the affix ka- is more commonly seen in conversational discourse (Zafra, Añonuevo, and Almario 2008, 17). This raises certain intriguing questions in the realm of subtitling. For instance, how should these variations be addressed in subtitles? Could the form that is less commonly used be relegated to a historical or a more dated register? In order to further examine this, an analysis was conducted on the specific words in question by using the Sketch Engine Tagalog corpus. The word “nakakahiya” had 14,058 occurrences, while its counterpart “nakahihiya” appeared only 46 times. Similarly, “nakakatuwa” was found 75 times compared to “nakatutuwa,” which had 53 occurrences. For “nakakaakit,” there were 7 entries, while “nakaaakit” had no entries. The term “nakakatiyak” appeared 9 times, contrasted with “nakatitiyak,” which appeared 100 times. “Nakakagulat” had 25 entries, while “nakagugulat” had none. “Nakakatakot” had a high frequency of 7,019 compared to “nakatatakot,” which was found 289 times. Lastly, neither “nakakahibang” nor “nakahihibang” appeared in the corpus. These findings provide a picture of the frequency of usage of these two forms in the corpus. It suggests that the form with the affix being reduplicated (“nakaka-”) is more commonly used than the one with the first consonant and vowel (CV) of the root word being repeated (“naka-”). The only exception to this is the pair “nakakatiyak” and “nakatitiyak,” where the latter appears to be used more frequently. This could indicate a shift or preference in language use for certain words, which is an important consideration for subtitling work. Style guides usually prescribe the ideal form of language to be used in certain contexts, such as in subtitling, to ensure consistency and accuracy. However, “ideal” often refers to standardized or formally accepted forms of a language, not necessarily the most commonly used ones in everyday speech. If the “ideal” form, as prescribed by a style guide, is less commonly used in daily conversation, it does not automatically refer to a historical language register, but we may be open to use such to introduce a degree of unfamiliarity to the material. The determination of a form as “historical” usually depends on its usage over time and its prevalence in older forms of the language, and studies made, such as by Gallego (2016), will help bring light to this conversation.

Beyond Constraints  63 In the context of subtitling, it is crucial to strike a balance between adhering to style guides and accurately reflecting the language as it is used in the material being subtitled. The choice between a more formal or colloquial register should be guided by the context, the tone of the original dialogue, and the intended audience. Therefore, even if a certain form is less commonly used in everyday speech, it might still be the most appropriate choice for subtitling a specific piece of content, particularly if that content is set in a historical period or aims to convey a certain level of formality. 4.3.3 When less says more

Given the spatial and temporal limitations set by the standards of subtitling, the task of the author-translator continually involves determining which elements of the dialogue are crucial to the narrative and thus must be kept within the subtitles. The standards for Filipino subtitling prescribed by the Netflix Filipino Timed Text Style Guide and the Netflix Timed Text Style Guide: General Requirements10 specify several constraints: subtitles must not exceed two lines; each line of subtitle should contain no more than 42 characters; in terms of reading speed, adult programs should not exceed 17 characters per second, while for children’s programs, the limit is 13 characters per second; the duration of a subtitle event should not be less than five-sixths of a second per event, which translates to 20 frames for a 24 frames per second video; and, the longest a subtitle event can be displayed is 7 seconds. Due to these restrictions, which are specifically related to the space onscreen and the duration of the subtitle event, it is inevitable that some parts of the original dialogue will be left out in the subtitles, such as in Event 6 in Section 3.2.1 where “very frightening” has been translated to nakakatakot (“frightening”) and this is but natural in subtitling. These constraints necessitate the ability of the author-translator to synthesize information efficiently and accurately, ensuring that the essence of the plot is retained despite the brevity of the subtitles. This often involves finding the balance between maintaining the original meaning and ensuring readability within the strict parameters against a backdrop of audio and visual cues. The imposed limits also require the author-translator to be highly aware of the pace of the dialogue and the reading speed of the audience. This is particularly important given the differences in reading speed limits for adult and children’s programs. The minimum and maximum durations for a subtitle event, as well as the number of characters per line, indicate that author-translators need to give careful thought to how much text a viewer can read and process within a given time frame. This can be a challenging task, especially when dealing with complex or fast-paced dialogues. The need for omissions in subtitling, therefore, is not a sign of inadequacy, but rather a necessary adaptation to the medium’s constraints. It places a great

64  Michael Manahan deal of responsibility on the author-translator to ensure that the narrative remains comprehensible and engaging, despite the inevitable reductions in the dialogue’s content. Ultimately, a good translation in the context of interlingual subtitling is one that balances accuracy, cultural sensitivity, and adherence to technical constraints, resulting in subtitles that are easy to read, understand, and engage with for the target audience. 4.4 The case for consensus Adopting an open stance toward acceptability could foster the creation of subtitles that resonate more deeply with viewers, exhibiting authenticity, fostering engagement, and enhancing relatability. Within this framework, linguistic variations are not perceived as hurdles to overcome, but rather as rich resources that augment the communicative efficiency and cultural relevance of the subtitles. The guidelines for subtitling underscore the importance of ensuring that subtitles faithfully reflect the linguistic nuances and realities experienced by the audience. This approach is fundamental in fostering an engaging and immersive viewing experience. It is essential that subtitles not only convey the literal meaning of the dialogue, but also resonate with the cultural and linguistic context of the viewers. Moreover, these guidelines should not be viewed as rigid or immutable. They should be open to revisions and adaptations in response to new observations about the language and emerging research in the field. Language is not static, but a living entity that evolves over time. Thus, as our understanding of the language and its usage evolves, the guidelines for subtitling should adapt accordingly. This flexibility can help ensure that subtitles remain an effective tool for communication and cultural exchange, accommodating linguistic shifts and cultural nuances. It can also contribute to a more nuanced and authentic representation of the source material, enhancing the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of the content. In this way, the approach to subtitling can become more responsive and inclusive, better serving the diverse and evolving needs of global audiences, particularly the Filipinos and Filipino language users. Notes 1 Netflix, “Global Top 10 TV (Non-English),” accessed on May 29, 2023, https:// www.netflix.com/tudum/top10/tv-non-english. 2 “Netflix Squid Game and the ‘Untranslatable’: The Debate around Subtitles Explained,” The Conversation online, October 14, 2021, https://theconversation. com/squid-game-and-the-untranslatable-the-debate-around-subtitles-explained169931.

Beyond Constraints  65 3 Netflix Partner Help Center, “Filipino Timed Text Style Guide,” last modified on  May 26, 2023, https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/ 4480978897939-Filipino-Timed-Text-Style-Guide. 4 Komisyón sa Wíkang Filipíno, “KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino,” accessed on May 29, 2023, https://kwfdiksiyonaryo.ph/. 5 “diksiyonaryo.ph” accessed on May 29, 2023, https://diksiyonaryo.ph/. 6 According to Sketch Engine, the Tagalog Web Corpus, also known as tlTenTen, is a collection of Tagalog texts sourced from the internet. It is part of the TenTen corpus family, a group of web corpora created using a consistent method aiming for a target size of over 10 billion words. The texts for the corpus were gathered from the internet between June and July 2018, and again in February 2019. They encompass both Tagalog and Filipino languages, thereby making this Tagalog Web Corpus also a repository for Filipino language resources. 7 Air, directed by Ben Affleck, written by Alex Convery, featuring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Chris Messina, Chris Tucker, and Viola Davis, aired April 5, 2023, https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0KNIUQ1DSY DUGL0G4Z41PXA1SB/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r. 8 Queer Eye, created by David Collins, executive produced by David Collins, Michael Williams, Rob Eric, Jennifer Lane, Adam Sher, Jordana Hochman, David Eilenberg, David George, and Mark Bracero, featuring Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk, Jonathan Van Ness, Karamo Brown, and Tan France, aired February 7, 2018, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80160132. 9 Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, created by Shonda Rhimes, directed by Tom Verica, featuring India Amarteifio, Adjoa Andoh, Michelle Fairley, Ruth Gemmell, Corey Mylchreest, Golda Rosheuvel, Arsema Thomas, Sam Clemmett, Freddie Dennis, Hugh Sachs, and Julie Andrews, aired May 4, 2023, https://www.netflix. com/watch/81478071. 10 Netflix Partner Help Center, “Timed Text Style Guide: General Requirements,” last modified on October 7, 2022, https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/ en-us/articles/215758617-Timed-Text-Style-Guide-General-Requirements.

References Chaume, Frederic. 2013. “The turn of audiovisual translation: New audiences and new technologies.” Translation Spaces 2 105–123. Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Aline Remael. 2021. Subtitling: Concepts and Practices. London and New York: Routledge. Díaz Cintas, Jorge. 2020. “Audiovisual translation.” In The Bloomsbury Companion to Language Industry Studies, by Erik Angelone, Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow and Gary Massey, 209–230. London: Bloomsbury. Gallego, Maria Kristina. 2016. “Isang Pagsusuri sa Korpus Ukol sa Pagbabago ng Wikang Filipino, 1923–2013.” Philippine Social Sciences Review 68, 71–101. Schachter, Paul, and Fe Otanes. 1972. Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Zafra, Galileo, Roberto Añonuevo, and Virgilio Almario. 2008. Gabay sa Ispeling. Quezon City: UP Diliman Sentro ng Wikang Filipino.

5 Necessary Infidelity Obligatory Shifts in Translating Audiovisual Texts for Children Honeylet E. Dumoran

5.1 Introduction Klingberg (in Oittinen 2000) identifies five types of adapting for children: (1) cultural context adaptation, which allows for the use of the closest equivalents of deeply cultural concepts; (2) language adaptation, which refers to the simplification of word choice and the specification of metaphors and other set phrases; (3) modernization, which uses the modern counterparts of traditional practices; (4) purification, which sanitizes values through deletion and addition (p. 90); and (5) abridgment, which refers to the reduction of otherwise longer texts (p. 95). When this translation involves audiovisual (AV) texts, a different set of parameters needs to be considered. This chapter presents insights into this vastly unexplored interface between audiovisual translation and pedagogy (Diaz-Cintas 2009). Essential questions include: What conditions arise when the translation involves a text that (1) is audiovisual, (2) contains a plot narrative, (3) conveys pedagogical content, and (4) is intended to be translated for children, whether it was made for children or otherwise? To what extent is the text faithfully translated? Over the years, the concept of fidelity has been reanalyzed into a spectrum: on one end is fidelity to text; on the other, fidelity to effect. To what extent is fidelity observed, especially in terms of plot-specific content, lesson-specific content, and culture-specific content? For these, examples are drawn from three sets of data: (1) several episodes of four English animated teaching series for children, which have been dubbed for a Filipino audience and released for television in the 2010s; (2) two AV learning texts from streaming platforms from Netflix and Disney+ that are currently available; and (3) the Filipino release of an English documentary March of the Penguins, which has been translated for an audience younger than the source text (ST) audience. This shift in audience provides invaluable insights into the accommodations that are necessary when translating for children. Two of the programs in (1) include a language teaching content: (a) Dora the Explorer teaches Spanish words and phrases, and (b) Ni Hao, Kai Lan teaches Mandarin words and phrases. In their translations, though, the Spanish words and phrases in Dora the Explorer are rendered in English so that DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-6

Necessary Infidelity  67 the Filipino target text teaches English instead of Spanish. In contrast, the Mandarin words and phrases in Ni Hao, Kai Lan are retained so that its target text (TT) remains to teach Mandarin. 5.2 Some Analytical Perspectives The term shift is native to a structural approach in the analysis of translated texts (Miao 2000; Munday et al. 2022; Cyrus 2009). Shifts are the linguistic changes in the translated text or the deviations from the original text that are treated as results of the constraints imposed or the allowances afforded by both the text and the recipient culture. More recent perspectives on translation studies, as well as the development of audiovisual translation (AVT) as a subfield of translation studies, have rendered a linguistic approach inadequate. Necessarily, a multimodal text such as an audiovisual text delegates the linguistic system with other co-occurring systems. In this view, translation is no longer a linguistic activity, but rather one that includes the relocation of a text into a different linguistic system, as much as into different cultural, contextual, formal, and technical systems. The term shift, therefore, is used here in the general sense, to refer to any deviation from the original. This may be linguistic or cultural in nature, or this may be a shift in the intended effect on the recipients. It was Eugene Nida who first positioned effect as the premier standard for a good translation. He termed this equivalent effect and referred to the goal of eliciting from the TT audience a response similar to that of the ST audience. This, according to Nida, is one of the four basic requirements of a good translation (Munday et al. 2022, 57), which are: (1) making sense, (2) conveying the spirit and manner of the original, (3) having a natural and easy form of expression, and (4) producing a similar response. Naturalness in AV texts is not only a linguistic requirement but also a requirement in dramatic synchrony, which refers to the correspondence of what is seen (or read—in subtitled films) onscreen and what is heard in the background (for voiceover narration) or in the foreground (for dubbed films). In the 1980s, text-type theories such as those by Reiss (1981/2004) and Vermeer (1989) recalibrated how translation and its analysis are approached. Vermeer’s Skopos theory identified purpose (of the ST and TT) as central to translation decisions. Vermeer was one of the earlier scholars who gave a prime role to the audience of the translated text; Mason (2000) and Oittinen and Ketola (2014) built on this notion and developed the interface of translation and Audience Design, a concept first put forth by sociolinguist Allan Bell, to hash out the relationships between communication decisions and the participants in the transaction. For Oittinen and Ketola (2014), the child audience’s best interest, as well as their (assumed) receptive ability, impose various pressures on the adult translator. Mason (2000) illustrates how the spirit of the original (Nida’s term, in Munday et al. 2022, 57) changes when the translation is made for an audience different from the intended audience of the ST.

68  Honeylet E. Dumoran This will be exemplified in Section 5.6 of this work with insights from the Philippine release of a documentary. The sections that follow demonstrate how audiovisual texts for children are a unique set altogether. 5.3 The AV Text for Children: Breaking the Fourth Wall A characteristic feature of audiovisual (AV) learning texts for children is the breaking of the fourth wall and real-time audience participation. The fourth wall refers to the imaginary wall that separates the performers from the audience. In this type of AV text, the characters speak to the audience directly and involve them actively in the solving of a problem at hand. This is done by asking direct questions and waiting for a response during a long pregnant pause. Variants of this activity include making the audience participate by asking them to do various movements and hand gestures, often with an equivalent audiovisual “effect” onscreen. For example, in the episode Journey to the Monkey King’s Castle, Kai Lan asks the audience to help her put the hall back into order after party decorations are strewn all over the place by impish foo dogs that have come to life. For this task, Kai Lan asks her audience-friends to point their index fingers to the screen like a magic wand and to use their fingers to move the lanterns to their proper places. An animated magic red stream later shoots from the lower edge of the screen, creating an illusion of magic from the audience’s outstretched index finger. The length of the pause is one that is not too long to bore the smarter and/or older members of the audience, and which is also not too short to deprive the younger audience of time to respond. In some AV learning programs, the pause consists only of dead air: it is devoid even of background noise and music. The visual accompaniment is the character looking through the fourth wall. This technique is characteristic of programs such as Dora the Explorer; Ni Hao, Kai Lan; and Blue’s Clues. Over the years, AV texts for children have departed from a magazine-type format where the show has segments, and toward a more narrative-type format, where an episode is built around a plot. The latter has been found to be more effective than a magazine-type format, which is composed of three or four regular segments. While this is the case, repetition plays an important role in how children’s learning materials are created, such that AV programs that take a narrative-type format still bear recurring sequences. Each episode, therefore, builds the plot through a predictable pattern: a context for adventure is set, a problem arises, and a solution is carried out with the help of the audience. Characteristically, a recurring sequence will have an accompanying theme song or dialogic sequence, such as those exemplified in Table 5.1. The songs in these sequences are usually retained, except for the opening theme song, which may be translated into Filipino, as in the case of Go, Diego, Go! which replaced the opening sequence of every Go, Diego episode. In the Philippine translation of these sequences, the dialogic repetition is retained throughout the series by keeping the same translation choices each

Necessary Infidelity  69 Table 5.1  Recurring Sequences and Their Communicative Exchange in the AV Programs AV Learning Program

Recurring Sequence

Dialogic Sequence

Dora the Explorer

Dora needs directions

Blue’s Clues

Dora worries that Swiper is near Swiper tries to steal Dora’s things Backpack reveals his contents Dora completes the adventure Joe sees a puzzle/mystery

Dora: Whom do we ask if we don’t know where to go? Audience: The Map! *Map sings his theme. Do you see Swiper?

Joe receives a letter Joe solves the puzzle Ni Hao, Kai Lan

Kai Lan appreciates the audience’s help Kai Lan says goodbye

Dora and audience say Swiper, no swiping! Backpack sings his theme Dora sings “We did it!” Joe:  We have to sit down in the …. Audience:  Thinking Chair!. Mailbox hollers “Mail time!” Joe sings “We just got a letter” theme Joe sings “We just figured out Blue’s Clues!” “Super!” “You make my heart feel super happy!”

time. In Dora the Explorer, for example, the command sequence “Swiper, no swiping!” where Dora raises her right hand, is rendered into Filipino as “Swiper, huwag kang lalapit!” (trans. “Swiper, don’t come near!”). Dora asks her audience to hold up their right hand in front of them, and this action, plus the visual onscreen complement the rather incongruent translation of forbidding Swiper from stealing anything. Swiper’s name is also retained in the Filipino translation, and while his bandit’s mask and the fact that he is literally a sly fox fosters a seamless congruence in the English original, these items become only incidental in the Filipino translation. In summary, AV learning texts for children have these features: (1) realtime audience participation; (2) narrative-type format with recurring sequences; (3) accompanying theme songs for recurring segments; and (4) lesson delivery in problem-adventure-celebration format. In the translation of these texts, it is  imperative that these four features are retained. For example, because a premium is given to predictability and repetition, the translation requires consistency in the translation choices pertaining to recurring segments. Realtime audience participation entails stricter visual and dramatic synchrony.

70  Honeylet E. Dumoran Between the plot and the lesson, the lesson content requires stricter rendition, while some liberties may be taken in the translation of the plot-related elements. 5.4 Netflix and Translation The shift in media platforms from traditional broadcast for television to streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ also reformed audiovisual translation. Now, language options are on demand, just as any show is available for streaming on demand. Unlike television programs which were the only broadcast medium for shows until the past decade, streaming services make available any show at any time; the user interface allows the platform to remember which episode in a series one is watching, and it picks up from that episode the next time one logs back in. Language options are now also an expected feature of streaming services. Disney+ makes available both an audio (dubbed) track in several languages as  well as subtitle tracks in more languages than the audio track. The Little Mermaid, for example, is available in 28 languages (i.e., there are 28 language audio tracks available for the movie; all are dubbed onto the characters). Each one is available as an option for the movie, and when selected, runs the audio in this language. This includes songs, which are all translated into each of the 28 languages. English subtitles are onscreen by default, but these could be turned off as a further language option available for the audience. In addition to language audio tracks, there are also assistive audio tracks in a few languages (e.g., English, French, and German) for the blind, and closed captions (subtitles) for the hard-of-hearing. These language options require massive translation efforts, and in 2017, Netflix launched Hermes, a now-defunct online subtitling and translation test and indexing system (Fetner and Sheehan 2017) specifically to manage the call for translators for its programs. The launch declared that the streaming service sees a future where English will not be the primary viewing experience on Netflix. Hermes quickly became saturated and had to shut down a year later, with Netflix putting forth an announcement that each one of the language tests could not take in any more users as applicants from all over the world had run down the software to its full capacity. Hermes never opened again, but Netflix, as well as other streaming services such as Disney+ now include in-app or native options for language and mode (audio or subtitles). Netflix Kids’ Cocomelon, an AV learning text for toddlers, employs a surprising translation mode: subtitling. The language options for the show include Filipino subtitles. Everything in the show is subtitled, including the songs in the episodes. Since the target age bracket of the children audience of Cocomelon indexes that the children are still nonreading, the subtitles are assumed to be for the adult companion of the kids. Cocomelon is originally in English, and its Filipino subtitles retain many English words including animal names; on the other hand, names of shapes and colors are translated into Filipino.

Necessary Infidelity  71 5.5 What Is Lost Blue’s Clues, a prototypical AV learning text for children, reveals an interesting case of loss—one that renders ineffective the delivery of the lesson content in the translated text. This pertains to the loss of rhyme, when rhyme essentially carries the context through in the AV sequence. When this happens, humor (or amusement) is also lost, as the scene (or sequence) is not translated as it should best be translated. Table 5.2 exemplifies this loss. In this episode, Opposites, Joe has been asking the audience to give him examples of opposites. In this sequence, however, the audience spots the familiar Blue’s clue, and offscreen voices of kids (audience) call Joe’s attention to it. When they shout, “A clue!” Joe hears “new,” and he assumes that the kids/audience are still giving him examples of the lesson. The same thing happens when they say, “Right there!” pointing to the clue, but Joe hears “right” and assumes that the kids were calling out “right and left” as opposites. The rhymes are not rendered in Filipino, as transliterations were used. As a result, the visual confusion of Joe that is seen onscreen now seems random and disjointed in the translated text. These losses are also vividly exemplified by the translation of a French documentary entitled March of the Penguins, the American release of the eighty-minute French documentary film La marche de l’empereur, which literally means “The Emperor’s March.” The film details the yearly journey of the emperor penguins of Antarctica, which is described in the film as “the harshest place on earth.” Set in this scientific context, the film tells, in rather beautiful language, how even “in the harshest place on Earth, love survives” (film tagline). Directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet, the original French version has been dubbed as if the penguins themselves were telling the story. The international translations, however, except for the first German release, used a nar­ ration voiceover, where a narrator details the penguins’ march from their sea-home to their ancestral breeding ground. The American release was narrated by the American actor Morgan Freeman. The Philippine release, on the other hand, is known under the title Penguin, Penguin, Paano ka Ginawa? (trans. Penguin, Penguin, How Were You Made?). The Filipino translation carried the English title as its subtitle and is narrated by the Filipino actress Sharon Cuneta. It was released in the Philippines in 2005, the same year March of the Penguins won Best Documentary in the Academy Awards.

Table 5.2  Loss of Rhyme, Opposites (Blue’s Clues) A clue! A clue! New … and old. That’s an opposite. Right there! Right and left. That’s another one.

May clue! May clue! Bago at luma. Opposite din yan. Ayon oh. Kanan at kaliwa. Tama rin yan.

72  Honeylet E. Dumoran The film opens with a long-range shot of the ice-covered land of Antarctica while the opening credits appear onscreen. In both the original (i.e., American release) and the translated versions, a narrator describes the climate in the continent—its cold weather and the harsh condition that makes living almost impossible. In the English version, however, the narrator ironically describes the temperature as a “balmy 58 degrees.” The translated version omits the adjective, and consequently, the irony and the humor are lost. This loss of nuance in the translated version occurs in several instances, insofar as faithfulness to equivalent effect is concerned. In the scene before the title appears in the original, for example, the narrator in the English version points out that because of the harsh conditions in the place, the “former inhabitants” have either died or left the place for good, all except one “tribe” who stubbornly stayed behind. This use of general (and vague) terms is understood to be deliberate in the original version, especially when a far and hazy shot of tall creatures accompanies the voiceover. It is not until later that the “inhabitants/tribe” is revealed to be, in fact, emperor penguins. In the original, an artistic decision was made to make it first appear that these “inhabitants” were people, and for the film to deliver a sense of mystery. The translated version renders the phrase as “ang mga hayop” (trans. the animals), and when it does, it obliterates the attempt at the mysterious. No longer is the audience made curious about the stubborn “tribe” who stayed behind, but is rather told at the onset, thus rendering a much-simplified version of an otherwise tricky narrative technique. 5.6 Un-equivalent Effect While the achievement of an equivalent effect in the TT audience is a sound parameter for a good translation, in the case of translating audiovisual texts for children, certain situations require the creation of a dissimilar effect or an un-equivalent effect. Such a case is exemplified by March of the Penguins, whose translation is characterized by a marked shift in tone, brought about by the shift toward a younger audience for the translated film. The dominant tone with which the documentary is presented is definitely a sense of apprehension for the penguins who shall undertake the journey. In the Filipino translation, however, this is often replaced by a sense of excitement. This is achieved through the addition of a segment, resulting in an unpaired segment in Table 5.3. The rendering of the English “their long march will begin” in Filipino as the informal utterance “sasabak pa rin” (trans. take on the challenge) results in a shift in tone, from a formal one to an informal one. Also, the vocal tone with which the Filipino AV text’s narrator delivers this also easily signals a shift in the attitude, and therefore delivers a dissimilar or an un-equivalent effect— an instance of necessary infidelity that euphemizes the serious content, and “cushions the blow,” so to speak, for the younger audience.

Necessary Infidelity  73 Table 5.3  Shift in Tone Due to Shift in Audience, March of the Penguins And some of them will not survive it. Nonetheless, when the last of the clan has finally clambered onto the ice, their long march will begin.

May iba na hindi ito kakayanin. (Literal translation) Pero ang karamihan, sasabak pa rin. Back trans: But most will take on the challenge. Dahil ito na ang nakagawian nila, libong taon na ang bumibilang. Back trans: Because this is what they have been doing for thousands of years.

This general shift in tone is also seen in a supposedly poignant scene detailing the gravity of the task the penguins undertake each year and the persistence with which they do it. The narrator underscores the distance of the breeding ground from the sea. The journey and the seeming impossibility of the task of undertaking it are underscored in the English version by the serious voice of the narrator and by the gravity with which he foretells that some of the penguins will not make it. This effect is not rendered in the translation, as can be seen in the segmentation in the shift analysis1 of the scene (Table 5.4). Table 5.4 shows the addition of a commentary, “Mantakin niyo yun!”(trans. Imagine that!) in the translation. This is the first of this type of addition in the film where commentaries, which are not in the original, are freely inserted in the translation. This freedom is afforded to the translator since the only visual synchrony requirement of a voiceover AV translation is that of the image and the background voice. This is unlike dubbed translations, which require, among others, lip synchrony. The table also shows the use of the very informal equivalent for the adverb “continuously” (segment 115). The rewording to the English word “non-stop” within a Filipino phrase consequently changes

Table 5.4  Segmentation: Addition of a Commentary, March of the Penguins Their breeding ground can be up to 70 miles away. To get there they will walk day and night continuously, sometimes for a week. Their breeding ground can be up to 70 miles away. To get there they will walk day and night continuously, sometimes for a week.

112 113 114 115

Ang kaso, 70 miles ang kailangan nilang lakarin para mahanap ang gusto nila. Mantakin n’yo yun! 70 miles! Non-stop na paglalakad ‘to. From morning to evening, for one week, dire-diretso sila, nang walang pahinga. ang kaso, 70 miles ang kailangan nilang lakarin para mahanap ang gusto nila. Mantakin n’yo yun! Non-stop na paglalakad ‘to. From morning to evening, for one week, dire-diretso sila, nang walang pahinga

74  Honeylet E. Dumoran the effect delivered to the target audience. Also, the playful vocal tone with which the TT narrator delivers this line makes light of the situation, and the sense of foreboding over the long and perilous journey is lost. It is, however, replaced by a palpable sense of excitement for a challenging trip. 5.7 Necessary Infidelity Six types of obligatory shifts may occur in the translation of AV learning texts for children: transposition, economy, simplification, adaptation, register conversion, and accommodation. Transposition and economy are formal processes while the rest are various types of adaptation. Transposition. Transposition is inherently meaning-preserving, and discernible deviations from the original are due to structural differences in the linguistic systems of the source and target texts. The term was first used by Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) to refer to a change in word class that does not affect the meaning of the translated segment. Its use in this chapter refers to the obligatory deviations imposed by linguistic features that are unique in either language, as well as by the imageries used in equivalent metaphors or idiomatic expressions; neither creates a change in meaning. Thus, two types of transposition can occur in translating AV learning texts for children: (1) structurally imposed transposition and (2) metaphor/idiom transposition. An instance of the first type is the obligatory use of the honorific/politeness particle po in the Filipino translation of Ni Hao, Kai Lan in (1). In Filipino, a similar goal of encoding politeness is done linguistically through the use of plural pronouns. This is exemplified by the second person plural pronoun kayo in (1) as well. (1) the Filipino politeness particle po (Ni Hao, Kai Lan) Monkey King! These are all our friends! We brought you some flowers! Haring Matsing! Sila po ang mga kaibigan natin! Dinalhan po namin kayo ng mga bulaklak. Monkey King! They are our (=inclusive) friends! We brought you ( = plural) flowers (polite).

English Filipino

Back translation

The ST-TT pair in (2) exemplifies an instance of idiom transposition, which involves the employment of an equivalent idiomatic expression from the target text. In this example, the English expression “all bets are off” is rendered in the TT with the Filipino equivalent “ibang usapan na yun” (trans. that is a different conversation).

Necessary Infidelity  75 (2) idiom transposition, March of the Penguins English Filipino

Emperor penguins are monogamous. Sort of. They mate with only one partner per year, which means every new season, all bets are off. Aba, ang mga emperor penguin ay monogamous. Ibig sabihin, iisa lang ang kapartner nila. Pero sa loob ng isang taon lang yun ha. Pagkatapos ng isang taon, aba, ibang usapan na yun.

In addition to these two types of transposition is one that occurs after retention (i.e., items that are not translated into Filipino, and remain spoken in English). Units that are retained are those that do not have direct lexical correspondences in Filipino. Among these are (1) names of fruits and other food (e.g., peach, orange, lettuce, salad, croutons, pizza); (2) animals (e.g., bear, sloth, lion, fox); (3) modifiers (e.g., minuscule, spiral, striped, brown, excited); (4) names of specific things (e.g., colander, lamp, clues, shelf, wagon, party, flute, card, pawprint). These may also include those that do have lexical counterparts but which are not as usually used as the English source item. Examples of these are pepper, notebook, sweep, and top. One unique linguistic feature of these retained items is their ability to take Filipino affixes, yielding inflected words with English roots and Filipino affixes, as in (3). Philippine languages, including Filipino, are often described as having a less rigid system for syntactic category membership. This means that noun-yielding affixes determine nominal status and verb-yielding affixes determine verbal status. This is the usual case for borrowed English words, which may take Filipino verbal affixes even when they are prototypical nouns in English and yield inflected verbs. The ligature –ng is also affixed to the English root, such as in “clue” in (3). Ligatures in Philippine languages are morphemes that cliticize onto nouns in order to link to other items in a phrase. (3) affixation of English roots, Blue’s Clues nag-skidoo REAL.PV-skid i-toss IRR.AV-toss ang mga clueng ito SUBJ=PL=clue-LKR=PROX

“skidooed” “to toss” “these clues”

The lesson content of the AV learning texts is generally translated through literal translation and/or retention. Consequently, they render very few deviations from the original. The translation of the narrative content (i.e., plot elements) is afforded more liberty. However, in the strict retention of lesson content, some peculiar translations arise. Such is the case in the transliteration of shapes and colors, where one would expect the English words to be retained. In the episode Joe Gets a Clue, for example, Steve and Blue hide behind some shapes, and they describe to Joe where they are hiding so that he can find them. The translations in Table 5.5 occur as follows:

76  Honeylet E. Dumoran Table 5.5  Transliteration in Joe Gets a Clue (Blue’s Clues) We’re hiding behind the shape that’s closest to the red circle. Behind the yellow diamond! Behind the blue triangle

Nagtatago kami sa likod ng hugis na pinakamalapit sa pulang bilog. Sa likod ng dilaw na hugis diamante! Sa likod ng asul na tatsulok!

The transliteration of the lesson content (i.e., shapes) in this case may have been a deliberate translation strategy in order to also teach the Filipino names of the shapes. Blue’s Clues, however, is not a language-learning material like Dora the Explorer. The average Filipino [child] would use the English word for the shapes in lieu of the less popular Filipino (or other Philippine language) shape name. Economy. Economy (first used by Vinay and Darbelnet [Munday et al., 2022, p. 78]) is observed when longer ST segments are reduced to shorter TT segments. This is usually achieved through the omission of modifying words or phrases, which yield structural shifts, and the use of shorter equivalents, which yield shifts in meaning. This is exemplified by the ST-TT pair in Table 5.6. The non-translation of segment 18 in Table 5.6 might be assessed as benign infidelity. The visuals that accompany the verbal utterance compensate for the non-translation. Onscreen, Kai Lan is seen looking around for something that may be used as a wheel, which she finds and successfully installs. While this non-translation does not hurt the plot of the story, the pedagogical content of the utterance may have been left unrendered. Still, notwithstanding the pedagogical event in the original—asking the audience to help identify a round object—is a minor one, since the major pedagogical objective of learning to extend help is retained. This renders the shift a necessary infidelity, one that needed to be made to summarize the verbal cues, but still retain the pedagogical ones.

Table 5.6  Non-Translation of Lesson Content, (Ni Hao, Kai Lan) Kai Lan: Don’t worry, Mr. Beetle, we can help you.

16

Mr. Beetle: You can? Kai Lan: Sure. We just need to find something else we can use for a wheel. Do you see something that’s round? Hey you’re right! That rock is round like a wheel. We can use it! Kai Lan: There! All fixed, Mr. Beetle!

17 18

Mr. Beetle: That’s great!

20

19

Kai Lan: Huwag ka’ng mag-alala, Ginoong Salagubang. Matutulungan ka namin. Ginoong Salagubang: Talaga?

Kai Lan: Hayan! Maayos na, Ginoong Salagubang! Ginoong Salagubang: Ang galing nyo naman!

Necessary Infidelity  77 (4) economy, The Chocolate Tree (Dora the Explorer) Chocolate tree: Can you sing for me? Puno ng Tsokolate: Pwede bang kantahin nyo yun sa akin? Chocolate tree: Will you sing that to me? Dora: Sure! [to audience] Will you help us sing the chocolate song to the Chocolate Tree? Dora: Sige po! [to audience] Sabayan nyo kami! Dora: Yes (polite)! [to audience] Join us!

English Filipino Back translation English Filipino Back translation

In some instances, constraints in economy are fulfilled with ease because of linguistic features that are available in the target language. Such a case is exemplified in (4) above, where the highlighted segment succinctly rewords the longer instruction. Simplification. Simplification occurs when an ST segment is made more specific in the TT. These usually occur outside the lesson context and within the narrative context. One of the especially interesting occurrences of simplification in the data involves the translation of idiomatic expressions. Unlike idiom transposition, where metaphors or idiomatic expressions are rendered using equivalent expressions, idioms or metaphors are rendered into the Filipino AV texts by specifying what they mean, as in Table 5.7. Consequently, their pragmatic figurativeness is lost, but their communicational intent is delivered. In Table 5.7, the expression get rid of x had been made more specific to the paw print -clue that disappears when the clue is solved, thus the use of “erase” the paw print. In (b), a hand gesture by the audience had been taught to them earlier in the episode. This causes all the inverted furniture in Joe’s house to right itself. “Figure out” in (d) had been translated into various synonyms of “determine” on three occasions: guess, decipher, and think. Adaptation. Adaptation is a translation process that changes the referent of the ST concept when it is absent in the TT sociocultural or geo-political system. This is seen in several instances in the AV texts, such as the one in (5): (5) adaptation for snow-related referents English: Now it is dark almost all the time, and the mother of all blizzards is about to arrive. Filipino: Napakadilim na. Parating na ang pinakamalalang bagyo. Back translation: It is very dark. The worst storm is coming.

For March of the Penguins, which is set in the ice-covered continent of Antarctica, adaptations for non-existing snow-related referents in the target culture were expected. The pair above illustrates the adaptation of “blizzard,” a snowstorm, as “bagyo” (trans. storm), the closest equivalent in the TT’s sociocultural context. These cases comprise only 1% (eleven instances) of the

78  Honeylet E. Dumoran Table 5.7  Specification of Idiomatic Expressions, Joe Got a Clue! (Blue’s Clues) English Idiom

Filipino Translation

BACK TRANSLATION

a. Get rid of the paw print! b. Do your thing again!

Burahin ang paw print! Ayusin mo ang mga nakabaliktad na bagay! Umpisahan mo na. hulaan ang clues alamin ang clues isipin ang clues

Erase the paw print! Turn the inverted things right-side up! Start it. guess the clues decipher the clues think about the clues

c. Go for it! d. Figure out the clues!

corpus. These included the absolute changing of the referent in the TT segment, such as in the case of “ice walls” to “bundok” (trans. mountains). In processes such as adaptation and in some cases of equivalence, where the SL segment is rendered in the TT using the concept closest to the ST referent, the differences in culture are recognized. In cases where culture-specific elements come into play (Table 5.8), the translation employs strategies such as adaptation. In the first example below, the Chinese stone lions called foo dogs are translated in the target text as “estatuwang aso” (trans. dog statues). Foo dogs are Chinese imperial guardian lions that are placed in entryways. This yields a shift from the original as the translation does not translate the cultural element at all; however, the faithful translation of foo dogs is also not obligatory since it does not have any bearing on the lesson content, nor does it take away any meaning from the narrative elements. The visuals also compensate for what is not translated. Register conversion. Register conversion refers to the use of vocabulary for children. This is seen in the translation of the vocatives in March of the Penguins. One notably consistent deviation from the original that has been influenced by the shift to a younger audience is the TT’s use of referents to the penguin male, female, and chick. In the Filipino translation (Table 5.9), which is a translation intended for children (i.e., there is a shift in the target audience for this translation), references to the parent penguins are done vocatively, using the child-friendly labels Nanay Penguin (Mommy Penguin) and Tatay Penguin (Daddy Penguin). The chick is also consistently called Baby Penguin all throughout the documentary. The use of these referents results in a more personal and endearing tone.

Table 5.8  Adaptation of “Foo Dogs.” The Monkey King (Ni Hao, Kai Lan) Tolee: Kai Lan, we have a bigger problem! Tolee: Kai Lan, may mas malaki tayong Kai Lan: What is it, Tolee? problema ngayon! Tolee: The foo dogs! They’re alive! Kai Lan: Ano yun, Tolee? Tolee: Ang mga estatwang aso! Nabuhay ang mga estatuwa!

Necessary Infidelity  79 Table 5.9  Use of Age-Appropriate Vocative, March of the Penguins With unending patience, the pair rehearses the steps they will need to transfer the egg from the mother to the father.

Parang walang hanggang ensayo ng sayaw ang pagsalin ng itlog mula sa Nanay Penguin papunta sa Tatay Penguin. Back translation: The transfer of the egg from the Mommy Penguin to the Daddy Penguin is like an unending dance rehearsal.

The ST-TT pair in Table 5.9 above is a very good example of necessary infidelity: the shift in the audience of the target text necessitates the choice of a more natural and child-friendly phrase. This infidelity aids the presentation of the pedagogical content seen onscreen. It is also observed that such a choice is consistent throughout the target text. Serious content (e.g., penguins dying on the journey) is euphemized through this vocabulary choice, thereby making the text suitable for children. Another instance of register conversion is illustrated in Table 5.10 for the ST item “docile.” In this case, a Filipino equivalent, although available (i.e., “maamo,” trans. tamed), was not used. Instead, another reasonably simpler English word is employed. The use of “behaved” a common entry in children’s vocabulary, simplifies the delivery of meaning and ensures an easy reception by children. Accommodation. Accommodation refers to necessary shifts in tone and point-of-view in order to deliver a filtered experience and achieve an ageappropriate response. These may be accomplished through the addition or the deletion of segments in the TT. The addition of commentaries in March of the Penguins assists the young audience and guides them toward the emotion that is being developed by the scene. However, alongside this, a dissimilar effect is also created. For example (Table 5.11), the segment “Kawawa naman” (trans. poor penguins) is a commentary that makes explicit what the scene intends to achieve: compassion toward the poor, shivering penguins, which are guarding their eggs against the blizzard. In the ST, this is delivered in a straightforward and even detached Table 5.10  Use of Age-Appropriate Lexical Item, March of the Penguins Though they can be aggressive during the rest of the year, at this time the males are totally docile. Though they can be aggressive

534

during the rest of the year at this time the males are totally docile

535 536 537 538

Kahit agresibo ang mga Tatay Penguin, behaved sila sa ganitong panahon. Kahit agresibo ang mga Tatay Penguin sa ganitong panahon sila behaved

80  Honeylet E. Dumoran Table 5.11  Shift Analysis: Addition of Commentary (March of the Penguins) Each day brings them closer to exhaustion and starvation. each day brings them closer to exhaustion and starvation

635 636 637 638

Kawawa naman. Bawat araw nalalapit sila sa matinding pagod at gutom. Kawawa naman bawat araw nalalapit sila sa matinding pagod at gutom

manner, but it can be seen how the added commentary in the TT has made this a personal and endearing matter. Another example of this is the addition of commentaries in a scene where the penguins finally arrive at their destination and where they immediately set off to mate. This love scene is powerfully delivered, especially in the English original, where a montage of mating penguin pairs in slow motion is presented with gentle poignant background music. There is no narration in the English original during the entire three-minute scene. In the Filipino translation, however, not only was the background music replaced with a more upbeat one, the scene was also interspersed with teasing remarks and other commentaries from the narrator. Some of these comments are presented Table 5.12. The effect achieved by the English original is not similar to the effect intended by the Filipino translation. The ST works toward a heartwarming experience of this intimacy that parallels human intimacy while the TT delivers a more animated but tempered version of the experience. The appreciation of the ST experience requires a more mature perspective, and the shift toward a younger audience requires the TT to accommodate the younger, less receptive audience.

Table 5.12  Addition of Commentary, The Love Scene (March of the Penguins) 297. Addition 298. Addition 299. Addition

300. Addition

297

Hey, baka tulog ka na? Ah, ayun, gising naman pala

298

Ay naku, parang tayo kung maglambingam! Talaga naman

299

Naku, sweet naman, Mahirap lang siguro mag-lips to lips to. Nagkakasakitan, eh.

300

Pero, parang tayo rin, ano? Kitang-kita mo na nagmamhalan sila.

Necessary Infidelity  81 5.8 Future Directions Translation for children reveals how we protect the most vulnerable members of our society. When this involves multimodal texts that carry with them multiple systems of meaning-making, translation necessarily becomes a more nuanced exercise. Compounding the challenges for this are the multi-cultural realities of contexts such as the Philippines. Our multilingual contexts include English as one of at least two languages that most people speak. English is the medium of instruction during most of everybody’s education and is the official language in business and in government transactions. The retention of English segments in translated texts is expected. The AV translations exemplified for this work reveal such a trend, but the extent of retention is an unexplored area for these texts. This information may be used to index many social phenomena, including language shift, and could inform policies relating to language use and education, among others. Intersections such as these need to be explored, especially in multilingual locales such as the Philippines. In addition to this, developments in digital platforms are seen to soon reformat narrative content, as they have when we shifted to on-demand streaming platforms, making television obsolete. More options for interaction now involve the audience in how the story unfolds. This will not be unlike the Choose Your Own Adventure book format for children, where readers turn to a certain page following a prompt from the book. In this traditional book format, the reader may be a character in the story, and as such, exercise his agency in “choosing his own adventure.” There will be certain parts in the book that require decisions, and the reader-character must decide which option to take. A digital platform will transform this experience and consequently transform how the text will be received. Reception frameworks need to develop toward these trajectories, as more and more AV learning texts become interactive. The fourth wall will soon be a thing of the past, too, and text will become a phenomenological entity that comes into existence only when the audience interacts with the screen. Our frameworks will need to keep up with the evolution of these text formats, and a good place to start is where the children are. Note 1 A shift analysis (Catford, 1965) is a helpful method in doing a preliminary comparison of the ST-TT segments. A shift analysis chart shows two parts of the analysis: the segmentation and the identification of shifts. The tables in this chapter show only the segmentation part. The SL segment (unit of translation) is placed in the leftmost column and the TT segment in the right. Each segment is numbered. A number may be shared by an ST-TT pair. These numbers are their tags and are used to refer to the segments in identifying the shifts or the deviations from the ST. Unpaired segments indicate that they have been added or omitted in the translation process.

82  Honeylet E. Dumoran References Catford, John. 1965/2000. “Translation Shifts.” In L. Venuti (Ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. 1st Edition, 141–147. Cyrus, Lea. 2009. “Old Concepts, New Ideas: Approaches to Translation Shifts.” MonTI. Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación, 1: 87–106. Diaz-Cintas, Jorge. 2009. New Trends in Translation Studies. Canada: Cromwell Press Group, Ltd. Fetner, Chris, and Denny Sheehan. 2017. “The Netflix HERMES Test: Quality Subtitling at Scale.” Netflixtechblog.Com (blog). 2017. https://netflixtechblog. com/the-netflix-hermes-test-quality-subtitling-at-scale-dccea2682aef Mason, Ian. 2000. “Audience Design in Translating.” The Translator, 6(1): 1–22. Miao, Ju. 2000. “The Limitations of ‘Equivalent Effect’.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 8 (3): 197–205. Munday, Jeremy, Sara Ramos Pinto, and Jacob Blakesly. 2022. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. 5th Edition. New York: Routledge. Oittinen, Ritta. 2000. Translating for Children. Vol. II. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. Oittinen, Ritta, and Anne Ketola. 2014. “Various Modes for Various Receivers. Audience Design in the Context of Picturebook Translation.” In M. Höglund (Ed.), Word and Image: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches. 107–125. Tampere: University of Tampere. Reiss, Katharina. 1981/2004. “Type, Kind and Individuality of Text: Decision Making in Translation.” In L. Venuti (Ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd Edition, 168–179. London: Routledge. Vermeer, Hans. 1989/2021. “Skopos and Commission in Translational Action.” In L.  Venuti (Ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. 3rd Edition, 219–230. London: Routledge. Vinay, Jean-Paul, and Jean Darbelnet. 1958/2004. “A Methodology for Translation.” In L. Venuti (Ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd Edition, 128–137. London: Routledge. Zhang, Meifang, and Pan Li. 2009. “Introducing a Chinese Perspective on Translation Shifts: A Comparative Study of Shift Models by Loh and Vinay and Darbelnet.” The Translator, 15 (2): 351–374.

6 Gender Bias in Machine Translation The Case of Filipino-English Translation in Google Translate Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. 6.1 Introduction Translation, in simple terms, refers to the process of conveying the equivalent meaning of a text from one language to another. Translation activities have been practiced since ancient times. The Rosetta Stone (196 BC), for example, is inscribed with Ancient Egyptian texts with their equivalent in Ancient Greek. Romans translated classical Greek texts and had been influential in translation theory, that is, Marcus Tullius Cicero’s insistence on “weighing words” rather than “counting them,” and Horace’s condemnation of literal translation (Kelly 1995, 419). The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was subsequently translated into Latin, was instrumental in the spread of Christianity. The translation of philosophy and science was prevalent in the Renaissance, together with literary translation (cf. Kelly 1995). Since then, translation has played an important role in understanding concepts from one language to another. Recent technological developments have made the task of translation easier as compared to before. With the use of different machine translation tools, the translation process has become faster because a large volume of documents can be translated in a shorter period. While the idea had been conceived much earlier, beginning from Al-Kindi’s cryptanalysis in the ninth century (DuPont 2018), the development of modern machine translation (MT) began in the 1940s by Warren Weaver and Andrew Booth. The 1950s–1960s saw a growth in interest in MT, with several projects in development overseen by several universities and corporations. However, the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) report in 1966 concluded that the “MT was slower, less accurate, and twice as expensive as human translation and that ‘there is no immediate or predictable prospect of useful machine translation’” (Hutchins 1995, 435). Even so, MT rapidly advanced in the 1980s with linguistic rule-based models and in the 1990s with corpus-based models (cf. Hutchins 1995), leading to the MT systems of the present.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-7

84  Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. Even though at times the quality of the text generated using machine translation tools is considered by some as inaccurate or incomprehensible, the quality of translation has improved throughout the years. Efforts to improve translation using these tools are still ongoing, and the quality is said to be improving every year by 3–7% (Malinowski and Mandell 2021). Some machine translation tools available include Google Translate, Bing Microsoft Translator, DeepL, and Reverso Translation. With the use of these translation tools, translation can be generated instantly, even without the user’s knowledge of the source language. The use of machine translation is very beneficial to many. It can be used as an instructional technology for those who are using the tool to learn a foreign language. In a study by Joan Clifford, Lisa Merschel, and Deborah Reisinger (as cited in Urlaub and Dessein 2022) on the challenges of machine translation, they mentioned that language learners use a translation tool like an online dictionary when looking for the equivalent lexical items in the target language. For language professionals, the use of machine translation tools increases productivity and efficiency as more work is done in a certain amount of time. It is also good for the business sector due to reduced labor costs, provided that the machine translator tool can generate translations of large volumes of text, and the human translator will act only as a reviewer of the translation to ensure its good quality. 6.2 Google Translate Google Translate is one of the most popular machine translation tools available online. It is used primarily to translate texts, handwriting, photos, and speech in over 100 languages (Caswell 2022). It is available in three Philippine languages, namely, Filipino, Cebuano, and Ilocano. In using Google Translate, the user can simply type in texts in the source language using the website or the mobile application. JPG, JPEG, or PNG files can also be uploaded to generate the same image files with the translation of the texts. The user can also upload a document in DOCX, PDF, or XLSX format and download the translated document. To translate a website, one can simply copy-paste the URL, and it will lead the user to a new tab with the translation in the target language. Google Translate was initially a statistical machine translation service; then in 2016, Google Translate switched to a neural machine translation engine that translates “whole sentences at a time, rather than just piece by piece. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar” (Turovsky 2016, para. 2). Launched with Chinese-English translation pairing (Le et al. 2016), the system has a reduced error rate of 60% (Metz 2016) and has since been applied to other languages like English and French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish.

Gender Bias in Machine Translation  85 6.3 Gender Bias and Google Translate Despite the popularity of machine tools and their wide use in different sectors, some still raise concerns over how these tools perpetuate certain social biases, one of which is gender bias. By definition, gender bias refers to a “person receiving different treatment based on the person’s real or perceived gender identity” (Cornell Law School 2020, para. 1). This bias can be reflected in language, with its subtle reproduction of imbalance in the status and power of different genders, in favor of men and their attached social roles (Menegatti and Rubini 2017). This permeates into social environments such as education and the workplace. A study by Flores and Aranduque (2022) titled “Gender Bias in Philippine English Textbooks” revealed that there is a dominance of the male gender in both quantitative and qualitative representations. The authors examined textbooks as these may affect the attitudes the students may carry into their adult life, including their values and societal roles. Subtly and often unconsciously, “the tone and development of the content and the illustrations in textbooks foster in a learner, positive or negative attitudes about self, race, religion, regions, sex, ethnic and social class groups, occupations, life expectations, and life chances” (para. 1). Their findings affirm gender bias with male characters being more visible (53% vs. 21.45%) and are mentioned first. Female usual occupations are teachers, nurses, singers, dancers, caregivers, while men were doctors, judges, counselors, local officials. Additionally, male activities were fixing broken household appliances, carrying heavy stuff, and traveling, while women were seen cleaning the house, cooking, and taking care of sick people. The books described girls/women as friendly, weak, nurturing, and bad-mouth, while boys/men were seen as angry, brave, aggressive, strong (cf. para. 43). A clear division could be seen here, based on Eagly’s (1987) Social Role theory, that men are agentic or have personal qualities that are assertive and controlling, while women are communal or are more concerned with other people’s welfare (16). Platform/online work had been steadily increasing in the past few years, and the COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the shift of a lot of work opportunities online. But even in this online world, gender norms still affect opportunities and wages in favor of men, with women earning 18.4% less than men. In Peña and Yao’s (2022) report for the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, women are relegated to encoding, while more complex, value-adding tasks are for male freelancers. A respondent claims that it is “easier for women to encode … than to think of digital designs” (15). Other stereotypes include “some gender expectations even stereotype women as not being fit for ICT jobs at all” (16) or that they can generally work in “general virtual assistance, infographic design, and social media management” (15–16).

86  Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. Gender bias can also be present in machine translation. While it is mechanical and unfeeling, the information fed into it is human made, which in turn shows the bias of the society where the data is from. Human language encodes males as the prototypical human being, and the feminine form is derived from the masculine form (Menegatti and Rubini 2017). As Sonnad (2017) reiterates, “the algorithm is basing its translations on a huge corpus of human language, so it is merely reflecting a bias that already exists” (para. 13). In translation, gender bias occurs when certain gender-neutral words in the source language tend to yield male defaults or gender-specific words in the target language (Prates et al. 2020). Defaulting to male forms may have the negative effect of “making women disappear in mental representations” (Menegatti and Rubini 2017, 451) or general representations in the world. Yielding gender-specific words in the target language may lead to or reinforce behavioral and stereotypical attributions to specific genders. Several observations have been made on this issue. Londa Schiebinger (2014) was surprised when she ran an interview of her in Spanish through Google Translate. Despite the context, the translation produced masculine defaults, and she was repeatedly referred to as “he.” In other cases, gender-neutral third-person pronouns are given a gender-specific equivalent in Google Translate depending on the word that co-occurs with the pronoun. An article by Nikhil Sonnad (2017) mentioned how the neutral pronoun “o” in Turkish is given a gender-specific equivalent. He notes that for certain occupations such as a soldier, doctor, writer, and entrepreneur, and adjectives such as hard-working, strong, and pessimistic, Google Translate uses “he,” while for occupations such as teacher, nurse, nanny, and singer, and adjectives such as lazy, beautiful, and optimistic, the translation tool generates “she.” The same behavior had been observed in Filipino wherein the gender-neutral “siya” had been given specific equivalents of “he/she.” In 2021, a Twitter thread about Google Translate’s gender bias in the translation of Finnish gender-neutral terms prompted a similar inquiry into Filipino (Lucero 2021) and resulted in the following (Figure 6.1). It can be seen that while a man invests, plays, works, and drives, women are doing household chores and childcare. In the same thread, the patterns have also been found in Turkish, Hungarian, Euskera, and Bahasa Indonesia. Lariosa (2021) added more entries concerning a few adjectives and occupations wherein a man is smart, a leader, and works as a doctor, while a woman cooks and works as a nurse. These are sporadic observations on the translation of a small amount of data which at times goes viral. However, there is no systematic research yet on the topic at hand in Filipino or other Philippine languages. It is the aim of this study to contribute to the discourse on gender bias in machine translation by investigating how this issue is observed in Filipino-to-English translation using Google Translate.

Gender Bias in Machine Translation  87

Figure 6.1 Filipino-English translation of activities. (Lucero 2021).

6.4 Gender Bias in Filipino-English Translation Using Google Translate The Filipino language is considered a gender-neutral language. Unlike English, which uses the third person singular pronouns he/his (masculine) or she/her (feminine), Filipino uses siya (he/she) or niya (him/his/her), which is not specific to any gender. Gender is also not marked in the language as can be observed in words such as anak (son/daughter), biyenan (father/motherin-law), manugang (son/daughter-in-law), manggagamot (doctor), and mangingisda (fisherman/-woman). This does not mean, however, that gender distinction in the language does not exist. To mark gender, the words lalaki (male) and babae (female) are added to modify the noun, as in anak na lalaki (son)—anak na babae (daughter), biyenang lalaki (father-in-law)—biyenang babae (mother-in-law), and manugang na lalaki (son-in-law)—manugang na

88  Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. babae (daughter-in-law). For Spanish loan words, the affixes “o” and “a” are used to indicate masculine and feminine, respectively, as in the words abogado (male lawyer)—abogada (female lawyer), kusinero (male cook)—kusinera (female cook), suplado (snobbish man)—suplada (snobbish woman), and pasensyoso (patient man)—pasensyosa (patient woman). The existence of these gender-neutral words in the language does not mean that gender bias does not exist. The issue of gender goes beyond what is explicitly expressed in the language, and a closer examination of the language may reveal something about people’s assumptions and perceptions of masculinity and femininity. Remedios Miciano’s (2001) study on the perception of job-related terms in five Tagalog speech communities reveals that some occupation-related terms are associated with a particular gender. Jobs that involve chatter or talkativeness such as teaching and selling are strongly associated with females, while jobs that require strength and heavy work like farming, carpentry, and driving are associated with males. To assess whether gender bias is observed, the translation of the genderneutral pronoun siya, when used along with certain occupations, activities, and adjectives, was checked in the Google Translate website. A total of 483 activities, 73 occupations, and 150 adjectives were translated from Filipino into English. The formulated sentences on activities, occupations, and adjectives were translated individually so no information on the gender of the entity being described is available. In addition, four online entertainment articles were also translated to determine whether Google Translate makes use of contextual information to generate a more accurate translation. The articles contain the gender-neutral pronouns siya, niya, and kanya. It must be noted that although gender is non-binary, the analysis of the translation is only limited to the masculine and feminine forms as these are the forms generated in the translation tool. Furthermore, the study is descriptive and does not provide a translation gender bias index1. 6.4.1 Activities

Verbs, except for biologically restricted actions like being pregnant and giving birth, can be potentially done by anyone and are supposedly neutral. However, this is not the case, as verbs can be associated with specific genders. In a study by Johnson and Young (2002) on children’s ads, they were able to develop five categories that distinguish “particular types of verb elements that might be relevant for gender imaging” (472). These are action, competition/ destruction, agency/control, limited activity, and feeling/nurturing. Feeling/ nurturing elements are not found in boy-oriented ads, while there are 113 competition/destruction verb elements (in contrast to 9 in girl-oriented ads). Limited activity verbs are more present in girl-oriented ads, while more of the agency and control verb elements are seen in boy-oriented ads. Testing if Filipino verbs have gender associations, 483 verbs were translated in the Google Translate website.2 While there are only 483 verbs, 637

Gender Bias in Machine Translation  89 sentences were tested, given that some verbs can be inflected with more than one Agent focus affix. The sentences are in the pattern Verb (imperfective aspect) + siya, for example, Kumakain siya “he/she is eating,” Nag-aaral siya “he/she is studying/studies.” The sentences are constructed using this basic pattern and are context-free to answer the question: In the most basic construction, what does the gender-neutral pronoun siya default to? For the whole data, except for six verbs (0.012%) used in eight sentences (0.013%), all the rest are translated into the masculine form. The verbs associated with the feminine are getting/being pregnant, giving birth, changing clothes, weaving, and sewing, as seen in Table 6.1 below. It is very clear that the tool has a preference by using the masculine form as the default. 6.4.2 Occupations

In the analysis of work-related terms, a total of 73 unique occupations are included in the data. Based on the morphological structure of these workrelated terms, 42 (57.5%) of these are gender-neutral, 19 (26%) can be said to be gender-specific in that the word can take both the Spanish affixes “o” and “a,” while 12 (16.4%) can be said to be gender-specific but can only take either “o” or “a.” To check whether gender bias occurs in the translation, gender-neutral occupations are used in a sentence with the pronoun siya. As already mentioned earlier, it is assumed that gender bias occurs when these supposed gender-neutral occupations use male defaults in the generated translation of the sentences. Out of the 42 gender-neutral occupations, 34 occupations generated the male form. Only 8 of these generated the female form which includes hilot “midwife,” kasambahay “maid,” mananahi “seamstress,” masahista “masseuse,” and nars “nurse.” Table 6.1  Filipino sentences that translate to “she” in the Google Translate website Verb

Gloss

Sentence

Google Translate website

“to give birth”; “to act as sponsor (at a wedding, baptism, etc.)” “to give birth/actual giving birth” bihis “to dress/to change clothes” buntis “to impregnate”

Nag-aanak siya.

She is breeding.

habi luwal

“to be pregnant” “to weave” “to give birth”

Nabubuntis siya. Naghahabi siya. Nagluluwal siya.

tahi

“to sew”

Nagtatahi siya.

anak

Nanganganak siya. She is giving birth. Nagbibihis siya.

She is getting dressed.

Bumubuntis siya.

She is getting pregnant. [sic] “(He) is impregnating (someone)” She gets pregnant. She is weaving. She is giving birth to a child. She sews.

90  Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. Table 6.2  List of sample gender-neutral and gender-specific occupations Gender-neutral occupations Gender-specific occupations Gender-specific occupations that take both the affixes that take either “o” or “a” “o” and “a” ahente “agent” bise-presidente “vice-president” dentista “dentist”

abogado/abogada “lawyer” arkitekto “architect” alahero/alahera “jeweler” barbero “barber”

basurero/basurera “garbage collector” beterinaryo/beterinarya “veterinarian” drayber “driver” dekano/dekana “dean” editor “editor” doktor/doktora “doctor” guro “teacher” gobernador/gobernadora “governor” hilot “midwife” kahero/kahera “cashier” ilustrador “illustrator” konduktor/konduktora “conductor” kasambahay “house konsehal/konsehala helper” “councilor” klerk “clerk” kusinero/kusinera “cook” kongresista labandero/labandera “congressman/-woman” “laundryman/-woman” magsasaka “farmer” mayor/mayora “mayor” makata “poet” musikero/musikera “musician” mananahi “seamster/ pastor/pastora “pastor” seamstress” mangingisda sapatero/sapatera “fisherman/-woman” “shoemaker” masahista “masseur/ senador/senadora masseuse” “senator” nars “nurse” serbidor/serbidora “server” negosyante “entrepreneur” presidente “president” pulis “police” tagalaba “laundryman/-woman” tagalinis ng bahay “house cleaner”

bumbero “fireman/-woman” hardinero “gardener” karpintero “carpenter” manikurista “manicurist” minero “miner” payaso “clown” puta “whore” sekretarya “secretary” tubero “plumber”

Gender-specific occupations were also checked in the translation tool to see some patterns, and it is observed that Google Translate can recognize gender distinction in some of the work-related terms such as alahero/alahera “jeweler,” gobernador/gobernadora “governor,” kusinero/kusinera “cook,” portero/ portera “porter,” and serbidor/serbidora “server.” There are instances, though, when Google Translate does not recognize the distinction in word pairs such as in abogado/abogada “lawyer,” basurero/basurera “garbage collector,”

Gender Bias in Machine Translation  91 Table 6.3  Translation of sample Filipino adjectives with siya or niya Filipino sentence with an adjective

Google Translate website

Arogante siya. Balisa siya. Inosente siya. Kaakit-akit siya. Kalmado siya. Maaasahan siya. Maalalahanin siya. Malakas ang loob niya. Malandi siya. Matigas ang ulo niya.

He is arrogant He is anxious. He is innocent. She is attractive He is calm. He is reliable. He is considerate. He is strong-willed. She is flirtatious. He is stubborn.

dekano/dekana “dean,” doktor/doktora “doctor,” kahero/kahera “cashier,” konduktor/konduktora “conductor,” and konsehal/konsehala “councilor,” and uses the male form as default. However, the use of the male form as default in these specific instances may not be because of bias toward the male form, but rather because Google Translate does not recognize the female form. In the instances where only the male or female forms are used in Filipino, the generated translation is the one that is usually associated with the specific gender. For example, arkitekto “architect,” barbero “barber,” beterinaryo “veterinarian,” bumbero “fireman,” hardinero “gardener,” karpintero “carpenter,” minero “miner,” tubero “plumber,” and weyter “waiter” generated the male form as these are usually associated with men while manikurista “manicurist,” puta “whore,” and sekretarya “secretary” generated the female form as they are usually associated with women. 6.4.3 Adjectives

It is interesting to note that while Google Translate generates the male and female forms in the list of activities and occupations, the translation tool generated the male form in the list of 150 adjectives except only for two words, which is kaakit-akit (attractive) and malandi (flirtatious). With limited data analyzed, it can be said that Google Translate tends to generate the male form in its translation of adjectives and only those that are perceived to be qualities or descriptions mostly associated with women such as being attractive and flirtatious would generate the female form. 6.5 Sample Translation of Texts with Contextual Information The translation of context-free texts, as observed in the analysis above, shows that Google Translate tends to yield male defaults. To check whether the translation tool makes use of available contextual information in its translation, four articles about popular Filipino celebrities from the online edition of Bandera,

92  Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. Table 6.4  A portion of the translation of an article about a Filipino male celebrity Filipino (Original)

English (Google Translate website)

Aminado ang Kapamilya A-lister na si Piolo Pascual na nakaramdam siya ng “emptiness” sa buhay sa kabila ng kanyang pagiging successful sa career. Sa kanyang pahayag kay Amy Austria na mapapanood sa YouTube channel ng huli, ibinahagi ng aktor ang mga personal na pangyayari sa kanyang buhay. Matatandaang sunud-sunod ang naging acting awards noon ni Piolo para sa pelikulang “Dekada ’70” na ipinalabas noong 2002, ito rin ang panahong peak ng kanyang career. … Sa kaparehong taon ay ginawa ni Piolo ang pelikulang “9 Mornings” kung saan nakasama niya si Donita Rose. Aniya, noong birthday raw niya ay niregaluhan siya ng aktres ng bibliya na tila nagsilbing senyales niya.

Kapamilya A-lister Piolo Pascual has admitted that he feels “emptiness” in life despite being successful in his career. In his statement to Amy Austria that can be viewed on the latter’s YouTube channel, the actor shared personal events in his life. It can be remembered that Piolo’s acting awards were consecutive for the movie “Dekada ’70” which was released in 2002, this was also the peak period of his career. … In the same year, Piolo made the movie “9 Mornings” where he was with Donita Rose. He said, on his birthday, the actress gave him a Bible that seemed to be a sign for him.

Note: This is a portion of the article titled “Piolo Inaming Feeling Empty nang Matamo ang Peak ng Career: ‘Walang Meaning ’yung Buhay,’” by Therese Arceo (2023) published in Bandera.

a Taglish tabloid newspaper, were translated using the platform. We expect that the generated translation would be more accurate in the use of pronouns as the information on the gender of the entity being talked about is explicitly mentioned in the text. Table 6.4 shows the English translation of a portion of an article about Piolo Pascual, a popular Filipino male celebrity, using Google Translate. Piolo Pascual serves as the antecedent and provides the information on which English pronoun to use in the succeeding sentences. In the second sentence, the word actor was used, which also serves as the basis for what pronoun to use. At this point, it can be said that the translation tool was able to use the correct English pronoun because of the presence of this information even in the succeeding sentences. This, however, is different if we look at the translation of the article about a famous female celebrity in Table 6.5. In Table 6.5, we see the translation of a portion of an article about Judy Ann Santos, a popular Filipino female celebrity. Judy Ann provides the information about the gender of the entity mentioned in the article and serves as the antecedent of the pronouns siya, niya, and kanya in the succeeding sentences. It is interesting to note that although Google Translate used the pronoun her to

Gender Bias in Machine Translation  93 Table 6.5  A portion of the translation of an article about a female Filipino celebrity Filipino (Original)

English (Google Translate website)

Inamin ng Kapamilya actress na si Judy Ann Santos ang naging dahilan kung bakit matagal nang walang upload ang kanyang YouTube channel. Sa isang episode ng “Magandang Buhay” kung saan isa siya sa mga kasalukuyang host, itinanong sa kanya ni Melai Cantiveros ang matagal nang tanong ng madlang pipol kung bakit hindi na siya naglalabas ng kanyang mga cooking videos at kung may kinalaman ba rito ang kanyang hectic schedule… …. Kung bibisitahin ang kanyang YouTube channel, makikitang ang huli niyang upload ng kanyang cooking video episode ay noon pang January.

Kapamilya actress Judy Ann Santos has admitted the reason why her YouTube channel has not uploaded for a long time. In an episode of “Magandang Buhay” where he is one of the current hosts, Melai Cantiveros asked him the longstanding question of the public why he no longer releases his cooking videos and if his hectic schedule…

…. If you visit his YouTube channel, you will see that his last upload of his cooking video episode was in January.

Note: This is a portion of the article titled “Judy Ann Santos Tigil muna sa Cooking Vlogs dahil sa Pagtaas ng Bilihin: Ayokong Hindi Maka-relate ’yung Viewers,” by Therese Arceo (2022) published in Bandera.

refer to Judy Ann in the first sentence, the translation of the Filipino pronouns siya, niya and kanya in the succeeding sentences is he, his, and him. Although contextual information was explicitly mentioned in the first sentence, the following sentences still used the incorrect pronoun, and this could be due to how the translation tool treats each of the sentences. The sentences may have been translated individually, so if both the antecedent and the pronoun occur in just one sentence, we expect Google Translate to generate a translation with the correct pronoun. However, as observed in our analysis, even if the information on the gender of the entity was explicitly mentioned in the previous sentence, the translation of the succeeding sentences would still use male pronouns as the default pronouns. To check whether Google Translate uses male pronouns as default for constructions with context provided, we tried to use the same text in Table 6.4 where Piolo Pascual and actor served as antecedent and replace it with Judy Ann Santos and actress. It can be observed in Table 6.6 that in the sentences where the antecedents are available, the correct pronoun will be generated. However, in the last sentence where the information on the gender of the entity is absent, the male pronoun is used as default.

94  Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. Table 6.6  Revised version of translation of an article about a Filipino male celebrity Filipino (Original)

English (Google Translate website)

Aminado ang Kapamilya A-lister na si Judy Ann Santos na nakaramdam siya ng “emptiness” sa buhay sa kabila ng kanyang pagiging successful sa career. Sa kanyang pahayag kay Amy Austria na mapapanood sa YouTube channel ng huli, ibinahagi ng aktres ang mga personal na pangyayari sa kanyang buhay. Matatandaang sunud-sunod ang naging acting awards noon ni Judy Ann para sa pelikulang “Dekada ’70” na ipinalabas noong 2002, ito rin ang panahong peak ng kanyang career. …. Sa kaparehong taon ay ginawa ni Judy Ann ang pelikulang “9 Mornings” kung saan nakasama niya si Donita Rose. Aniya, noong birthday raw niya ay niregaluhan siya ng aktres ng bibliya na tila nagsilbing senyales niya.

Kapamilya A-lister Judy Ann Santos admitted that she felt “emptiness” in life despite being successful in her career. In her statement to Amy Austria that can be viewed on the latter’s YouTube channel, the actress shared personal events in her life. It can be remembered that Judy Ann won consecutive acting awards for the movie “Dekada ’70” which was released in 2002, this was also the peak period of her career. …. In the same year, Judy Ann made the movie “9 Mornings” where she was with Donita Rose. He said, on his birthday, the actress gave him a Bible that seemed to be a sign for him.

6.6 Addressing the Problem Google acknowledges the issue of gender bias in its platforms and is trying to reduce these social biases as stated in its AI Principles below (Google n.d.). AI algorithms and datasets can reflect, reinforce, or reduce unfair biases. We recognize that distinguishing fair from unfair biases is not always simple and differs across cultures and societies. We will seek to avoid unjust impacts on people, particularly those related to sensitive characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, income, sexual orientation, ability, and political or religious belief. In line with these AI Principles, Google Translate had set out to reduce gender bias by providing both masculine and feminine forms when it used to default to the masculine form (Zhou 2018; Johnson 2020). An example in Turkish of o bir doktor will now have options in the translation box as ‘He is a doctor’ and ‘She is a doctor.’ As of 2018, this is available in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, and Spanish. Having this as an option also in Filipino will be beneficial. Google also released the Translated Wikipedia Biographies dataset in 2021. The earlier version of the translation tool translates sentences individually, so it is highly possible for it to miss the contextual information mentioned in

Gender Bias in Machine Translation  95 previous sentences (Stella 2021). To illustrate, the Spanish sentence, “Marie Curie nació en Varsovia. Recibió el Premio Nobel en 1903 y en 1911” can be translated as “Marie Curie was born in Warsaw. He received the Nobel Prize in 1903 and in 1911.” Since the earlier version of the translation tool only translates the sentences individually, the second sentence is translated without referring to the information on the gender of the entity that is explicitly mentioned in the preceding sentence. This specific example, along with other instances of gender bias in machine translation tools, is what Google Translate wanted to address by using a different model in the translation system. Savoldi et al. (2021) compiled ways for mitigating bias that can be applied to the program such as model debiasing by gender tagging, adding context, debiased word embeddings, and balanced fine-tuning, or debiasing through external components by black-box injection, lattice re-scoring, and gender re-inflection. Through Google’s blog The Keyword, it is clear that the people involved in Google Translate are actively addressing the gender bias issue, such as the Responsible AI—Human-Centered Technology team (Catahan 2022). On a personal level, users can help Google Translate reduce, if not eliminate, the bias by utilizing the feedback mechanism in the web version and in the mobile application. Though efforts are being carried out to address the issue, it is still important to have a continuing discussion and identify cases where gender bias is observed and enact measures on how to mitigate them. 6.7 Summary, Conclusion, and Recommendations This study sought to determine whether gender bias occurs in the machine translator Google Translate when translating gender-neutral pronoun forms in Filipino into English. To answer this, we tested the tool using context-free sentences containing activities, occupations, and adjectives as well as constructions with contextual information provided. It is said that gender bias occurs in different machine translation tools when certain gender-neutral words in the source language tend to yield male defaults or gender-specific words in the target language (Prates et al. 2020). Based on the results, gender bias exists in the Filipino-English translation of genderneutral pronouns siya, niya, and kanya in Google Translate. With regard to the different activities, the default is the masculine form except for six verbs, three of which are biological, for example, anak, luwal “to give birth,” and buntis “to be/get pregnant” and the other three are related to clothing/fabric, for example, bihis “to dress/change clothes,” habi “to weave,” and tahi “to sew” (see Table 6.1). For the occupations, Google Translate also generated the male form in most of the supposed gender-neutral occupations and workrelated terms (see Table 6.2). Work and occupations that are dominated by males in the real world such as leadership positions in government, military, agriculture, construction, and skilled work would generate the male form while work that involves taking care of other people such as in childbirth,

96  Divine Angeli Endriga and Francisco Rosario, Jr. housekeeping, and well-being, the female form is expected. Furthermore, only those that are specific to women as indicated by the Spanish affix -a would generate the female form. This is also observed in the adjectives as all the adjectives checked in the translation platform generated the male form except for being attractive and flirtatious (see Table 6.3). Even with contextual information provided, the pronouns still default to “he” when the antecedent is not in the same sentence/paragraph, despite the pronouns in the text referring to a female person (see Table 6.6). The current study is a preliminary foray into the topic of gender bias in machine translation, and so much remains to be explored. A wider and more comprehensive database can be tested, for example, for verbs, the testing of longer context-free sentences. Preliminary testing on the translation website reveals that even if the default is the masculine form, there are still genderassociated activities when sentences get more specific (see Table 6.7). For example, for the verb bili “to buy,” the purchase of jewelry is a female activity, but not when buying rings. Moreover, with alaga “to take care of,” childrearing is also associated with women. The translation of whole texts and narratives in different genres (e.g., business, scientific, technical, literary texts, etc.) can also be done to test if context is really taken into account and how it affects the translation. This can also reveal if there are contexts or environments that more commonly default to the masculine as opposed to other fields. As this study only looks into Filipino, it can also be done on other languages available in Google Translate such as Cebuano and Ilocano. Furthermore, gender bias in other Philippine languages available in other machine translation tools can also be examined, as well as its implications on the behavior and mindset of its users.

Table 6.7  Filipino-English translation of the verbs bili and alaga Bumibili siya. Bumibili siya ng bahay. Bumibili siya ng lupa. Bumibili siya ng kotse. Bumibili siya ng gusali. Bumibili siya ng pagkain. Bumibili siya ng alahas. Bumibili siya ng hikaw. Bumibili siya ng singsing. Bumibili siya ng kwintas. Nag-aalaga siya. Nag-aalaga siya ng bata. Nag-aalaga siya ng aso. Nag-aalaga siya ng pusa. Nag-aalaga siya ng isda. Nag-aalaga siya ng halaman.

He buys. He is buying a house. He buys land. He is buying a car. He is buying a building. He buys food. She buys jewelry. She is buying earrings. He buys a ring. She is buying a necklace. He cares. She takes care of the child. He takes care of a dog. He takes care of a cat. He takes care of fish. He takes care of plants.

Gender Bias in Machine Translation  97 Notes 1 In their paper titled “On Measuring Gender Bias in Translation,” Cho et al. (2019) referred to translation gender bias index (TGBI) as the quantitative measure of gender bias in a machine translation system. 2 The corpus was from Endriga (2014) which was used for an affix-based subcategorization of verbs. The data in turn were collected from several comic books that were chosen due to their conversational nature and that topics are varied, resulting in the collection of a variety of commonly used verbs. The verbs are inflected for Agent focus with the affixes -um-, mag-, mang-, and ma-.

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7 The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal Juxtaposing Filipino/Tagalog Translations of Biblical Passages and Local Views on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho 7.1 Introduction Language plays an essential role in ensuring that society could articulate ideologies that, in many ways, govern it, let alone serve as a conduit that facilitates the transfer of knowledge across generations. Language, then, is functionally defined as a set of cultural practices, that is, as Alessandro Duranti (1997) puts it: “a system of communication that allows for interpsychological (between individuals) and intrapsychological (in the same individual) representations of the social order and helps people use such representations for constitutive social acts” (3). This chapter explores the various mechanisms of expressing and euphemizing linguistic constructs related to sex, sexuality, and gender in the Filipino/ Tagalog translations of the Bible. Centuries of colonization in the Philippines have paved the way to the sacralization of the Christian text, penetrating the different aspects of life in the country, from the drafting of the Constitution up to observing everyday practices and prescribing a particular way of looking at and understanding the world. In playing its vital role in shaping what is right or wrong, moral or sinful within society, religion utilizes sacralized written scripts that have also permeated legal views on several aspects of social and cultural life. In emphasizing the way it is read and discussed in collective contexts, Sherry Ortner (2023) notes how the Bible (along with the newspaper) have “opened up vistas of alternative ways of organizing social life and political authority” (1). For this study, focus shall be given to how the Bible has influenced the worldviews and perspectives of its believers with regard to sexual behaviors and gender identities, norms, and roles. Furthermore, we demonstrate how communities, specifically in the Philippines, that subscribe to the Christian text negotiate their local views on gender and sexuality, evidenced by the enduring practices deemed unacceptable by the Bible. Historians such as William Henry Scott (1994) and Mary Dorothy Jose and Atoy Navarro (2004) have long since studied earlier chronicles of the archipelago’s culture and society. They found out that during the pre-colonial period, different groups in the islands that make up what is part of the Philippines today were more open about expressing their sexualities. Sexual acts were not DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-8

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  101 confined to procreation, but also to giving each other pleasure, as evidenced by genital adornments such as penile rings and beads chronicled to be used for the enhancement of performance of sex. Unmarried women could engage freely in sexual activities; in fact, the loss of virginity was expected of a woman before consummating marriage. To achieve this, they would hire males whose occupation was to attract and devirginize maidens for marital and spiritual reasons. Among different groups around the Philippines, there exist terms referring to people who do not belong to the conventional categories of men and women, signifying that they are recognized members of society. Stuart Schlegel (2003) records how Teduray men who become women, or mentefuwaley libun, are treated just like anybody else. Meanwhile, the studies done by Mark Johnson (1995), Michael Tan (1998), and Fenella Cannell (1999) note that the terms bakla, bayot, and bantut, respectively, which in today’s terminologies may refer to being transgendered women, are currently used in different parts of the archipelago. Chroniclers have taken into account babaylan and catalonan, whom J. Neil Garcia (2008) argues to be gender crossers, assuming the outward appearance and demeanor, and symbolic recognition being “somewhat-women.” They also play a vital role of serving as an intercessor to the spiritual world, thus earning symbolic recognition as well as respect and honor almost equal to a leader of the community. Women were highly regarded such as the binukot (as chronicled by Maria Bernadette Abrera [2009]) and males dressing up as and/or playing the role of the female are respected. Women deities such as Mebuyan, goddess of the underworld and of unborn children among the Bagobo in Mindanao, south of the Philippines, were venerated. Notably, epics and oral traditions that freely express and describe reproductive organs, such as Amburukay—an epic of Panay documented by a research team headed by chanters Federico Caballero and Leopoldo Caballero (2015), and translated by Alicia Magos—were passed on from generation to generation, oftentimes onto the younger members of society. With the advent of Christianity, brought about by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, most of these concepts, attributions, and values were deemed demonic and barbaric (Jose and Navarro 2004). According to Daniel Everett (2009), a missionary-linguist who documented Pirahā, basic evangelization tells us that in order to convert a community to the religion that the missionaries were carrying, they had to make them believe that they were doomed and that their religious practices were evil, and that they had to be saved from eternal damnation. This in turn resulted in the imposition of a new social order—the Christian, particularly the Roman Catholic, way of life, for the centuries to come. The Philippines is a multilingual and multicultural country composed of various ethnolinguistic groups. Centuries of contact among these communities, as well as with those from outside the archipelago, have brought about changes in ideologies, ways of life, and value systems of their inhabitants. The introduction of new concepts is made possible through the translation of cultural expression, which is carried by the language that the community uses.

102  Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho According to Nigel Armstrong (2005), “[w]hen we view language as a vehicle of cultural expression, we soon see that culture-specific concepts enjoy specific linguistic privileges, as they are compactly encoded” (21). For this reason, we will examine how Christian perspectives and preferences on sex, gender, and sexuality, as reflected in the Bible, inform how said concepts are translated into the language used by the local community. 7.2 Not One Stroke of a Letter: The Bible as Text The Bible is a collection of books (66 books in what the Christian scholars refer to as the biblical canon) that contains texts in different genres—stories, poetry, legends, songs, and prophecies, among others. It is considered a highly important book among several religions; in fact, a number of religious groups, such as the fundamentalists, consider the Bible as the sacred text in which all beginning and all end—and everything in between—have already been written. Some groups have also considered the Bible as the sole basis of the faith, and therefore it provides all and only rules about proper—or holy—behavior. The importance bestowed upon this ancient anthology has enabled religious leaders to vigorously (and at times, aggressively) propagate the Word of God to all parts of the world. Currently, it is still considered as the most translated book in history. We will look into the Bible as a text—sacralized and translated by various societies and Christian denominations, each with its own purpose that encompasses liturgical services, religious rites and practices, and propagation of biblical knowledge, understanding, and interpretation, among others. We have referred to seven different versions of the Filipino/Tagalog translation of the Bible, the publication year of which ranges from 1905 to 2019, and widely circulated throughout the Philippines. For this chapter, we will use the words Filipino and Tagalog interchangeably, Tagalog being a major language spoken in the central part of the Philippines and notably in Metropolitan Manila, where the Philippine capital is located, upon which Filipino, the national language mandated by the Constitution, was based. The Ang Dating Biblia [The Old Bible] (or ADB1905) was published by Protestants in 1905. It is widely used by various Christian denominations in the Philippines and boasts itself as the Bible that is written in classical Tagalog. The Magandang Balita Biblia [The Good News Bible] (or MBB1983) is one of the most commonly used Tagalog Bibles. It is patterned after the Good News Bible published in 1966 by the American Bible Society. Under the auspices of the Episcopal Commission on Biblical Apostolate of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, the Catholic edition of the New Testament of the MBB was published in 1976, the Old Testament in 1983. The Biblia ng Sambayanang Pilipino [Bible of the Filipino Family] (or BSP1990) is published by the Claretian Publications, based in Quezon City. It is characteristically a more simplified Tagalog translation of the Bible (as compared with the older versions), and contains thick commentaries as footnotes within. In 1998, the Bibles International produced their own version of the

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  103 Filipino translation of the New Testament titled, Ang Salita ng Diyos [The Word of God] (or SND1998). The Ang Biblia [The Bible] (or AB2001) was published by the Philippine Bible Society, which, although derived from the older version ADB1905, is still considered as a formal Tagalog translation. The Philippine Bible Society has published in 2009 what they claim as the first ever literary-liturgical version of the New Testament in the Filipino language, titled Ang Bagong Tipan [The New Testament]: Filipino Standard Version (or FSV2009). Although this version is translated directly from the original Greek language, the publisher uses simple and easy-to-understand Filipino in order that more people may be able to read the Bible. The latest version of the Filipino translation of the Bible, the Bagong Sanlibutang Salin ng Banal na Kasulatan [New World Translation of the Holy Scripture] (or BSS2019] is published (the newest edition being in 2019) by the Jehovah’s Witnesses through the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. 7.3 Ancient Sins of the Flesh This section details four verses from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, each mentioning words and phrases referring to prostitution, homosexual acts, and unacceptable sexual behaviors. These verses represent the debates surrounding the topics of sex, gender, and sexuality. These also serve as bases for what is considered an ideal—clean, moral, holy—way of life. Furthermore, they also impose these standards upon those who do not subscribe to the Christian faith. Afterward, we look into how these verses were translated into Filipino/ Tagalog by the different versions of the Bible stated earlier. For the English translation, we referred to the New Revised Standard Version (or NRSV) as well as the King James Version (or KJV), two of the most popular and commonly used versions of the English Bible. The first verses that we will discuss are Genesis 19:5 and 8, which read and are translated as presented in Table 7.1. Table 7.1 Filipino/Tagalog translations of Genesis 19:5 and 8 Verse

Version

Text (emphasis ours)

Genesis 19:5

NRSV

and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. At kanilang tinawagan si Lot, at sinabi sa kaniya, Saan nangaroon ang mga lalaking dumating sa iyo ng gabing ito? ilabas mo sila sa amin upang kilalanin namin sila. Pasigaw nilang tinanong si Lot, “Nasaan ang mga panauhin mong lalaki? Ilabas mo’t makikipagtalik kami sa kanila!”

KJV ADB1905 MBB1983

(Continued)

104  Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho Table 7.1  (Continued) Verse

Version

Text (emphasis ours)

BSP1990

Tinawag nila si Lot at sinabing “Nasaan ang mga lalaking bisita mo ngayong gabi? Palabasin mo sila at makikipagtalik kami sa kanila!” Kanilang tinawagan si Lot at sinabi, “Saan naroon ang mga lalaking dumating sa iyo nang gabing ito? Ilabas mo sila sa amin upang makilala namin sila.” Paulit-ulit nilang tinatawag si Lot at sinasabi: “Nasaan ang mga lalaki na pumunta sa bahay mo ngayong gabi? Ilabas mo sila sa amin para masipingan namin sila.” “Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. Narito, ngayon, may dalawa akong anak na babae, na hindi nakakilala ng lalake; ipinamamanhik ko sa inyo, na sila’y aking ilalabas sa inyo, at gawin ninyo sa kanila ang magalingin ninyo sa inyong paningin: huwag lamang ninyong gawan ng anoman ang mga lalaking ito; yamang sila’y nangasa silong ng aking bubungan. “… Ako’y may dalawang anak na dalaga, sila na lang ang ibibigay ko sa inyo at gawin ninyo sa kanila ang gusto ninyo, huwag lamang ninyong galawin ang mga lalaking ito. Mga panauhin ko sila at dapat ko silang ingatan.” “… May dalawa akong anak na dalaga. Sila ang palalabasin ko rito sa inyo at gawin ninyo sa kanila ang anumang gusto ninyo. Ngunit utang na loob, huwag ninyong galawin ang mga lalaking narito sapagkat nakikisilong sila sa lilim ng aking bubong.” “… Narito, may dalawa akong anak na babae na hindi pa nasipingan ng lalaki. Sila’y aking ilalabas sa inyo, at gawin ninyo sa kanila ang ayon sa inyong nais, huwag lamang ninyong gawan ng anuman ang mga lalaking ito, sapagkat sila’y nasa ilalim ng aking bubungan.” “… Mayroon akong dalawang anak na babae na hindi pa nasisipingan ng lalaki. Pakiusap, hayaan ninyong ilabas ko sila sa inyo para magawa ninyo sa kanila kung ano ang gusto ninyo. Pero huwag ninyong gawan ng anuman ang mga lalaking ito, dahil nasa bahay ko sila at pananagutan ko sila.”

AB2001 BSS2019 Genesis 19:8

NRSV

KJV

ADB1905

MBB1983

BSP1990

AB2001

BSS2019

It is widely understood that the verb to know is actually a euphemism for “having sexual relations.” The ADB1905 and AB2001 versions do a direct translation of the phrase, while the MBB1983 and BSP1990 use the verb makikipagtalik, which in the present-time is the euphemistic term to refer to

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  105 the same act. BSS2019, meanwhile, uses the verb masipingan which can also refer to “having sexual relations.” It should be noted that both the terms makipagtalik and masipingan are Tagalog euphemistic expressions for sexual acts in the Philippine context. The term talik, which is used both as a verb makipagtalik and as an adjective matalik, means “to be intimate or close with someone.” In fact, the adjective matalik is used collocationally with kaibigan “friend,” so that the phrase matalik na kaibigan would mean a “close or best friend.” Meanwhile, the verb masipingan or sumiping originally means “to lie down with someone”; but by semantic expansion, it has automatically been used to refer to “having sex.” Further analysis on the two expressions brings about semantic nuances in the use of the two verbs: for while makikipagtalik is more reciprocal in nature, given by the reciprocal modal affix makipag-, the verb masipingan connotes a more abilitative, affective act toward a passive goal or patient. The next paragraph euphemizes virginity. The phrase hindi nakakilala ng lalake in ADB 1905 is a direct translation of the “to have not known a man,” but this does not mean that the daughters have never gotten acquainted with men, but rather, it is a euphemistic expression of “being virgins,” as evidenced by the other versions of the verse: hindi pa na(si)sipingan ng lalaki “to never have been laid down by men.” Interestingly, some versions such as MBB1983 and BSP1990 referred to her daughters as dalaga, which in layman’s terms, means “maiden.” Hence, the said expression reflects that the dalaga who is not yet married is construed (in other words, must be and should remain) as a virgin before marriage. The next verses that we will discuss are I Corinthians 6:15 and 16, which are presented in Table 7.2.

Table 7.2  Filipino/Tagalog translations of I Corinthians 6:15 and 16 Verse

Version

Text (emphasis ours)

I Corinthians 6:15

NRSV

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. Hindi baga ninyo nalalaman na ang inyong katawan ay mga sangkap ni Cristo? kukunin ko nga baga ang mga sangkap ni Cristo, at gagawin kong mga sangkap ng isang patutot? Huwag nawang mangyari. Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang inyong mga katawan ay mga bahagi ng katawan ni Cristo? Kukunin ko ba ang bahagi ng katawan ni Cristo upang gawing bahagi ng katawan ng isang babaing nagbebenta ng aliw? Hinding-hindi!

KJV ADB1905

MBB1983

(Continued)

106  Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho Table 7.2  (Continued) Verse

Version

Text (emphasis ours)

BSP1990

Hindi ba ninyo alam na naging mga bahagi ni Kristo ang mga katawan ninyo? At kukunin ko ba ang mga bahagi ni Kristo upang gawing mga bahagi ng isang babaeng bayaran? Huwag naman sana! Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang inyong mga katawan ay mga bahagi ni Cristo? Kukunin ko ba ang mga bahagi ni Cristo at gagawing bahagi ng isang patutot? Huwag nawang mangyari. Hindi ba ninyo nalalaman na ang inyong mga katawan ay mga sangkap ni Cristo? Kukunin ko ba ang mga sangkap ni Cristo at gagawin kong mga sangkap ng isang masamang babae? Huwag nawang mangyari. Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang inyong mga katawan ay mga bahagi ni Cristo? Kaya’t kukuha ba ako ng mga bahagi ni Cristo at gagawin kong mga bahagi ng isang bayarang babae? Huwag nawang mangyari! Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang inyong mga katawan ay mga bahagi ng katawan ng Kristo? Kaya kukunin ko ba ang mga bahagi ng katawan ng Kristo at gagawing bahagi ng katawan ng isang babaeng bayaran? Siyempre hindi! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. O hindi baga ninyo nalalaman na ang nakikisama sa patutot, ay kaisang katawan niya? sapagka’t sinasabi niya, Ang dalawa ay magiging isang laman. Hindi ba ninyo alam na nagiging isa ang katawan ng bayarang babae at ang nakikipagtalik sa kanya? Sapagkat sinasabi sa kasulatan, “Ang dalawa’y magiging isa.” Pero alam ninyo na ang makipag-isa sa isang babaeng bayaran ay kaisang-katawan niya. Sinasabi nga: Ang dalawa ay magiging isang laman. Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang isang nakikipag-isa sa patutot ay kaisang laman niya? Ito ay sapagkat sinabi nga niya: Ang dalawa ay magiging isang katawan. Hindi ba ninyo nalalaman na ang nakikisama sa masamang babae ay nagiging iisang katawan na kasama niya? Sapagkat sinasabi, “Ang dalawa ay magiging isang laman.” Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang lalaking nakikisama sa isang bayarang babae ay nagiging kaisang katawan nito? Sapagkat nasasaad, “Ang dalawa ay magiging isang laman.” Hindi ba ninyo alam na kung nakikipagtalik ang isa sa isang babaeng bayaran, sila ay magiging iisang katawan? Dahil sabi niya, “ang dalawa ay magiging isang laman.”

SND1998

AB2001

FSV2009

BSS2019

I Corinthians 6:16

NRSV KJV ADB1905 MBB1983

BSP1990 SND1998 AB2001

FSV2009

BSS2019

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  107 The verses above use expressions connoting prostitutes and sexual acts. The term for “prostitute” in classical Tagalog is patutot, which can be seen being used in ADB1905 and SND1998; but this word has already been considered obscure or archaic. Rather, most Filipino speakers would use euphemisms to refer to it, and sometimes utilize the word puta, borrowed from Spanish, in vituperation. In other versions of the Filipino/Tagalog translation of the Bible, the phrases used would refer to the commodification of the woman’s body as evidenced in the terms babaing nagbebenta ng aliw, which literally means “woman who sells pleasure” and bayarang babae or babaeng bayaran, which literally means “woman-for-hire” (often used derogatorily). Meanwhile, the AB2001 translation of the prostitute is an even more euphemized (or dysphemized) expression masamang babae, that literally means “evil woman.” In the following verse, we can see another instance of euphemizing the term for “sexual activity,” by the expression maging isa or maging isang laman or katawan, which literally means “to become one, to become one flesh, to become one body.” We can indeed argue that this expression connotes having sexual relations judging by the prior expressions nakikipagtalik as in MBB1983 and BSS2019. The latter version provides a footnote that reads, “magiging isang laman”: from the Hebrew word dabaq which means “joined together tightly, as if held by glue.” A more euphemistic expression is used in the rest of the versions—makisama which literally means “to get along well with” and makipag-isa “to be in union with,” but both still connote doing sexual acts with a person. Notably, the same expression is synonymous with “getting married,” as expressed in Ephesians 5:31 (NRSV) which reads, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This signifies that sexual acts should only be confined within marriage, and any and all extramarital sex is considered sinful and immoral. The translations of the verse Deuteronomy 23:17 are presented in Table 7.3.

Table 7.3  Filipino/Tagalog translations of Deuteronomy 23:17 Verse

Version

Text (emphasis ours)

Deuteronomy 23:17

NRSV

None of the daughters of Israel shall be a temple prostitute; none of the sons of Israel shall be a temple prostitute. There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. Huwag kang magkakaroon ng masamang babae sa mga anak ng Israel, ni magkakaroon ng sodomita sa mga anak ng Israel.

KJV ADB1905

(Continued)

108  Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho Table 7.3  (Continued) Verse

Version

Text (emphasis ours)

MBB1983

Sinumang Israelita, babae man o lalaki ay hindi maaaring magbenta ng panandaliang-aliw bilang pansamba. Huwag maging sagradong babaeng bayaran ang mga babaeng Israelita o sagradong bakla ang mga anak na lalaki ng Israel. “Huwag magkakaroon ng bayarang babae sa mga anak na babae ng Israel, ni magkakaroon ng bayarang lalaki sa mga anak na lalaki ng Israel. …” “Hindi puwedeng maging babaeng bayaran sa templo ang mga babaeng Israelita; hindi rin puwedeng maging lalaking bayaran sa templo ang mga lalaking Israelita. …”

BSP1990 AB2001

BSS2019

The two versions of the English translation of the Bible differ from one another by way of expressing or differentiating the female and the male prostitute. In NRSV, the term prostitute is used to refer to both female and male, while in KJV, the terms are whore for female and sodomite for male. We can trace hints of patriarchal ideology as reflected in the KJV. The term sodomite, which refers to a male prostitute, is called as such because he is performing sexual acts outside of what is natural—between a male and a female—since he is available to engage in sexual activities with the same sex. A whore, on the other hand, is a female prostitute. Since historical accounts state that in the milieu in which the Bible was written, the female sex is practically considered inferior to males, we can expect that only the males can afford to pay to have sex with female prostitutes as well as male prostitutes. We can infer therefore that the translators of the BSP1990 have used the Filipino/Tagalog term bakla (which a number of studies, such as those conducted by Martin Manalansan IV [2003]), Jesus Federico Hernandez and Eufracio Abaya [1998], and Johnson [1995] refer to as “homosexual, gay man, or transgendered woman”) to mean “sodomite,” or “male prostitute.” Meanwhile, all the other versions of the Filipino/Tagalog translation of the Bible assign the description of being prostitutes both to males and females, as in babae man o lalaki “whether female or male” … magbenta ng panandaliang aliw “to sell temporary pleasure,” bayarang babae “woman-for-hire” … bayarang lalaki “man-for-hire,” and babaeng bayaran “woman-for-hire” and lalaking bayaran “man-for-hire”. The last verse to be discussed is I Corinthians 6:9, which is presented in Table 7.4.

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  109 Table 7.4  Filipino/Tagalog translations of I Corinthians 6:9 Verse

Version

Text (emphasis ours)

I Corinthians 6:9

NRSV

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, O hindi baga ninyo nalalaman na ang mga liko ay hindi magsisipagmana ng kaharian ng Dios? Huwag kayong padaya: kahit ang mga mapakiapid, ni ang mga mananamba sa diosdiosan, ni ang mga mangangalunya, ni ang mga nangbababae, ni ang mga mapakiapid sa kapuwa lalake. Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang mga makasalanan ay walang bahagi sa kaharian ng Diyos! Huwag ninyong dayain ang inyong sarili, Ang mga nakikiapid, sumasamba sa diyus-diyosan, nangangalunya, nakikipagtalik sa kapwa lalaki o kapwa babae, Hindi ba ninyo alam na hindi magmamana ng kaharian ng Diyos ang mga sakim? Huwag kayong paloloko: ang mga mahalay, mga sumasamba sa mga idolo, mga nakikiapid, mga bastos, mga bakla, Ang mga hindi matuwid ay hindi magmamana ng paghahari ng Diyos. Hindi ba ninyo alam iyan? Huwag kayong magpadaya. Ang mga nakikiapid, ang mga sumasamba sa diyos-diyosan, ang mga mangangalunya, ang mga bakla, ang mga gumagamit sa kapwa lalaki ay hindi magmamana ng paghahari ng Diyos. Hindi ba ninyo nalalaman na ang mga masasamang tao ay hindi magmamana ng kaharian ng Diyos? Huwag kayong padaya! Ang mga mapakiapid, mga sumasamba sa diyus-diyosan, mga mangangalunya, mga binabae, mga nakikiapid sa kapwa lalaki, Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang masasamang tao ay hindi makababahagi sa kaharian ng Diyos? Huwag kayong padaya! Ang mga nakikiapid, mga sumasamba sa diyus-diyosan, mga nangangalunya, mga nakikipagtalik sa kapwa lalaki o sa kapwa babae, Hindi ba ninyo alam na ang mga di-matuwid ay hindi magmamana ng Kaharian ng Diyos? Huwag kayong magpalinlang. Ang mga imoral, sumasamba sa idolo, mangangalunya, lalaking nagpapagamit sa kapuwa lalaki, lalaking nagsasagawa ng gawaing homoseksuwal,

KJV

ADB1905

MBB1983

BSP1990

SND1998

AB2001

FSV2009

BSS2019

110  Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho For this part we shall focus on how the terms fornicators, adulterers, male prostitutes (or effeminate in KJV), and sodomites (or abusers of themselves with mankind in KJV) were translated in the different versions of the Tagalog Bible. The term fornicator is translated as the different affixed forms of the root apid, which are almost synonymous to one another: mapakiapid “promiscuous” in ADB1905 and AB2001 and nakikiapid “fornicating” in MBB1983, SND1998, and FSV2009. Meanwhile, BSP1990 uses the term mahalay, which actually means “immoral,” while BSS2019 uses the borrowed term imoral from Spanish. For the term adulterers, the most commonly used translation is mangalunya and its other variant forms, except for BSP1990, which uses the term nakikiapid (perhaps due to editorial/exegetic decision that this term may refer to “any person who commits sexual acts outside of marriage”). It is noteworthy that both the words makiapid and mangalunya are used nowadays only in religious contexts. The terms for fornicator and adulterer are expressed differently in everyday (and in the case of adulterer, legal) settings. The term male prostitute (or effeminate in KJV) has been given various translations: nangbababae (although this literally means “womanizer” in Filipino), nakikipagtalik sa kapwa lalaki “having sex with a fellow male,” bastos (which literally means “profane”), bakla (commonly used to refer to “gay man”), binabae “effeminate,” and lalaking nagpapagamit sa kapuwa lalaki (literally, “one who lets himself be used by another male”). Lastly, the term sodomites (or abusers of themselves with mankind in KJV) is also given a variety of translations: mapakiapid sa kapuwa lalake “fornicators of fellow male”; nakikipagtalik sa kapuwa babae “engaging in sexual acts with fellow female” ; bakla “gay man”; gumagamit sa kapwa lalaki (literally “using another male [for sexual purposes]”); nakikiapid sa kapwa lalaki “fornicating another male”; nakikipagtalik sa kapwa lalaki “engaging in sexual acts with fellow male”; nakikipagtalik sa kapwa babae “engaging in sexual acts with fellow female”; and lalaking nagsasagawa ng gawaing homoseksuwal “male doing homosexual acts.” It can be noticed that MBB1983 and FSV2009 have already included female-to-female sex in their list of immoral activities in the particular verse. 7.4 Negotiating Sexual Scripts and the Holy Script The texts shown above are examples of how a powerful institution such as the Church and its teachings can control how members of a particular society view and express their sexuality. The translated work acts as a medium through which ideologies may be brought closer and hence be propagated to the community. These institutions, called technologies of power by Michel Foucault (1988), “determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination” (18). As the teller of (oftentimes absolute) truth, Ortner (2023) observes, the Bible “has the capacity to engage people at both the level of intense social intercourse and the level of powerful ideas and meanings” (1).

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  111 The Philippines, as a generally Christian-baptized collective, has inevitably experienced how the Bible has penetrated and, to a certain extent, changed the worldview and social order of its peoples. Ortner (2023) considers the holy scriptures as the lens through which “people see themselves as parts of new collectivities, to feel that the world could be changed for the better, and— under the right circumstances—to act on those feelings” (1). The passages used as examples in this chapter illustrate how different the expectations and norms were for people belonging to different gender categories. People are expected to behave according to (sexual) scripts already laid out for them in society. These scripts, according to Bella Ellwood-Clayton (2006), guide the social actors in different sexual situations. Expressions of sexuality, particularly the act of having sex, is apparently accepted only in a Christian society under a particular context, that is, it should only be practiced by married heterosexual couples. Genesis 2:24 has been used to restrict the definition of marriage to be between a male and a female; whereas a number of Bible verses such as I Corinthians 6:9 mentioned above have been cited to connote that sex outside of marriage, for example, fornication, adultery, homosexual acts, and prostitution, is not sanctioned in the eyes of God and is thus construed as immoral and sinful. As such, sexual urges must be suppressed and kept inside especially for women. We can see from the above examples how those consenting to sex as an occupation have been viewed generally in society as dirty and unworthy. Findings from Eric Manalastas and Clarissa David’s research published in 2018 show that virginity remains to be highly valued among Filipinos. This is consistent with what Ellwood-Clayton (2006) has seen in her study among women in Kalibo, where those who are not yet married are expected to remain virgins and even offer their virginity as a gift to their husbands when they marry. This kind of thinking automatically construes women who are sexually active, including those who had children outside of marriage, as immoral and sinful. On the other hand, it is considered natural for men to be sexually active. Although having sex with women who are not their wives is considered immoral, society tolerates sexual activities of men more even outside of marriage. Manalastas and David (2018) say this is an example of an existing sexual double standard in premarital sexuality in the country. These discussions on sex and marriage show another social norm espoused by the teachings of the Christian church—that sex and marriage should occur only between a man and a woman. Hence, same-sex relations are considered sinful. Sexual acts between persons of the same sex are considered acts of the devil, as described by Jose and Navarro (2004) in their article that talked about how beliefs about sexuality and spirituality are in conflict in the sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century Philippines. This power exerted by the Church does not end with the propagation of its teachings. It is highly influential even on the level of the state. The Constitution is highly-influenced by the moral teachings of the Catholic Church as what Carolina Ruiz Austria (2004) has shown in her discussion of how the church

112  Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho and the state are influential in the control of women’s sexual and reproductive health. The church and the state, especially when working together, are major technologies of power shaping the everyday lives of people. That being said, people nevertheless find ways to negotiate their religiosity (see F. Landa Jocano 1967) and work around the strict sexual scripts. Maria Dulce Natividad (2018) has established in her own study about Catholicism and everyday morality that Filipino urban poor women reshape their religion to have control over their sexuality and reproductive health. We may also cite other cases of local practices that seem contrary to what is sanctioned by the church. One example of this is the practice called lukayo, where elderly women dance around the newlywed couples holding phallic symbols to bless them with fertility as they are about to start their families. The parish priest was quick to point out that this was not part of the actual wedding ceremony that is done in the church. The dance was featured in a documentary by Howie Severino (2006). However, the show was suspended by the country’s television regulatory board for showing scenes that they deem as obscene. Another instance where we see how community members negotiate their sexuality and their religiosity is in a wedding engagement practice called gawaan ng magaling in one community in the province of Batangas. Generally, in this practice, families of the couple negotiate on the terms of the wedding. Another topic that is often negotiated is whether the couple will be allowed to start living together (which of course entails sexual relations that are informally sanctioned by the community) despite not yet having been officially married “in the eyes of the church.” Most of the time, the family of the woman has the last say and, almost always, they are amenable to such an arrangement. In the practice of the gawaan ng magaling that we observed in our fieldwork in 2022, the mother of the bride-to-be said, “They are as good as married and are of the right age, so why would we object to them sleeping together?” 7.5 Conclusion The possibility of translating and retranslating ancient religious texts such as the Bible, as Wendy James (2013) states: opens a way for the regular redefinition of our sense of how we are placed in the world of others, personally, culturally, and politically, whether we ourselves undertake the translation or receive and respond to it in some new context of religious practice. In translating God’s words, we reorient ourselves to each other. (342) This chapter has reviewed specific texts in the Bible that explicitly describe how Christianity views sex, gender, and sexuality. It has shown how translation and exegetic choices carry with them ideas that prevail both in the context of the original text and, more notably, of translators themselves. They, in turn,

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  113 subject the text to further interpretations, which are most likely shaped by the views of the religion they are subscribing to, the results of which may greatly affect the lived realities of the audience of the religious text. We see this happening in the context of the Philippines—a nation whose majority of the population is Christian. For the longest time, several national issues in the country have not been addressed, some are still being fought for by sectoral movements—such as divorce, an anti-discrimination bill, same-sex marriage, and reproductive health law. The Family Code of the Philippines, for instance, does not state the rights of the LGBT, and the term “homosexual” is mentioned only as a form of fraudulence which serves as a justification for the annulment of marriage. These circumstances take place partly because of the fact that followers of the Christian faith subscribe to the idea that these practices are not acceptable based on the sacred texts found in the Bible. However, if we look beyond the prescribed right or wrong by the said holy text, we see that subscribing solely to it takes away the right of the general population to decide on their bodies, identities, well-being, and (social) lives in general. And so, inasmuch as the Bible may contribute to the general understanding of what is moral and just, it should nevertheless not hinder the crafting of more inclusive and culturally responsive policies that are supposed to uphold the dignity of each human person. Finally, the chapter shows how enduring local practices, biblically unacceptable though they may seem, demonstrate how laypeople take part in subjecting the sacralized text to further (and more relatable) interpretations, negotiating the prevailing Christian values system and spiritual practices with those which are part of their community’s traditions. It further proves that the people who consume the outputs of these translations are not mere passive followers of these scripts, for they have their own ways of interpreting and indigenizing the sacred texts as well as navigating around the prescribed norms, which are, after all, part of the totality of their spirituality. Resources Abrera, Maria Bernadette. 2009. “Seclusion and Veiling of Women: A Historical and Cultural Approach.” Philippine Social Sciences Review 60, no. 1: 33–56. Ang Bagong Tipan: Filipino Standard Version. 2009. Manila: Philippine Bible Society. Ang Biblia. 2001. Manila: Philippine Bible Society. Ang Dating Biblia. 1905. Manila: Philippine Bible Society. Ang Salita ng Diyos. 1998. Grand Rapids, MI: Bibles International. Armstrong, Nigel. 2005. Translation, Linguistics, Culture: A French-English Handbook. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Bagong Sanlibutang Salin ng Banal na Kasulatan. 2019. New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. Biblia ng Sambayanang Pilipino. 1990. Quezon City: Claretian Publications. Caballero, Federico and Leopoldo Caballero. 2015. Amburukay (Sugidanon (Epics) of Panay Book 2), translated by Alicia Magos. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.

114  Jem R. Javier and Madilene B. Landicho Cannell, Fenella. 1999. Power and intimacy in the Christian Philippines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellwood-Clayton, Bella. 2006. “Maria Clara, Manila Girl and the Other Mary: Premarital sex in the Catholic Philippines: Constructions of seduction.” Pilipinas: A Journal of Philippine Studies 46: 1–27. Everett, Daniel. 2009. Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, Michel. 1998. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, edited  by Luther Martin, Huck Gutnam, Patrick Hutton. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Garcia, J. Neil. 2008. Philippine Gay Culture: Binabae to Bakla, Silahis to MSM. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Good News Bible. 1966. Philadelphia, PA: American Bible Society. Hernandez, Jesus Federico and Eufracio Abaya. 1998. “Salitang Bakla: Makapang­ yarihan? Mapagpalaya?” The Archive 14: 69–81. James, Wendy. 2013. “Translating God’s Words.” In A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion, edited by Janice Boddy and Michael Lambek, 329–343. West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118605936.ch18 Jocano, F. Landa. 1967. “Filipino Catholicism: A Case Study in Religious Change.” Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia 55, nos. 1–2: 69–101. (Original work reprinted in 2019.) Johnson, Mark. 1997. Beauty and Power: Transgendering and Cultural Transformation in the Southern Philippines. London: Routledge. Jose, Mary Dorothy and Atoy Navarro. 2004. “Katawan at kaluluwa sa kronikang Espanyol: Pagtatalaban ng seksuwalidad at espiritwalidad noong dantaon 16–18.” Daluyan Journal ng Wikang Filipino XII, no. 1: 64–80. Magandang Balita Biblia. 1973. Manila: Philippine Bible Society. Manalansan, Martin IV. 2003. Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press. Manalastas, Eric Julian and Clarissa David. 2018. “Valuation of Women’s Virginity in the Philippines.” Asian Women 34, no. 1: 23–48. https://doi.org/10.14431/ aw.2018.03.34.1.23 Moss, C.R. 1920. “Nabaloi Law and Ritual.” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 15, no. 3: 207–342. Natividad, Maria Dulce. 2019. “Catholicism and Everyday Morality: Filipino Women’s Narratives on Reproductive Health.” Global Public Health 14, no. 1: 37–52. 10. 1080/17441692.2018.1471145 Ortner, Sherry. 2023. Screening Social Justice: Brave New Films and Documentary Activism. Durham: Duke University Press. Reiss, Katharina. 2000. “Type, Kind and Individuality of Text: Decision Making in Translation.” In The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd ed., 168–179), edited by Lawrence Venuti, 168–179. New York: Routledge. Ruiz Austria, Carolina. 2004. “The Church, the State and Women’s Bodies in the Context of Religious Fundamentalism in the Philippines.” Reproductive Health Matters 12, no. 24: 96–103. 10.1016/S0968-8080(04)24152-0 Schlegel, Stuart. 2003. Wisdom from a Rainforest: The Spiritual Journey of an Anthropologist. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.

The Biblical, the Moral, and the Legal  115 Scott, William Henry. 1994. Barangay: Sixteenth-century Philippine culture and society. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Severino, Howie. 2006. Lukayo: Hindi ito Bastos [Documentary]. GMA News and Public Affairs. Tan, Michael. 1998. Silahis: Looking for the Missing Filipino Bisexual Male. In Bisexualities and AIDS, edited by Peter Aggleton, 205–222. London: Taylor and Francis Group.

8 On the Translatability of Filipino Modals and Its Impact on Disaster Communication Mary Ann G. Bacolod 8.1 Introduction This chapter thoroughly examines the translation of modals expressing possibility and obligation in both English and Filipino, emphasizing their crucial role in disaster-related contexts. Accurately comprehending the meaning of modals is indispensable when analyzing disaster information. In the sentence: Residents must evacuate to the nearest evacuation center, the modal must as a modal expressing obligation in English can be translated in Filipino as dapat or kailangan, as in the sentence: Dapat lumikas ang mga residente sa pinakamalapit na evacuation center or Kailangan lumikas ang mga residente sa pinakamalapit na evacuation center. Native speakers may argue that the two sentences are the same and can be used interchangeably to translate must. However, according to Schachter and Otanes (1972), dapat expresses what is required or appropriate, while kailangan generally expresses what is necessary (261). In the given example, dapat implies a greater sense of urgency or obligation imposed by the speaker upon the addressee based on expected or required action. In contrast, kailangan implies necessity based on the speaker’s judgment. Given this example, which of the two modals would effectively communicate the level of risk? Accurate translations of modal verbs are crucial in crisis scenarios for communicating urgent information between languages. According to Müller (2021), “modal verbs play a key role in discourse when uncertainties, norms, and expectations have to be dealt with linguistically” (422). They “make an important contribution to the linguistic management of the complex discourse formation in crisis situations.” One primary reason for this is that “they introduce backgrounds such as norms, assumptions, abilities, goals, or constraints into the discourse and link them to the thematisation of actions” (426). This chapter provides a linguistic analysis of the translation of commonly used modals in English and Filipino in the context of disaster. It aims to answer the following questions: (1) What are the differences between the use and meaning of modals, and how are they translated from English to Filipino? (2) How do these differences affect our interpretation of disaster-related risks? and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-9

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  117 (3) What factors affect the translatability of modals expressing possibility and obligation from English to Filipino? The analysis aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion surrounding modal verbs, their translation, and their pivotal role in facilitating effective communication in disaster situations. 8.2 What Is Modality? The category of modality holds varying interpretations across different languages. According to Downing and Locke, modality encompasses a range of notions such as “possibility, probability, necessity, volition, obligation, and permission” (Downing and Locke 2002, 382). Core modals, according to Downing and Locke, express two primary meanings: epistemic and deontic. Speakers employ the epistemic meaning to assess the likelihood of a situation based on their knowledge or belief. On the other hand, the deontic meaning expresses different degrees of obligation, advisability, or permission. The epistemic and deontic meanings are connected to the concepts of necessity and possibility. Modality enables speakers to perform two crucial communicative functions: “to comment on and evaluate an interpretation of reality” and “to intervene in, and bring about changes in events” (Downing and Locke 2002, 383). According to Downing and Locke (2002), modal forms in English consist of modal auxiliaries, which include basic forms like can, could, may, might, will, shall, should, and must. Additionally, there are other forms, such as lexicalmodal verbs and a group of semi-modal verbs. According to Quirk et al. (1985), modal verbs have two types of meaning-restricting factors. The first category includes permission, and obligation, among others, that pertain to “human control over events” (219). The second type involves human judgment of what is likely to occur and is not primarily associated with control of events, such as possibility, necessity, and prediction (ibid.). They also refer to these as intrinsic and extrinsic modalities. They assert that each modal verb has intrinsic and extrinsic uses, and some can be interchangeable in certain situations. (Quirk et al. 1985, 219). When conveying possibility, speakers utilize modals such as may, might, can, and could to express their assessment of the likelihood of the statement. These exact modals can likewise be used to grant permission, and in the case of can and could, they can show ability or a dynamic modality. Obligation is communicated in various ways, such as an “inescapable obligation” using must (Downing and Locke 2002, 391) or an “unfulfilled obligation” using should and ought (392). Must is linked with external forces, while should and ought to express a less strong obligation that is “not binding” and “may be unfulfilled” (Downing and Locke 2002, 392). It conveys that the speaker lacks the authority to “impose the obligation” and may do so out of “politeness or a lack of conviction of the absolute necessity of the predicated action” (Downing and Locke 2002, 393).

118  Mary Ann G. Bacolod 8.2.1 Modals in Filipino

In Filipino, Schacter and Otanes identified eight Tagalog pseudo-verbs that function like adjectives with verb-like meanings. These pseudo-verbs cannot be inflected to show variation in aspect (Schachter and Otanes 1972, 261). Those that express necessity consist of dapat and kailangan. Dapat, given equivalents in English by Schacter and Otanes as ought to, must, and should, expresses external necessity, while kailangan, translated in English as needs to, ought to, must, and should, expresses internal necessity. Maaari, translated in English as can, may, could, might, expresses possibility and is more commonly used in formal and informal settings, while pwede is used in informal settings (Schachter and Otanes 1972, 261). Maaari and pwede both express permission aside from possibility. According to Schacter and Otanes, some of these so-called pseudo-verbs are similar in meaning. For example, kailangan denotes necessity in terms of what the speaker feels, while dapat denotes requirement. In addition, maaari and puwede, which denote ability, permission, or possibility, are synonymous in all their occurrences and differ only in the context or setting of use, whether formal or informal (Schachter and Otanes 1972, 261). Malicsi called these modal verbs and divided them into two categories consisting of roots or modal verbs incapable of inflection, such as dapat, nararapat, maaari, and pwede, and those that are inflectable, such as gusto, nais, ibig, ayaw, and kailangan (Malicsi 2013, 180–183). 8.2.2 Modals in Translation

Numerous studies have explored the translation of modals in different languages. In 2011, Boźana and Bogunović compared Croatian and English modals. Their study aimed to analyze changes in syntax and semantics of translation equivalents, focusing on modal verbs expressing deontic possibility and necessity. The researchers sought to determine shifts in modality during translation, providing valuable insights into the translation process (Božana and Bogunović 2011). A recent study by Yetkin-Karakoç and Mergen (2021) analyzed the translation of circumstantial and modal adverbs in English and Turkish. Their findings highlighted errors in translating these adverbs into Turkish and categorized them as “semantically correct,” “incorrect,” or “omitted.” Modal adverbs were found to be more challenging to translate than time and place adverbs, resulting in a “loss in accuracy and change in emphasis” (Yetkin-Karakoç and Mergen 2021, 12). Susini et al. (2019) studied translation strategies and the “translatability of modality from Indonesian into English” (1125). They compared the source and target texts to determine equivalency or changes in the meaning of modals in context. The researchers examined the “degrees of possibility, usuality, obligation, and readiness; the value and the orientation” (1127). They found various English

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  119 translations of Indonesian texts without markers, which results in changes in “value and orientation” (1132) and the meaning of modality in translation. Furthermore, various studies, including those by Müller (2021), Torres (2021), and Odhiambo and Odhiambo (2020), investigated the role of modal verbs in disaster and crisis communication. Müller’s study specifically examined German modal verbs in COVID-19 reporting during the initial phase of the pandemic, using newspaper articles as data. He categorized modals based on their discourse function and “Kratzer’s concept of conversational backgrounds” (Müller 2021, 421), finding that most constructions pointed to normative backgrounds in addressing “official rules and their effects,” as well as “appeals and demands” referencing common social norms (447). Meanwhile, epistemic backgrounds were more likely to be found in “speculations about the virus’s social consequences” (447). Torres (2021), in his study on the role of modals in the US opioid crisis, analyzes its significance in policy verb phrases using corpus-assisted discourse analysis. His findings suggest that modals “reflect the gravity of the issues on the ground” (1) as well as function in “highlighting or deemphasizing a policy’s optionality to broaden or limit the range of possible interpretations under which policy stakeholders could operate” (9). Odhiambo and Odhiambo (2020) conducted a study on modal verbs in COVID-19 reporting, using the daily nation newspaper in Kenya as their data source. They analyzed the frequency and functions of modals used in reporting COVID-19 to understand the opinion of article authors regarding COVID-19. The study found that the most commonly used modal verbs in COVID-19 reporting, in order of frequency, were will, may, can, and should. Additionally, their study noted that obligation, prediction, and intention were the most prominent functions of the modals analyzed. In the study of Filipino modals, it is essential to note that despite the numerous studies conducted on the grammatical aspect (descriptive, syntactic) of Filipino modals, there has been a significant research gap in their practical application for disaster or risk communication and translation. Addressing this gap is crucial in improving disaster communication and risk perception. A thorough understanding of the complexities of modals in Filipino can greatly facilitate efficient communication during disasters and risk management. Further investigation into this subject can also provide invaluable insights into the translatability of modals in general. 8.3 Methodology This chapter examines the English-Filipino translation of modals in the context of disaster communication. The chapter focuses on analyzing English modals can, could, may, must, have to, and need, which express epistemic and deontic functions of possibility and obligation. The most frequent translations of these modals (with the most number of occurrences from the data) in the TT were analyzed and semantically contrasted. The modal verbs analyzed in

120  Mary Ann G. Bacolod Filipino focused on dapat, maaari, and kailangan. The study utilizes contextualized data from translated online newspaper articles about disasters, with most of the data focusing on floods, landslides, typhoons, and COVID-19. Forty-three online articles1 containing data on modals of possibility and obligation published from 2020 to 2023 were examined. In both the source text (ST) and the target text (TT), the modals used in sample sentences were examined and classified by their functions (possibility, permission, ability, and obligation). The analysis compared English and Filipino modals’ modality values (high, median, or low) using Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) network of modality systems. Different translation methods from ST to TT were also examined to see how translation shifts, if any, affected modal meanings. The study is limited to the Filipino and English languages and cannot be generalized to other languages. The modals analyzed are limited to the collected data and exclude negatives, past forms, and metaphorical uses and are mainly focused on analyzing differences in meanings. The study focused solely on English-to-Filipino translations based on online translated disaster-related articles. 8.3.1 Key Terms and Concepts

This chapter uses Quirk et al.’s (1985) modal meaning description in examining the meaning conveyed by modals analyzed from the data. According to them, modals convey the meanings of obligation, permission, and ability when they involve human control (219). When expressing an obligation, a speaker can exert his authority in two ways. The first is through compulsion, using must. The second is through an obligation where the speaker implies his authority but lacks confidence that his recommendation will be followed, utilizing the modals should or ought to (Quirk et al. 1985, 225–227). Modals expressing permission may be divided into two categories: “permission given by the speaker,” usually expressed in English using may, and “more general and impersonal” permission expressed in English by the modal can (1985, 224). The latter may be paraphrased by the “be allowed to” construction. Ability is determined by paraphrasing it into the “be able to” structure (1985, 222). According to Quirk et al., modals convey the meanings of necessity and possibility when they express human judgment but no human control (Quirk et al. 1985, 219). Epistemic possibility refers to the likelihood of a proposition being true or becoming true and can be expressed as “it is possible” (223). The modality value expressed from ST to TT was analyzed using Halliday and Matthiessen’s network of modality systems and finite verbal operators (see Halliday and Matthiessen 2014, chaps. 4 and 10). Halliday and Matthiessen considered required obligation as having a high value, supposed obligation as having a median value, and permission as having a low modality value. Modals conveying possibility, on the other hand, have low modality values. The modals must, ought to, need, and has/had to, fall under high; will, would, should, is/was to fall under median; and can, may, could, and might under low (Halliday and

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  121 Matthiessen 2014, chap 4., sec. 4.2.2.1 and chap. 10, sec. 10.3.2). On the other hand, the meanings of Filipino modals were analyzed based on Schachter and Otanes’ (1972) description of Filipino modals (which they call pseudo-verbs) expressing possibility, necessity, and obligation (discussed in Section 2.1). 8.4 Results and Discussion 8.4.1 Translating Modals of Necessity and Possibility

Forty-three (43) articles were analyzed, of which four focused on reports on typhoons, nine focused on flooding and landslides, and thirty relayed information about COVID-19 to the public. The study focused on modals expressing possibility, obligation, permission, and ability, and their most common translations (with the most number of occurrences) from English to Filipino. The English modals discussed are limited to should, may, can, could, have to, need, and must, while the Filipino modals are limited to dapat, kailangan, and maaari. Table 8.1 is a summary of the modals examined, their translations from the ST to the TT, and the frequency with which they appear in disaster-related articles analyzed. A.  Expressing Possibility A.1.

Could - Maaari ST:   The state of emergency will last two weeks and could be extended. TT: Ang state of emergency ay magtatagal ng dalawang linggo at maaaring i-extend.

A.2.

Could - Maaari ST:   Prematurely lifting restrictions could easily lead to a large surge in cases. TT: Ang maagang pag-aangat ng mga paghihigpit na wala pa sa panahon ay maaaring madaling humantong sa isang malaking pagbulusok ng mga kaso.

2

3

Table 8.1  Summary of modals examined ST

TT

must should have to need can could may

dapat (6), kailangan (6) dapat (9), kailangan (1) kailangan (7) kailangan (7), dapat (1) maaari (27), pwede (3), kaya (1) maaari (28), pwede (1) maaari (30)

122  Mary Ann G. Bacolod The modal verb could is translated as maaari in the TT to convey the notion of possibility. The modal verb could in the ST emphasizes the potential negative implications of relaxing restrictions too soon and the possibility of extending the state of emergency. Example A.2 is translated into the TT word for word, with no alterations in meaning. Example A.1, however, employs the transposition strategy, in which the passive voice form of the verb used with the modal could in the ST is translated into the modal maaari + verb in the active voice in the TT, using the object-focus verbal affix i-. If the verbal affix ma- is used with the verb extend in the TT instead of i-, as in Ang state of emergency ay maaaring ma-extend ‘The state of emergency may be extended,’ the meaning of possibility rather than permission is emphasized. In the translation process in example A.1, the verb form used (i-extend) with the modal maaari can give two possible interpretations: possibility and permission. The sentence can mean “It is possible that it (state of emergency) will be extended “ or “One is allowed to extend it.” According to Peng (2020), ambiguities in the meaning of modals could lead to “indeterminacy in understanding and using modal verbs” (209). “Indeterminacy of modal semantics” may be shown according to Coates (1983) (in Peng 2020, 210) through different semantic relationships of “ambiguity, merger, and gradience.” Peng described these relationships as “either-or,” “both-and,” and “gradience relationship of modal meanings” (209), which he referred to in his study as “either-or ambiguity,” “merging ambiguity,” and “gradient ambiguity” (210). Example A.2 above is an example of merger or both-and semantic relationship where maaari may both be interpreted as expressing permission and possibility. Interpreting it as a possibility or permission does not significantly alter the expressed low modality value of both the modal could and maaari. A.3.

May - Maaari ST:   The storm may intensify at sea as it heads toward southern China, they said. TT: Ang bagyo ay maaaring lumakas pagtawid ng dagat patungong southern China, sabi nila.

A.4.

May - Maaari ST:   “This may become a seasonal, flu-like thing…” TT: “Ito ay maaaring maging pana-panahon, parang trangkaso sa sakit…”

4

5

To express the meaning of possibility in examples A.3 and A.4, the modal verb may is translated as maaari in the TT. A literal translation is used to convey the meaning from ST to TT. The modal may, in the ST, indicates the likelihood that COVID-19 will evolve into a seasonal flu and the possibility of changes in the intensity of the typhoon reported. The modality value does not significantly change, and the ST and TT both express low probabilities.

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  123 In addition to may expressing possibility, the data suggests another function of may in disaster communication texts: expressing permission, as seen in the example below: A.5.

May - Maaari ST:   Some jurisdictions may use a legal Health Officer Order. TT:  Maaaring gumamit ang ibang mga hurisdiksyon ng ligal na Kautusan ng Opisyal ng Kalusugan. 6

In example A.5, the permission expressed using may in the ST is translated into the TT using the exact modal used to express possibility, maaari. The modality element in the ST is translated into the TT through transposition. Using may in the ST conveys the meaning of permitting to use a legal health order. In the TT, permission is translated into Filipino using the modal maaari. There is also no significant change in the modality value in that both ST and TT express low modality values. B.  Expressing Permission Apart from may, can is another modal used to express permission, as seen in the example below: B.1.

Can - Maaari ST:   Certain outdoor businesses can also begin operating again. TT: Ang ilang mga panlabas na negosyo ay maaari ring magsimula muli sa pagpapatakbo.

B.2.

Can - Maaari ST:   Road conditions can be checked at DriveBC. TT:  Maaaring itsek ang kondisyon ng mga daan sa DriveBC.

7

8

Example B.1 uses the modal can in ST to express the granting of permission for business operations. Example B.2 may be rephrased as “One is allowed to check road conditions at DriveBC.” In the examples presented, both the ST and TT express a low level of modality value, expressing what is allowed or permitted to the addressee. Moreover, the modal can, in this example, may also convey the idea of possibility aside from permission and can be rephrased as “It is possible to check road conditions at DriveBC.” While one may argue that may is a better option for expressing permission, both can and may often have overlapping meanings, according to Quirk et al. According to them, may implies more personal permission granted by the speaker, while can suggests “more general or impersonal” permission (Quirk et al. 1985, 224). It is essential to have a clear grasp of the various meanings and contexts of modals in both the ST and TT when using maaari to convey can in the TT. This modal has the capacity to express

124  Mary Ann G. Bacolod both possibility and permission, which can lead to misperception. It is worth noting that direct translations may not necessarily convey the intended meaning accurately. Another example that illustrates a challenge in translating the ambiguity in the meaning of modals is the translation of the modal can into maaari, as shown below. B.3.

Can - Maaari ST:   Any employee allowed to return to work at a facility can also access childcare programs that can operate. TT: Ang sinumang empleyado na pinapayagan na bumalik sa trabaho sa isang pasilidad ay maaari ring ma-access ang mga programa sa pangangalaga ng bata na maaaring magpatakbo. 9

In example B.3, permission to access childcare programs is expressed using the modal can in the ST. The meaning is translated into the TT using literal translation. Both the ST and the TT express a low modality value. However, in the TT, the modal maaari can convey both the meanings of permission and ability. The translation in the TT poses a challenge when using the verbal affix ma- and the modal maaari, as it can create ambiguity in interpreting the meaning of maaari. It is because the affix ma- has several functions, including patient, abilitative, and agent focus, affecting the interpretation of modals’ meanings as permission and ability. Expressing ability using the modal maaari is evident in example B.4 below, where the affix maka-, an abilitative modal affix in Filipino, is used with the verb in conjunction with the modal maaari. B.4.

Can – Maaari ST:   Our ultimate goal is that anyone, living in any neighborhood, can get access to testing, particularly those with symptoms of COVID-19. TT: Ang aming tunay na layunin ay ang sinuman, na naninirahan sa anumang kapitbahayan ay maaaring makakuha ng pag-access sa pagsusuri. 10

One occurrence of the word kaya (able) utilized as a translation of can was also found, which clearly denotes ability. Furthermore, it is also worth noting that aside from maaari, the modal pwede was also used to translate can (3) and could (1) but with low occurrences compared to maaari. The meaning similarly conveys possibility and permission. To accurately interpret the modal maaari, it is essential to consider various influencing factors that could help address the ambiguity. Analyzing the affixes affixed to the verbs utilized with modals in Filipino, in addition to the context, can provide further insight and a clearer understanding of the intended meaning of the modal within the sentence.

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  125 C.  Expressing Obligation C.1. Must - Dapat C.1.1. 11 Must - Dapat ST:   “…we must greatly enhance our efforts to mitigate future climate change and to adapt to the new weather reality we face.” TT: “…dapat nating pagbutihin ang ating efforts upang iwasan ang climate change sa hinaharap at mag-adapt sa bagong weather reality na ating kinakaharap.” C.1.2.

Must - Dapat ST:   “We are progressing steadily as a region, but we must reduce restrictions on activity gradually, or we will put the lives of many community members at risk.” TT: “Patuloy tayong sumusulong bilang isang rehiyon, ngunit dapat nating bawasan ang mga paghihigpit sa aktibidad nang unti-unti o mailalagay natin sa panganib ang mga buhay ng maraming mga miyembro ng komunidad.”

12

To communicate the meaning of obligation as a requirement or compulsion, dapat is used as the translation for the modal must. In both examples, C.1.1 and C.1.2, a transposition strategy is employed where the structure N/NP + modal in the ST (we must) translates into modal + N/NP in the TT (dapat natin). The modal must in the ST denotes a stronger obligation, where the speaker compels the addressee to address climate change and reduce restrictions to avoid consequences. In Filipino, the TT translates the meaning of obligation associated with must into dapat. The modal dapat expresses an obligation based on external forces, as defined by Schachter and Otanes (1972). Using dapat in this example conveys the exact meaning of obligation where the speaker expresses their authority to the addressees and compels them to act based on external factors such as current conditions brought about by climate change and the possible risk of reducing restrictions. Furthermore, the value of modality remains high in both ST and TT. C.2. Must - Kailangan C.2.1. 13 Must - Kailangan ST:   Services will be limited in Merritt as the return progresses, and residents will be on a boil water notice, meaning all water must be boiled before being consumed. TT: Ang mga serbisyo ay limitado sa Merritt habang pabalik ang mga tao, ang mga residente ay nasa ilalim din ng boil water notice, ibig sabihin lahat ng tubig ay kailangan pakuluan bago ikonsumo.

126  Mary Ann G. Bacolod In sentence C.2.1, the modal verb must is employed in ST. Here, the speaker emphasizes the importance of boiling water before drinking due to water contamination from flooding. In the TT, the obligation conveyed by must is translated to kailangan in Filipino. Kailangan in Filipino may act as a full lexical verb by itself, which means “necessary.” It mainly expresses necessity with a median modality value. In example C.2.1, a change in modality value from high (ST) to median (TT) affects the degree of obligation that the modals in the sentence express. In this example, must is considered obligatory, and the speaker expects the addressee to follow. On the other hand, using modal kailangan as its translation signifies internal obligation, with the speaker emphasizing the necessary action based on his evaluation. Using kailangan in the TT to convey necessary action based on the speaker’s assessment leaves room for uncertainty regarding adherence to the recommendation. This example highlights the impact of translations on our perception of obligation in disaster-related communication. Data from C.1 and C.2 also shows that the translation of must mainly uses two overlapping and ambiguous equivalents in the TT: dapat and kailangan. C.3. Have to - Kailangan C.3.1. 14 Have to - Kailangan ST:   The containers, many of which make their way to the coastal ports by rail, have had to wait for railways through the interior to be repaired. TT:  Ang containers, na karamihan ay dumarating sa coastal port sa pamamagitan ng tren, ay kailangang maghintay na makumpuni ang mga nasirang riles sa interior. C.3.2.

Have to - Kailangan ST:   But, when we do have to go out into the public, face covering is a critical tool to reduce asymptomatic trans­mission. TT: Ngunit, kapag kailangan nating lumabas sa publiko, kritikal na pamamaraan ang mga panakip sa mukha upang mabawasan ang pagkakahawa ng walang mga sintomas.

15

In C.3.1 and C.3.2, the obligation is expressed using the modal have to, which bears a high level of obligation. In C.3.1, have to expresses the imperative for containers to wait due to a non-functional railway. In C.3.2, have to signifies an obligation to go out because of possible external factors such as work or the necessity of buying food. The translation of the ST verb have had to into kailangan in the TT in example C.3.1 downplays the importance of the time and inaccurately conveys the completed action. Kinailangan should have been used in the TT to reflect

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  127 the fulfilled action correctly instead of kailangan. It is crucial to note that the obligation associated with have to in the TT is weakened when translated into kailangan, which has a median modality value. This change in value affects the interpretation of the level of obligation expressed in the source text. C.4. Need - Kailangan, Dapat C.4.1. 16 Need - Kailangan ST:   We need to continue these protections until we’re confident that the level of immunization and immunity from infection in our population is sufficient. TT:  Kailangan natin ipagpatuloy ang mga proteksyon na ito hangga’t confident na tayo na ang level of immunization at immunity mula sa infection sa ating populasyon ay sapat na. The modal need is used in example C.4.1 to convey the obligation or responsibilities in relation to COVID-19 mitigation. The modal need represents a high level of obligation. In the target text, need is translated into kailangan using the transposition strategy, where the structure N/NP + modal in the ST translates into modal + N/NP in the TT. The modal kailangan expresses the speaker’s assessment that it is crucial and indispensable to continue protecting the population against the virus. However, the shift in the high modality value from the original text to the median value in the target text results in a change in the sense of urgency and necessity. While need conveys both obligation and necessity in the ST, kailangan places greater emphasis on necessity. Although kailangan is the most commonly used translation for need, there was one instance found where dapat was used to express obligation or expected norm. Using dapat in example C.4.2 successfully conveyed the obligation and necessity expressed by need in the original text. However, more data is needed to confirm the consistency of this equivalent. C.4.2.

Need - Dapat ST:   “Am I optimistic? Yes, because we kind of know what needs to be done,” Deonandan said. TT:  “Optimistic ba ako? Oo, dahil alam natin kung ano ang dapat gawin,” ani Deonandan.

17

C.5. Should - Dapat C.5.1. 18 Should - Dapat ST:   … residents in flood-prone areas of the province should be prepared for more evacuations as more storms roll in. TT: … ang mga residente sa flood-prone areas ng probinsya ay dapat maghanda para sa mas maraming evacuations habang mas maraming bagyo ang darating.

128  Mary Ann G. Bacolod Should, in example C.5.1, also signifies obligation. In this example, should is rendered as dapat in the TT via transposition that requires verb structure and form modifications. The initial implication of readiness and preparation in the ST is translated into a directive or action that must be executed in the TT. Should in C.5.1 signifies what people are expected to do as more storms approach. It denotes a sense of obligation, albeit weaker than other modals, as it leans more toward advice and recommendations, with a median modality value. The TT expresses obligation using the modal verb dapat. The translation of the verb that goes with dapat influences the change in meaning in the TT. In ST, should is followed by be + verb in the past participle, which functions as an adjective (prepared). It conveys the expectation that preparation has been fulfilled. Conversely, in TT, dapat is followed by the imperative form of the verb maghanda, expressing a command to prepare hereafter. The translation process employed reflects the difference between the necessity of being “prepared” when disaster strikes and the necessity of “preparing” when disaster strikes. The modality value expressed varies from ST to TT, where should represents a median modality value. In contrast, the meaning denoted by dapat in this example expresses a high modality value, indicating high obligation or command. C.6. Should - Dapat, Kailangan C.6.1. 19 Should - Dapat ST:   Travelers should carefully check all entry requirements of their desired destination before booking their ticket. TT:  Dapat maingat na suriin ng mga biyahe ang lahat ng kinakailangan sa pagpasok sa gusto nilang destinasyon bago magpabook ng tiket. C.6.2.

Should - Kailangan ST:   Canada’s chief public health officer said Tuesday that Canadians should get their dose of a recently authorized bivalent vaccine to stave off a fall resurgence of COVID-19. TT: Sinabi ng chief public health officer ng Canada noong Martes na kailangan magpaturok ng otorisadong bivalent vaccine para maiwasan ang muling pagkalat ng COVID-19 ngayong taglagas.

20

Based on the data, dapat is the most common translation of should. Nonetheless, one occurrence of kailangan being used as a translation for should warrants further investigation. C.6.1 and C.6.2 present two distinct translations of should. Should is rendered as dapat in C.6.1, whereas it is rendered as kailangan in C.6.2. In example C.6.1, should expresses recommendation or advisability.

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  129 It conveys the meaning of a non-binding obligation where the speaker advises the addressee to check requirements before booking tickets but leaves it to the addressee’s discretion as to whether the recommendation will be fulfilled. In the target text, dapat is not used in a recommendatory sense. Dapat indicates that the addressee is expected to adhere to the proposed action because it is part of a rule or protocol or is mandatory. Using dapat, the speaker expects the proposed action to be carried out. Should in the ST expresses median modality value. However, its translation using the modal dapat in the TT expresses obligation with a high modality value. Again, we see a shift in meaning and modality value in translation here. In C.6.2., should indicates a strong recommendation to get vaccinated to prevent the resurgence of COVID-19. In this context, the speaker urges the addressee to take the proposed action on the basis of its advisability. The use of kailangan as the translation of should in the TT emphasizes the necessity of the action conveyed by the speaker. It does not necessarily urge the addressee to adhere to the recommendation but highlights the need to get vaccinated. In this example, both should and kailangan have a median modality value. It is crucial to note that the translation of should in Filipino, like must, is expressed in the TT using dapat and kailangan. These modals indicate different types of obligation, with kailangan emphasizing need/necessity and dapat emphasizing obligation, command, or requirement. Correctly translating these modals can aid in differentiating between necessary actions related to disaster information and the steps required to adhere to a particular process or protocol. The interpretation of modals can have a significant effect on how we respond to the urgency or necessity of disaster situations. In order to convey the correct sense of obligation, it is crucial to exercise caution when selecting the appropriate meaning of modals. 8.5 Summary and Conclusion This study highlights the importance of modal verbs when communicating urgent or necessary information about disasters and COVID-19 restrictions. The analysis shows that modal verbs such as must, have to, should, and need are central for giving commands related to disaster preparedness, response, and management and for informing the public and government entities about COVID-19 restrictions, requirements, protocols, and expectations. In the TT, must is often translated to dapat or kailangan. Should is primarily translated to dapat, whereas need and have to are mainly translated into kailangan. However, further data is needed to confirm the use of kailangan as equivalent for should and dapat as another equivalent for need. On the other hand, modals expressing possibility in disaster communication texts analyzed include the modals can, could, and may, which are used to express possibility, permission, and ability. They are used to convey the state, behavior, and potential effects of a disaster. In Filipino, all three functions are encompassed by the single modal

130  Mary Ann G. Bacolod form maaari. It poses a challenge in translation, as the different functions of one modal can make achieving equivalence difficult, requiring careful analysis of backgrounds or context. Table 8.2 shows a summary of translation equivalents of English and Filipino modals based on the data, contrasted semantically according to the meaning they express based on the analysis conducted. The results of this study indicate that translating English modals to Filipino can be challenging, given the absence of one-on-one equivalents in the target language. The data in Table 8.2 shows that multiple forms of modals in the source language may be rendered into a single modal form with different meanings in the target language. Conversely, a single form in the source language may be translated into multiple forms with various meanings in the target language. Dapat and kailangan in Filipino, which express obligation, necessity, and recommendation, can generate ambiguity when translating English modals. Similarly, the modal maaari can express permission, possibility, and ability, creating a potential for misinterpretation during translation. This study highlights the importance of semantic components, contextual meaning, and morphosyntactic features as factors that can significantly affect the translatability of modals in Filipino. Understanding these factors is crucial to grasp the nuances and value of the modality used in a disaster communication context. For instance, when using the modal maaari to convey permission or possibility, addressing a human subject explicitly in a sentence makes permission more evident, as in the example Maaari ka nang lumabas ng bahay kapag walang sintomas. (You may leave the house if you do not have symptoms). However, if there is no human control involved or there is no explicit agent in  the sentence, maaari can be interpreted to express possibility, such as Maaaring masuspinde ang pasok bukas. (Classes may be suspended tomorrow). Sometimes, even without an explicit agent, the sentence’s underlying structure may imply one, leading to the interpretation of maaari as permission, as in the example, Maaari (mo) nang kuhanin ang ticket. (Tickets are ready to be claimed Table 8.2  Summary of Translation Equivalents and Meaning English

Meaning(s)

Translation

Meaning(s)

MUST

Obligation

SHOULD

Obligation (non-binding)/ Advisability Permission Ability Possibility Permission Possibility Obligation Obligation

DAPAT KAILANGAN DAPAT KAILANGAN MAAARI

Obligation Necessity Obligation Necessity Permission Ability Possibility Permission Possibility Necessity Necessity Obligation

CAN COULD MAY HAVE TO NEED

MAAARI MAAARI KAILANGAN KAILANGAN DAPAT

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  131 [by you/someone]). It is essential to consider these factors carefully to ensure accurate interpretation and conveyance of the meaning of modals. Furthermore, the findings also suggest that translating modal verbs poses a challenge because their meanings can vary depending on the source and target languages and are dependent on the context of use. In Filipino, interpreting the meaning of modals is even more complex due to their ambiguous functions. In addition to considering the context of usage, it is also essential to understand the nuances in the meaning of affixes attached to the verbs that are used with modals in Filipino or the structure/type of verb(s) used. It can be seen in the example dapat maghanda (should prepare; expressing command/ obligation) versus dapat handa (should be prepared; expressing expected norm). Dapat maghanda commands or obligates one to prepare, while dapat handa denotes a normative expectation of being prepared. Same with the example maaaring i-extend ang state of emergency (permission and possibility) and maaaring ma-extend ang state of emergency (possibility). This variability can significantly impact the intended interpretation of modals in the sentence as it plays a crucial role in the shift in meaning and modality value of modals in the translated text. As one of the initial attempts to analyze the significance of modals in the context of disaster and risk communication, the analysis was based on limited data. Further studies need to be carried out using more comprehensive data to validate the consistency in translation equivalent given for these modals and their functions from English to Filipino. Despite its exploratory nature, this study set out to gain a better understanding of modals in Filipino and English in the context of translation in disaster communication. It underlined the significance of accurately translating modals to provide readers with the necessary information to respond appropriately based on the gravity of the communicated situation. By conducting a semantic analysis to examine the nuances in the meaning of modals in disaster-related communications, we can better understand the risks, urgency, and necessity involved. It will enable us to provide individuals with vital information so they can make well-informed decisions and respond accordingly to disaster-related communication. Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful to Cassaundra Allanne Bacolod, Patricia Anne Asuncion, and Maria Khristina Manueli-Baumann for their feedback and invaluable help. Notes 1 Data sources include Radyo Canada Internasyonal, CBC News, Thomson Reuters, Seattlepi, Santa Clara County, The Associated Press, and The Canadian Press. 2 ST Title: Mammoth cleanup to begin in B.C. as flood waters recede, https://ici. radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/1840803/mammoth-cleanup-to-begin-in-b-c-asflood-waters-recede, TT Title: Malaking cleanup uumpisahan na sa B.C. matapos

132  Mary Ann G. Bacolod humupa ang tubig baha, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/balita/1840867/ bc-cleanup-begins-flood-waters?fbclid=IwAR2FZq-JE3f6kSRGcSLdA4eezumxf zwfOpTf0p515Myck1U8My5Z0gaS_AY. 3 ST Title: Joint Statement of the Seven Bay Area Health Officers on Upcoming Extension and Revisions to the Current Shelter-in-Place Orders, https://covid19. sccgov.org/news-releases/pr-04-27-2020-upcoming-extension-and-revisions-toshelter-in-place-order, TT Title: Sama-samang Pahayag ng Pitong Opisyal ng Kalusugan sa Bay Area tungkol sa Paparating na Pagpapatuloy at Pagbabago sa Kasalukuyang Kautusan na Manatili-sa-Bahay, https://covid19.sccgov.org/ news-releases-tagalog/pr-04-27-2020-upcoming-extension-and-revisions-toshelter-in-place-order. 4 ST Title: Tropical storm injures 3, displaces thousands in Philippines, https:// apnews.com/article/floods-storms-sports-manila-tropical-e36d8fd3b4a9 cf54f8579b3158299c02, TT Title: Bagyong Florita iniwan ang libo-libo na walang tahanan, 3 sugatan sa Pilipinas https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/balita/1907661/ tropical-storm-florita-philippines-disaster?fbclid=IwAR0agAVU7D54xkQkCDs RxBeA7iyAACWbg98olvKQJCHtkTAxCQbI9S28s08. 5 ST Title: 4th wave of COVID-19 likely, seasonal return may be inevitable if Canada reopens too fast, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/1791904/4th-wave-ofcovid-19--seasonal-return-inevitable-canada-reopens-too-fast, TT Title: Ika-4 na bugso ng COVID-19 malamang, pana-panahong pagbabalik baka hindi maiwasan kung muling magbubukas agad ang Canada, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/ balita/1807899/ika-4-na-bugso-ng-covid-19-malamang-pana-panahong-pagbabalikbaka-hindi-maiwasan-kung-muling-magbubukas-agad-ang-canada. 6 ST Title: County of Santa Clara Public Health Department Issues Guidance on Face Coverings, https://covid19.sccgov.org/news-releases/pr-04-17-2020-scc-phdguidance-on-face-coverings, TT Title: Nagpalabas ang Departamento ng Pam­ publikong Kalusugan ng County ng Santa Clara ng Patnubay sa mga Panakip sa Mukha, https://covid19.sccgov.org/news-releases-tagalog/pr-04-17-2020-sccphd-guidance-on-face-coverings. 7 ST Title: Regional Shelter-in-Place Orders Extended as Some Rules Ease, https:// covid19.sccgov.org/news-releases/pr-04-29-2020-shelter-in-place-orderextended, TT Title: Pinalawak ang mga Kautusan na Rehiyonal na Manatili-saBahay at Pinaluwag ang Ilang mga Tuntunin, https://covid19.sccgov.org/ news-releases-tagalog/pr-04-29-2020-shelter-in-place-order-extended. 8 ST Title: Rains to subside as B.C. assesses damage from floods, mudslides, https://ici. radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/1840210/rains-to-subside-as-b-c-assessesdamage-from-floods-mudslides, TT Title: Ulan titila na habang ina-assess ng B.C. ang pinsala mula sa baha at mudslides, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/balita/1 840219/british-columbia-rains-subside-assess-damage. 9 See B.1. source/links for full data. 10 ST Title: County of Santa Clara Increases COVID-19 Testing Access with Two New Community Testing Sites, https://covid19.sccgov.org/news-releases/pr-05-042020-two-new-covid-19-testing-sites, TT Title: Nagdaragdag ang County ng Santa Clara ng Pag-access sa Pagsusuri ng COVID-19 ng Dalawang Bagong Pasilidad ng Pagsusuri sa Komunidad, https://covid19.sccgov.org/news-releasestagalog/pr-05-04-2020-two-new-covid-19-testing-sites. 11 ST Title: B.C. floods caused at least $450M in damage, insurance bureau says, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-flood-damage1.6280393, TT Title: Mga pagbaha sa B.C. nagdulot ng halos $450M na pinsala, ayon sa insurance bureau, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/balita/1846428/ british-columbia-floods-millions-damage. 12 See B.1. and B.3. source/links for full data.

On the Translatability of Filipino Modals  133 13 ST Title: Heavy storms headed for southwest B.C., threatening recovery from floods and landslides, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wyntk-bcfloods-nov-23-1.6259055, TT Title: Malakas na bagyo patungo sa southwest B.C., binabantaan ang flood at mudslide recovery, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/ balita/1842026/storms-bc-flood-mudslide-recover y?fbclid=IwAR2qQmd FG5lD8mnjjCWdkuogiRyagwES7WOG6Hh-3t-lniizauX2gHGBJ0M. 14 ST Title: These Christmas packages are destined for the Philippines—but floods have delayed them from being shipped, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britishcolumbia/bc-balikbayan-boxes-delayed-1.6281573#:~:text=Columbia%C2%B7 Mabuhay%20B.C.-,These%20Christmas%20packages%20are%20destined%20 f o r % 2 0 t h e % 2 0 P h i l i p p i n e s % 2 0 % E 2 % 8 0 % 9 4 % 2 0 b u t % 2 0 f l o o d s, t h e % 2 0 Philippines%20%E2%80%94%20from%20being%20shipped, TT Title: Balikbayan boxes patungong Pilipinas para sa Pasko— naantala dahil sa mga pagbaha, https:// ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/balita/1847350/balikbayan-boxes-delayed-floodsphilippines. 15 See A.5. source/links for full data. 16 ST Title: Health experts predict gradual return to normal, but with caveats, https:// www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/health-experts-predict-return-to-normal1.6084165,TT Title: Napipisil na ng mga eksperto sa kalusugan ang pagbabalik normal, ngunit may babala, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/balita/1808416/ covid19-bakuna-bata-pagbabalik-normal. 17 See C.4.1. source/links. 18 ST Title: Prime minister tours flood zones as B.C. Officials warn more storms are coming, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wyntk-bc-floods-nov26-1.6263420, TT Title: Justin Trudeau bibisita sa Fraser Valley sa B.C. na napinsala ng baha https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/balita/1842876/trudeau-visitfraser-valley-floods?fbclid=IwAR2S6aLo1cHH0jcBGSyp57blaVvB-wCswj7A1 Q9Rz3WY4DjXsqiJL3uQXg4. 19 ST Title: Fully vaccinated and yearning to travel? Here are the new rules of the road, https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/travel-rules-covid-19-vaccinated-1.6094133, TT Title: Kumpletong nabakunahan na at naghahangad na magbiyahe? Narito ang ilan sa mga bagong panuntunan sa kalsada, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/ tl/balita/1807995/kumpletong-nabakunahan-na-at-naghahangad-na-magbiyahenarito-ang-ilan-sa-mga-bagong-panuntunan-sa-kalsada. 20 ST Title: Facing a fall COVID surge, Tam calls on Canadians to get their bivalent  booster shots, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tam-bivalent-shots-fallresurgence-1.6620555, TT Title: Banta ng Fall COVID surge: Tam nanawagan sa Canadians na magpa-bivalent booster shot, https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/tl/ balita/1925830/fall-covid-surge-bivalent-booster.

References Božana, Knežević, and Irena Bogunović. 2011. “Modals and modality in translation: A case study based approach.” Jezikoslovlje 12, no. 2 (December): 117–45. Downing, Angela, and Philip Locke. 2002. A University Course in English Grammar. London: Routledge. Halliday, Michael, and Christian Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed.). Oxon: Routledge. Kindle. Peng, Lai. 2020. “Semantic and Syntactic Ambiguities in the Acquisition of Chinese Modal Verbs: Based on Intralingual and Interlingual Differences.” Linguistics and Literature Studies 8, no. 4 (July): 206–14. https://doi.org/10.13189/lls.2020. 080406

134  Mary Ann G. Bacolod Malicsi, Jonathan. 2013. Gramar ng Filipino. Diliman, Lungsod Quezon: Sentro ng Wikang Filipino, Unibersidad ng Pilipinas. Müller, Marcus. 2021. “Necessity, Norm and Missing Knowledge.” Zeitschrift Für Literaturwissenschaft Und Linguistik 51, no. 3 (September): 421–50. https://doi. org/10.1007/s41244-021-00212-4 Odhiambo, Kenneth, and Owala Silas Odhiambo. 2020. “The Use of Modal Auxiliary Verbs in Reporting Covid-19: A Study of Selected Articles Daily Nation Newspaper.” International Journal of Research—GRANTHAALAYAH 8, no. 7 (July): 118–29. https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v8.i7.2020.550 Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Pearson Longman. Schachter, Paul, and Fe T. Otanes. 1972. Tagalog reference grammar. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. Susini, Made, Ida Bagus Putra Yadnya, and Ida Ayu Made Puspani. 2019. “The Translatability of Indonesian Modality into English.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 9, no. 9 (September): 1125–33. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls. 0909.08 Torres, Peter Joseph. 2021. “The role of modals in policies: The US opioid crisis as a case study.” Applied Corpus Linguistics 1, no. 3 (December). https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.acorp.2021.100008 Yetkin-Karakoç, Nihal, and Filiz Mergen. 2021. “Analyzing the Translations of Some English Circumstantial and Modal Adverbs into Turkish.” The Journal of Language Teaching and Learning 11, no. 1: 1–16.

9 Lost for Words The Untranslatability of Some Tagalog Words and Phrases Jesus Federico C. Hernandez

9.1 Introduction Untranslatability has been the topic of debate and interest in the literature on translation. Sadkowska (2016, 123) summarizes the various viewpoints on the notion and possibility of translation under three general approaches: the universalists, the monadists, and the deconstructionists. The universalist, according to Sadkowska, supposes that “every utterance or text is translatable due to the existence of ‘linguistic universals’ in languages”; the monadist, on the other hand, argues that difference in linguistic systems between the source language and the target language creates untranslatability between languages; and the third group, the deconstructionists, see translation as a re-writing of the source text and not just a mere transfer of message, and in the process of re-writing losses are inevitable. These approaches are products of a long history of debates among various disciplines, from philosophy to linguistics, and between various schools of thought like the cognitivists and the behaviorists, the relativists and the universalists, and the practitioners of translation in the literary arts. House (2016) presents a discussion on linguistic relativity from its Humboldtian origins to post–Sapir-Whorf reimaginings, locating translatability or untranslatability within the linguistic determinism and relativity spectrum. Bassnett (2014) provides a comprehensive history of translation theory and highlights some of the fundamental sources or collision points in the debates on translation theory and practice. The current chapter attempts to contribute to the discussion on untranslatability by looking at some lexical items and phrases in Tagalog that poses a challenge to the translator. It aims to provide illustrations and elaborations by providing specific examples of untranslatability from a source language of Austronesian origin (Tagalog) to one of Indo-European descent (English): two languages with very different linguistic systems and cultural milieu that have collided during the colonial subjugation of the Philippines by the Americans. Among other things, this resulted in the widespread use of English in urban centers and the attempts to translate, mediate, and find equivalencies between the two linguistic systems.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003405603-10

136  Jesus Federico C. Hernandez Recently, one often sees a list of words that are untranslatable or do not have an equivalent in another language (most often English). This has become prevalent in social media and in other popular media. From various Tagalog lists of untranslatables (Anza 2022; Custodio 2022; and Filipiknow 2022), I selected several words that occurred in these lists to examine the reasons why they are challenging to translate. I have also included several phrases that are oftentimes considered impossible to translate. The goal of the chapter is to unpack some of these “untranslatable” words by looking into the cultural and linguistic contexts of these words. The exploration goes beyond the denotations and the connotations but also considers the various lexical use, semantic connections, and significance of these words in the everyday life of the speakers. The syntactic features of the language that produce gaps in equivalencies are also examined. 9.2 Untranslatability The notion of untranslatability was brought to the forefront by John Catford in 1965. Catford distinguishes between untranslatability attributed to linguistic differences and untranslatability because of cultural disparities (Catford 1965, 94). However, other translation scholars question these classifications, arguing that a language is inseparable from its culture because language is a product of culture (Cymbalista 2003; Cui 2012; Okolie & Okoedion 2022). Catford’s classifications and the counterpoints to the separation between linguistic and cultural untranslatability need to be further considered. While a language is a witness and a repository of culture, and the connections between the two are almost inextricable, particularly in the field of semantics, that is, meanings are not simply denotative but are also connotative and sometimes even subjective and collective, some parts of language, such as morphosyntactic structures and mechanisms may be classified as more linguistic and less cultural. In this section, the ideas of linguistic and cultural untranslatability will be explored further and unpacked by investigating the challenges in translating some lexical items and phrases in Tagalog. I propose that the lexicon, categorization, lexical productivity, and semantic networks form part of Catford’s cultural classification and linguistic untranslatability will focus mainly on the structural differences of languages that pose challenges in translation. The analyses will concretize and operationalize Catford’s classification of untranslatables. 9.2.1 Cultural Untranslatability

One view from ethnolinguistics is that the diversity of languages provides for a diversity of worldviews. Language is a product of the collective struggle and the meaning-making practice of a group and is reflective of the everyday life of a community. It is also dynamic and responsive to the daily communicative

Lost for Words  137 needs of its speakers. Different languages do not reflect only differences in vocabulary but also differences in the categorization of the various objects, experiences, and phenomena, which means the breadth and depth of meaning and the semantic domains associated with the lexicon are diverse across cultures and specific to a particular language community. This however does not deny the existence of universals in language as was already shown in generative grammar and in the development and application of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory; what this tells us is there are features of language that are universal and perhaps foundational even, but some elements of language are culture-specific. This is where the challenges to translatability reside. Translatability operates on the concept of equivalence. According to Kashgary (2010, 49), “The concept of equivalence has been considered the  essence of the translation process. Almost all definitions of translation advanced by various theorists employ one form or another of this concept.” Untranslatability then occurs because of non-equivalence. Oftentimes, we view untranslatability as the lack of a one-to-one lexical correspondence from the source language to the target language. Large, Akashi, Józwikowska, and Rose (2019, 2) note that to describe a word as untranslatable simply means that the target language “does not have a single-word equivalent which can be agreed to cover all the senses of the source language word.” The most obvious examples of these are words in the source language that do not have a referent in the target language. The non-equivalence is brought about by the lack of vocabulary because the object itself is non-existent in the target language. In this case, untranslatability is not because of differences in semantics but in the materiality of the referent itself. One of the techniques used in diachronic linguistics in making inferences about the culture history of a group is called the Wörter und Sachen technique (Blust 1984, 46), which literally means “words and things.” In simple terms, the technique makes use of reconstructed vocabulary as a basis for the existence of referents in the past. The premise is if an object is present in the environment where the language is spoken, then it is likely that there exists a word for the particular object. However, if the object is absent, then it is certain that the language will not have a word for that particular object. This can also be applied to the notion of equivalence; one can find equivalence where the referent exists in both the source and the target languages. Otherwise, non-equivalence and therefore untranslatability ensues. For example, aardvarks are not native to Tagalog, so an equivalent to the word aardvark does not exist in Tagalog. Examples such as these might be candidates for true untranslatability. However, the mutability and flexibility of language provide for ways to accommodate introductions of new vocabulary even when referents are distant or remote. Translating the word snow into Tagalog, for example, might seem impossible because snow does not exist in the Tagalog-speaking regions, but because of our colonial subjugation, initially by Spain and then by the United States, the object and the words associated with snow from Spanish

138  Jesus Federico C. Hernandez and English, nieve and snow, have become part of the Tagalog vocabulary, even if the referent itself is not part of the realities of Tagalog speakers in the Philippines. Words from Tagalog however that have no referents in English will be untranslatable until the speakers of English find a need for such objects. In recent American culinary explorations, for example, ube which was translated as “purple yam” early on, has now become a popular ingredient. And this word of proto-Malayo-Polynesian origin has now infiltrated the English vocabulary, ushering the obsolescence of the purple yam. The point I am driving at is while the materiality of the referent may have been a strong reason, a condition even, for untranslatability, with rapid globalization and increasing connectivity, words that were untranslatable before because of lack of referents in the target language can now easily be borrowed and its referents can easily be accessed virtually. Still, words in Tagalog that have no referents in English may continue to pose a translatability challenge until speakers of English find a need for such vocabulary. Apart from the materiality of the referent, another challenge to translatability from Tagalog to English is the existence of multiple lexical items that express specificity and distinction between each word within a domain. Consider rice. Tagalog has numerous specific words that refer to rice in various stages of preparation and states but not a generic term for rice while English has a generic term for rice while other states of rice appear in a modification structure. Tagalog has palay, which in English will either refer to the rice plant or the unhusked grain of this plant, which distinguishes it from bigas, the husked grain of rice. Kanin is cooked rice while sinaing is defined as rice that is being cooked, or cooked or boiled rice that is still in the pot (Santos 1978, 2289). The burnt part of the cooked rice is called tutong, left-over rice is bahaw (usually left overnight), and some particles of cooked rice (kanin) that fell off the plate or left on the plate are referred to as mumo. And finally, fried rice is sinangag. These are some examples of words within the domain of rice. While single-word equivalents for the various states and stages of rice are absent in English, phrasal equivalents are possible. The converse also poses a challenge: rice is difficult to translate into Tagalog if it appears outside of its context. The translator needs information on the condition of the rice for it to be translated into Tagalog. One of the words that appeared in the list of untranslatables from Tagalog into English is the word papak. Papak is an interesting word because while it is a word that refers to the act of eating, it is very specific in the sense that it means to eat meat or fish (anything usually eaten with rice during meals) without rice, especially not during mealtime. This highlights the centrality of rice in the culinary culture of the Tagalog, that eating without it needs to be distinguished with a separate word. This however is not the case in English gastronomy. The difference in the prominence of the position of rice in the dietary practice between the Tagalog and English speakers provides for the lack of equivalency for this particular example.

Lost for Words  139 Another word that I find difficult to translate is the word pakla. Pakla falls under the category of taste. While English has sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, salty, and recently, umami, Tagalog has an additional taste term, pakla. The difficulty with the translation of this word is that it is both a taste and a certain feeling in the mouth and teeth. Some translate pakla as acrid or to have a very irritatingly strong and unpleasant taste or smell. While pakla can be an unpleasant taste, it is not irritatingly strong. Also, it is not used to refer to odor. Pakla seems to be very specific as well to the taste of unripe bananas or banana blossoms that were not properly prepared. Generally, it is in reference to the taste of some immature fruits. This gustatory term reveals that some tropical fruits, when eaten before maturity, do not taste sour (like mangoes) or bland, in the sense of not being able to fulfill their full sweetness potential (like melons and papaya). Instead, the taste can be described as that which is mapakla. Apart from the taste, it is also a mouthfeel that may be characterized by the feeling of sap coating the tongue and the teeth. The examples above about rice show differences in the lexical productivity and specificity of terms related to rice in a culture where rice is not only an essential part of the food culture but also plays an important role in the economic, folkloric, and even religious life of the Tagalog. The taste term pakla, which lacks an equivalent in the English language, points to the difference in gustatory categories brought about by the difference in the food produced in the environment. Lexical productivity, which is also referred to as lexicalization in some literature, and categorization are challenges to translatability. They are ethnolinguistic challenges; they are both cultural and linguistic in nature. Other challenges to translatability that surfaced in the list of Tagalog untranslatables into English may be categorized as the differences in semantic breadth, depth, and composition. These will be discussed in the succeeding sections using illustrations from the lists. Two words that appeared across various lists are the words pasma and usog. Interestingly, both terms are prominent in Tagalog conversations about health and well-being. Pasma may have been derived from the Spanish espasmo, which means “spasm.” However, pasma is more than just the sudden uncontrollable jerking of muscles. Tan (2008, 94) describes pasma as accompanied by hand tremors, sweaty palms, numbness, and pains anchored in the beliefs about the interactions between the hot and the cold. This hot/cold syndrome, according to Tan (2008, 93), forms the basis for the concept of pasma. Tan (2008, 94) further notes that “someone who becomes too ‘hot’ from strenuous physical activity would be advised against bathing in cold water lest he or she be affected by pasma.” Someone who is too “hot” from exerting too much energy must then first wait for their internal temperature to normalize before washing or bathing. This in turn is probably anchored in the idea of balance and equilibrium. One must always take precautions with temperatures above or below normal. A cold drink in the morning on an empty stomach disturbs the equilibrium of the stomach and causes it to ache. Sudden changes in the

140  Jesus Federico C. Hernandez weather cause illness and body aches. Getting rained on, and sudden exposure to wet and cold rain, can cause a fever. Going in and out of an air-conditioned room on a hot day can cause colds, body aches, and fever. A whole lot of medico-cultural beliefs and practices, particularly on causation, are anchored on the idea of loss or disturbance of balance. Alimuom is another example of illness causation caused by hot/cold (or wet/dry) syndrome. Alimuom is defined as “vapor rising from the ground, esp. after a light rain during a hot day” (Santos 1978, 38). Panganiban (1972, 34) defines it as earth vapor (especially after a light rain on a very dry surface). The term is often translated in English as petrichor which is defined as a pleasant smell brought by rain after a period of dry weather. Both alimuom and petrichor refer to the smell or vapor released by the pouring of rain on a dry surface after a period of hot weather; however, alimuom is not considered pleasant. It is something to be avoided (by covering the nose and mouth or by closing the windows) because it causes stomach aches and other illnesses. This goes back once again to the reactions of the human body to hot and cold elements. While pasma has hot/cold exposure and imbalance as the basis for the disease, usog happens when a stronger life force meets or collides with a weak life force. Dictionaries often reduce the definition of usog to gas in the stomach or flatulence; sometimes a secondary sense is provided which is of a sickness of a child that is supposed to have been caused by another person who has taken notice of the child. To understand the meaning of usog and to be able to find phrasal equivalencies for translation, one must understand that usog is an illness usually of a child which manifests in vomiting, fever, pains, and incessant crying or concerning quietude that was unintentionally caused by an individual with a powerful life force or a strong pneuma. The reason why the secondary sense in the dictionary definition includes the idea of taking fancy or notice of a child is that the strong life force is released in the breath when a person articulates compliments to the child. Both pasma and usog and a host of other words that fall under the domain of traditional medicine or medico-cultural beliefs and practices are challenging to translate because of underlying belief systems. Pasma is not just a spasm, but it is a host of other maladies that result from an imbalance or disturbance in the internal temperature of a person. Usog is not just about child flatulence but is about the importance of the pneuma or breath in the conceptualization of well-being by the Tagalogs. This can also be seen in other Tagalog words that indicate well-being—ginhawa (breath) and nakakaluwag ang paghinga (literally, being able to breathe easily). Hence to translate pasma and usog, one needs to surface the cultural anchors where these concepts are tethered and at the same time examine the intersections between semantic domains where these concepts are located. While pasma and usog present challenges to translatability because of the semantic depth and semantic networks of these terms, the following words— kilig, gigil, and torpe—are challenging because of the semantic ambivalence and semantic associations of these words.

Lost for Words  141 Kilig is one of the more popular Tagalog untranslatables. In the translation of Noceda and Sanlucar’s Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala, quilig (in clerical orthography) it is defined as temblar el cuerpo por picado de culebra, which was translated by Almario, Ebreo, & Yglopaz as mangingig ang katawan dahil sa tuklaw ng ahas (Noceda and Sanlucar 2013, 434) or “to convulse because of a snake bite.” Other dictionaries like Panganiban (1972, 285) and Santos (1978, 373) provide “to shudder, shiver, and convulsions” as equivalencies to kilig. It is also often associated with fear or cold. While we accept that lexicographic works are never perfect in the sense that despite how thick a dictionary is, there are words in the language that are not captured in the dictionary and there are senses, meanings, and particular usage of words that might not have been collected by the lexicographers, and in addition to the imperfect nature of dictionaries, meanings, like any other part of language, are constantly in transition, it is interesting to note that it seems through time the culebra or snake has been eliminated from the definition. The meaning has become generic and non-specific. However, current usage of the term often refers to things other than fear or cold, or snakebites. In 2016 the word kilig was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. It refers to the exhilaration or elation caused by an exciting or romantic experience, but it can also be used adjectivally to describe a person feeling this thrill, or a thing that causes or expresses such an emotion. In the more recent usage of the term, snakes, cold, and fear have been banished by romance, elation, and excitement. However, it appears that kilig now is both the romantic emotion of excitement and the shuddering, shivering, convulsive manifestation of the ecstasy and euphoria of amorousness. Despite this dominant meaning of kilig, the term is also used to refer to a couple of things that are hardly dreamy or passionate. It is still used to refer to the shuddering one experiences from eating too much fat, especially visible pork or beef fat, or eating too much sour or sweet food, and to the urinal convulsions when one concedes defeat to a bladder bursting for release. This semantic vacillation from snakes to cold to fear, then to romance but also to satiation and much-needed release, in addition to the entanglement of emotion and manifestation, contributes to the challenges of translatability of the word kilig. But then again, the word has already been borrowed into English as recorded in the OED. Another example of a term that straddles semantic boundaries is the word gigil. Although not as complicated as kilig, gigil poses a challenge in terms of the source of the gigil. Noceda and Sanlucar define gigil (guigil in clerical orthography) as rabia con grande enojo con gestos de boca y dientes, which was translated into Tagalog by Almario, Ebreo, and Yglopaz as malaking galit na may kasamang kilos ng bibig at ngipin (Noceda and Sanlucar 2013, 202) or “the hatred or anger accompanied by the movement of the mouth and teeth.” Santos (1978, 556) defines the word as the suppressed pleasure or thrill, or sometimes anger, manifested by the gritting of the teeth and tight gripping of the hands. Panganiban (1972, 439) adds trembling or thrill due to the suppressed or irrepressible pleasure or liking but is quick to add that sometimes it

142  Jesus Federico C. Hernandez is also because of anger. From the dictionary definitions and the general usage of the term, what is clear is it involves a suppression of feelings that manifests in the gritting of the teeth and the sudden need to either squeeze, pinch, or hit someone. What is not clear is whether the gritting and the eventual squeezing and hitting are coming from fondness or qualify as assault. If kilig and gigil showed semantic vacillations and straddling, the semantics of torpe in Tagalog has been reduced to a very particular context. This borrowed term from Spanish saw a reduction of context and narrowing of meaning in its use in Tagalog. From being clumsy or awkward in movement, devoid of grace and elegance, and sometimes stupid in Spanish, this was reduced to being dull and stupid, but eventually was ameliorated to being timid or shy in Tagalog. Both Panganiban (1972, 984) and Santos (1978, 2522) record stupid but Santos adds a second sense of being timid and shy. Currently, torpe is hardly used as being stupid but is more often used as being shy. However, this type of timidity and shyness is limited to the domain of courtship, particularly in reference to the person performing the courtship. It is the stage where one is unable to express and articulate the intention of courtship or affection. This stage is characterized by awkwardness and nervousness, of being certain about the affection but unsure how to approach and act. It is the stage of what ifs, of hope, and also of despair. It is such a marked phase in the pre-courtship process that songs have been written about this specific timidity. The examples above showed that cultural untranslatability is a challenge that can be categorized based on the materiality of the referent, the differences in categorization and lexical productivity and specificity, and the semantic depth and breadth of the words. However, it was also shown that these are challenges and not barriers to translation. Where there is no single-word equivalent in the target language, there are various strategies that can be used to provide a translation, such as borrowing and phrasal translation, among others. 9.2.2 Linguistic Untranslatability

Catford (1965, 94) also attributes untranslatability to linguistic differences between the source language and the target language. These are differences that are structural and are not based on the creation of meanings and are not bound by worldviews. Languages that are genetically and typologically different from each other might encounter more challenges on structural incom­ patibility, which then translates to untranslatability, as with the case of the Austronesian Tagalog and the Indo-European English. Some grammatical differences might create a pause in translation from Tagalog into English, such as the absence of gender in the third person Tagalog personal pronoun, the inclusive and exclusive features of the Tagalog first person plural pronouns, or the fact that Tagalog is not time bound—therefore, tense is not a feature—but instead Tagalog has aspect, or Tagalog’s multiple passives, not to mention the numerous particles of Tagalog. In this section,

Lost for Words  143 I  will focus mainly on two processes that relate to structure: ordinality and incorporation. One of the most common challenges to bilingual Tagalog speakers is to translate ordinality into English. How does one translate, pang-ilan ka sa magkakapatid? or pang-ilang presidente si Marcos ng Pilipinas? I have heard these translation challenges thrown in various circles and media ever since Marcos Sr., the dictator, was president. There have been few attempts; some are more natural sounding than others. The resulting translations appear to be more complex and unwieldy than the original text. For example, pang-ilan ka sa magkakapatid? May be translated in the following manner: Where do you fall in your family’s birth order? Or Where do you fall in your sibling order? Or What is your birth order among your siblings? Or some other iteration of birth, order, and sibling. Pang-ilang presidente si Marcos ng Pilipinas? May be translated as: In the sequence/order of Philippine presidents, where does Marcos fall in? or some other clumsy iteration of the already awkward translation. The difficulty or awkwardness in the questions lies in the interrogative form pang-ilan, an ordinal interrogative that asks for an ordinal number that indicates the position of something in a series for an answer. It is a word that requires a lot of elements: a collection of objects arranged in a sequence and the identification of the order of the object of interrogation. Another grammatical feature of Tagalog that might be challenging for translators into English is the process of incorporation. Some complements of the verb may be incorporated into the verb, rendering the verb invisible. One often hears sentences such as MagkaKatipunan kami, where the name of a street, Katipunan, has been incorporated and now occupies the verbal position of the sentence. MagkaKatipunan kami however maybe mean either Dadaan kami sa Katipunan (We are driving via or through Katipunan or We are taking Katipunan Road) or it can also mean Pupunta kami sa Katipunan (We are going to Katipunan). In these instances, both the transitory location and the end location were absorbed into the verbal position. Given the bigger context, one can easily interpret whether the incorporated location is the way to an endpoint or the endpoint itself. It seems that other complements of the verb, like the instrument, may be incorporated into the verb, for example, tsitsinelasin kita (I will hit you with my flip-flops). However, in instances of incorporation, where the verb may already have been “forgotten,” translation may be challenging. Take the following example: Nilanggam ang asukal. How does one translate this into English? We know that langgam or ants are the actors and asukal or sugar is the object, but then the actor was incorporated into the verb, which rendered the original verb non-existent. What did the ants do to the sugar? One can awkwardly translate this as an “attack of ants” which sounds like the title of a B-movie. How about nilalangaw ang pagkain? Should this be translated as “flies congregating around the food”? Or Inipis ang tuyo? Was the dried fish visited by cockroaches? The challenge is to figure out the verb before the infestation of ants, flies, and cockroaches happened.

144  Jesus Federico C. Hernandez Ordinality and incorporation are examples of challenges to translatability because of structural and grammatical differences between the source and target languages. Structural untranslatability might be a better term to use for what Catford referred to as linguistic untranslatability because the source of difficulty lies in the structure itself; the challenge lies in the morphosyntactic incompatibilities between the source language and the target language. 9.3 Conclusion This chapter focused on Catford’s categorization of untranslatability attribution: cultural and linguistic with the help of examples from Tagalog as the source language and English as the target language. By exploring specific lexical items, we can say that what Catford refers to as cultural untranslatability is the difficulty of translating lexical items that are semantically loaded with meanings and networks or words that are deeply rooted in culture. It also includes the materiality of the referent. A word for an object in a language will not have an equivalence if that object is absent in the target language. Catford’s other category, which is linguistic untranslatability, was seen as incompatibilities in the structures between the target language and the source. Typological similarities play an important role in the translatability between languages. Beyond translation, however, I think what is important in this exercise and what I realized in writing this chapter is the significance of the pause (Foran 2023) when confronted with challenges in translation. In our world today, translation can sometimes be instant with the use of artificial intelligence; one click and A.I. will do the rest. While this has its benefits, the instantaneous translation fails to provide that pause, that moment to acknowledge the differences between various languages and cultures, the assertion of uniqueness by the untranslatables, that moment of resistance and protest to be translated, and that celebration of diversity and richness of human experience and history as encoded in our languages. References Anza, Precy. 2022. “17 Must-know Tagalog Words with no English Translations.” Owlcation. June 13, 2022. https://owlcation.com/humanities/10-Weird-FilipinoWords Bassnett, Susan. 2014. Translation Studies, 4th edition. New York: Routledge. Blust, Robert. 1984. “The Austronesian Homeland: A Linguistic Perspective.” Asian Perspectives 26, no. 1: 45–67. Catford, John. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press. Cui, Jingjing. 2012. “Untranslatability and the Method of Compensation.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 2, no. 4: 826–830. Custodio, Gari. 2022. “10 Filipino Words You can Try to Translate into English (but probs can’t).” Inquirer, August 31, 2022. https://pop.inquirer.net/331811/ 10-filipino-words-you-can-try-to-translate-into-english-but-probs-cant

Lost for Words  145 Cymbalista, Piotr. 2003. “Untranslatability as Culture-Specific Phenomenon.” Studia Anglica Resoviensia 2, no. 14: 21–31. Filipiknow. 2022. “30 Filipino Words with no English Equivalent.” Filipiknow, April 20, 2022. https://filipiknow.net/tagalog-words-with-no-english-translation-2/ Foran, Lisa. 2023. “Untranslatability and the Ethics of Pause.” Persectives 31, no. 1:44–58. House, Juliane. 2016. Translation as Communication across Languages and Cultures. New York: Routledge. Kashgary, Amira. 2010. “The Paradox of Translating the Unstranslatable: Equivalence vs. Non-equivalence in Translating from Arabic into English.” Journal of King Saud University – Language and Translation 23: 47–57. Large, Duncan, Motoko Akashi, Wanda Józwikowska, and Emily Rose (Eds.). 2019. Untranslatability: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Noceda, Juan, and Pedro de Sanlucar. 2013. Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala. Translated by Virgilio S. Almario, Elvin R. Ebreo, and Anna Maria M. Yglopaz. Manila: Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino. Okolie, Ugo Chuks, and Eseohe Glory Okoedion. 2022. “Untranslatability of texts: Equivalence and Cultural Perspectives.” World Scientific News 165: 66–70. Panganiban, José Villa. 1972. Diksyunaryo-Tesauro Pilipino-Ingles. Quezon City: Manlapaz Publishing Co. Sadkowska, Anna. 2016. “The Translator is Hitting the Road – On the Untranslatability of Culture.” Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie Skłodowska, sectio FF – Philologiae 34, no. 1: 123–137. Santos, Vito. 1978. Vicassan’s Pilipino-English Dictionary. Caloocan City: Philippine Graphic Arts, Inc. Tan, Michael. 2008. Revisiting Usog, Pasma, Kulam. Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press.

Index

Pages in bold refer to tables; pages followed by “n” refer to notes. ability 13, 25, 27, 63, 67, 75, 94, 117, 118, 120, 121, 124, 129, 130 accommodation 66, 74, 79 adaptation 40, 47–48, 63–64, 66, 74, 77–78 adulterer 109, 110 affixation 75 AI algorithms 94 AI Principles 94 alimuom 140 Alliance Française 26, 33 Amazon Prime Video 55, 58 ambiguity 122, 124, 130 American period 8, 12, 16, 28, 30 Ateneo de Manila University 19n23, 29 Audience Design 67 audio description 52 audio track 70 audiovisual translation (AVT) 35, 52, 54, 66–67, 70 audiovisual text/AV Text 66–68, 72, 77 author-translator 54, 59, 63–64 AV learning text 66–71, 74–75, 81 bahaw 138 bakla 101, 108–110 Bible 10, 83, 92, 94, 100, 102–103, 107–108, 110–113 bigas 138 biologically restricted actions 88 business process outsourcing 25 can 117–121, 123–124, 129–130 captioning 52; close-captioning 24; close-caption/closed captions 24, 70

categorization 136–137, 139, 142, 144 Christianity 28, 83, 101, 112 church 28, 40, 110–112 commissioned work 33, 38–39 community theater 45, 49 Constraints 39–40, 45, 52–55, 57, 59, 61, 63, 67, 77, 116 contextual information 47, 91, 93–95 continuing education 31 could 117–122, 124, 129–130 cultural untranslatability 136, 142, 144 dapat 104, 116, 118, 120–121, 125–131 De La Salle University 19n23, 29 disaster communication 116, 119, 123, 129, 131 dubbed 66–67, 70–71, 73 dubbing 52 Dulaang Laboratoryo 41 economy 74, 76–77 enforced disappearance 42–43, 46; state-enforced disappearance 47 English 12–16, 18n13–18n14, 18n17, 19n18, 23–30, 32–33, 53, 56–61, 66–67, 69–81, 83, 84–88, 92–96, 103, 108, 116–121, 130–131, 135–136, 138–144 equivalence 27, 39, 78, 130, 137, 144; equivalent effect 67, 72; un-equivalent effect 72 euphemism 104 European Union 28 exegetic choices 112 extra-judicial killings 42–43

Index  147 Family Code 113 fandubbing 52 feminine form 86, 88, 94 fidelity 66; infidelity 66–81 Filipino 8, 11–17, 18n15, 19n18, 19n23, 23–32, 41–42, 47–48, 52–61, 63–64, 66–80, 83–84, 86–89, 91–96, 100, 102–103, 105, 107–112, 116–121, 123–127, 129–131 Filipino Timed Text Style Guide (TTSG) 54, 55, 63 fourth wall 68, 81 French 12, 26–27, 30–31, 33, 70–71, 84, 94 gay 60, 108, 110 gender 85–88, 90–95, 100–103, 111–112, 142; gender-associated activities 96; gender bias 83–97; gender expectations 85; genderneutral occupations 89, 90, 95; gender-neutral words 86, 88, 95; gender-specific occupations 90; gender-specific words 86, 95 German 26–27, 30–31, 70–71, 84, 119 gigil 140–142 Google Translate 34, 83–97 government organizations 14 grammar-translation method 28 guidelines 14, 54–60, 64 have to 119, 121, 126–127, 129–130 history of translation 7–19, 135 homosexual 108, 113; homosexual acts 103, 110–111 human translator 84 human translation 83 idiom transposition 74–75, 77 immersion activity 45–47 incorporation 17, 143–144 Instituto Cervantes 26, 33 interlingual subtitling 52, 53, 60, 64 interpreting 23–24, 26, 29, 33–34; consecutive interpreting 29, 52; consecutive and simultaneous interpreting 33; court interpreting 25; interpreting education 35; interpreting-related course 29; interpreting-related training 29; interpreting-related work 33; para-interpreting 34; signed interpreting 29

interpreting (understanding) 113, 122, 124, 131 Italian 26, 30–31, 33, 94 kailangan 73, 116, 118, 120–121, 125–130 kanin 138 kilig 140–142 Korean 25, 30–32, 53, 84 language documentation 12, 15, 16 language options 70 language/s other than English 32 lexical productivity 136, 139, 142 linguistic diversity 10, 13, 16–17 linguistic untranslatability 136, 142, 144 live subtitling 52 local practices 113 LOTE 31–33 maaari 108, 118, 120–124, 130–131 machine translation 83–97 magazine-type format 68 marriage 101, 105, 107, 110–111, 113 masculine form 86, 88, 89, 94–96 materiality 137–138, 142, 144 may 117–123, 129–130, 132n5 memory 42–43, 45 metaphor/idiom transposition 74 migration 26 missionary-linguists 11–12, 16, 18n11 missionary linguistics 16 modality value 120, 122–124, 126–129, 131 modals 116–133 moral 12, 42, 100–101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 113 morality 112 Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education 26 mumo 138 must 116–121, 125–126, 129–130 narration 52–53, 67, 80 narrative-type format 68–69 nation-building 8, 14–15 national language 14–15, 17, 19n18, 19n20–19n21, 25, 28, 30–31, 55, 102 necessity 116–118, 120–121, 126–131 need 119–121, 127, 129–130 negotiation 33, 39–40, 50 Netflix 53–55, 60–61, 63, 66, 70

148 Index neural machine translation 84 non-equivalence 137 obligation 116–121, 125–131 occupation-related terms 88 ordinality 143–144 pakla 139 palay 138 papak 138 pasma 139–140 pedagogical content 66, 76, 79 pedagogy 32, 66 performance 38, 42, 45, 47, 49, 101 periodization of Philippine linguistics 7 permission 117–118, 120–124, 129–130 Philippine languages 7–8, 10, 12–17, 18n13–18n14, 18n16–18n17, 19n18, 25, 32, 59, 75, 84, 86, 96 Philippine period 8, 13, 17 playwright-translator 50 poetics 38, 40, 45, 50 policy 8, 12–15, 18n13, 23–24, 26, 46, 119 possibility 9, 30, 38, 112, 117–124, 129–131, 135 Pre-Colonial period 8, 100 professionalization 17, 23, 25–26, 34 Queen Charlotte 60–61 refraction 38, 40, 45 register conversion 78–79 religious text 112–113 retention 75, 81 revoicing 52 rewriting 39–40, 45 risk 116, 119, 125, 131 Rizal Law 29 school-based theater 40, 50 SDH 52 segment 68–69, 72–74, 76–79, 81 semantic analysis 131 semantic depth 139–140, 142 semantic networks 136, 140 sex 85, 100–103, 105, 107–108, 110–112 sexual scripts 110–112 sexuality 100, 102–103, 110–112 shift 35, 62, 64, 66–81, 85, 118, 120, 127, 129, 131; shift analysis 73, 80, 81n1; shift in audience 66, 73, 79;

shift in the target audience 78; shift in tone 72–73; shifts in tone and point-of-view 79 should 117–121, 127–131 sign language 24, 29 simplification 74, 77 sinaing 138 sinangag 138 skopos 38, 41, 67 social biases 85, 94 sodomite 107–110 source text (ST) 38, 66, 120, 127, 135; source and target texts 74, 118 Spanish 7–8, 10–13, 16, 18n12, 19n18, 23, 26–31, 33, 66–67, 84, 86, 88–89, 94–96, 107, 110, 137, 139, 142; Spanish period 8, 30 Special Program for Foreign Languages 27 specificity 138–139, 142 Squid Game 53 streaming services 70 structural untranslatability 144 subtitle 53–64, 70–71; subtitle track 70 subtitling 30, 52–64, 70; subtitling for people who are D/deaf or hard-ofhearing (SDH) 52 surtitling 52 sworn translation 31 T&I training 25–26, 31 Tagalog 7–11, 13–14, 18n9, 18n12, 18n15, 19n22, 23, 25, 28–29, 57, 61–62, 65n6, 88, 100, 102–103, 105, 107–110, 118, 135–144 target text 38, 67, 74, 78–79, 118, 120, 127, 129 technologies of power 110, 112 theater translation 38, 40–41, 48, 50 timed text 52, 54–55, 63 torpe 140, 142 track 30, 70; audio track 70; subtitle track 70 translatability 116–133, 137–141, 144 translation and interpreting (T&I) 23–35; translation and interpreting education 23–35 translation work 18n12, 39–40 translator 8, 23–25, 29, 32–33, 38–41, 45, 50, 59, 67, 70, 73, 84, 95, 108, 112, 135, 138, 143; sworn translator 26; theater translator/translator for theater 38–40; Translator Studies 35

Index  149 transliteration 57–58, 71, 75–76 transposition 74–75, 77, 122–123, 125, 127–128 Trojan Women 41, 43, 48 tutong 138 unfair biases 94 University of Santo Tomas 29 University of the Philippines 19n23, 29, 35, 41, 45 UPD 29–30, 34

untranslatability 135–144 untranslatable 136–139, 141, 144 usog 139–140 virginity 101, 105, 111 voiceover (VO) 52–53, 67, 71–73 women 41–42, 44, 85–86, 91, 96, 101, 111–112 world classic 41–42, 50 World Theater 41