When a translator at a recent book reading casually remarked that translating came naturally to her, the room reacted with surprise. The moderator looked impressed. Members of the audience nodded in admiration.
Throughout the discussion, translation had been presented almost like brain surgery. Every sentence seemed to demand impossible choices. Every word sounded like it carried a burden only a gifted translator could bear.
Then the translator simply said it came naturally.
To me, that sounded perfectly normal.
Perhaps it's because I grew up speaking multiple languages. If you truly understand both languages, translation doesn't feel like replacing words. You understand an idea, then express that same idea in another language.
It's less like solving a puzzle and more like having the same conversation with a different friend.
So why do we so often speak about translation as though it were some mysterious art?
When meaning gets lost
A few months before that book reading, I attended a script reading session in Penang. The script was Love of Eyes, originally written in Tamil by B.S. Narayanan sometime in the 1970s and translated into English. I happened to be the only Tamil speaker in the room.
As the actors read through the script, something felt odd.
The English wasn't wrong, but I could hear Tamil beneath it. The rhythm of the dialogue, the sentence structures, even the expressions all felt as though they had been carried over too literally. Every now and then I found myself explaining why a line sounded awkward in English. The translation had faithfully preserved the words, but not always the language.
Then came the final scene.
The last word in the script was "kanasai."
The room burst into laughter.
Everyone assumed it was the Hokkien expression meaning "like shit." They thought the playwright had ended the story with an unexpectedly Malaysian punchline.
But I couldn't help wondering if we had all misunderstood it.
What if "kanasai" wasn't Hokkien at all? What if the translator had deliberately left the original Tamil words kan asai untranslated? After all, kan means "eye" and asai means "desire" or "affection"— the very phrase behind the title Love of Eyes.
If that was the intention, then something beautiful had accidentally become something funny - not because anyone in the room lacked intelligence, but because translation had left just enough ambiguity for meaning to slip away.
When words aren't enough
That experience made me realise something. Perhaps translation isn't difficult because moving between languages is difficult. Perhaps translation becomes difficult because languages don't package meaning in the same way.
Sometimes another language simply doesn't have the word you're looking for.
The German word Schadenfreude (read shaa-duhn-froy-duh), meaning the pleasure derived from another person's misfortune, is so specific that English adopted it. In Malay, you'd probably need an entire sentence to convey the same idea.
Other times, one language has too many possibilities.
Take the English word "love."
In Malay alone, depending on context, it could become cinta, sayang, kasih or kasih sayang. None are wrong. Yet each carries a slightly different emotional weight. The translator's job isn't choosing the dictionary equivalent. It's choosing the emotion.
Then there is poetry.
This is where translation stops being linguistic and becomes artistic.
I often think of the Tamil lyric: "Paal kodutta nenjile eeram innum kaayale."
A literal translation might read: "The breast that once fed you milk has not yet dried."
Or, “The breast that nursed you is still moist.”
Neither is wrong. The meaning survives.
Yet both lose something. The beauty doesn't quite make the journey.
In Tamil, the line evokes motherhood, sacrifice and unconditional love with remarkable elegance. It carries rhythm and emotion that native speakers immediately recognise. In English, despite conveying the same idea, it risks sounding almost clinical. Nothing has been translated incorrectly. Yet something precious has been left behind.
Perhaps this is why literary translation earns such respect.
Not because translators possess some mysterious gift, but because they constantly make impossible decisions. Do they preserve the literal meaning? The rhythm? The humour? The cultural reference? The emotional impact? Rarely can they keep everything.
And perhaps we, as readers, sometimes contribute to the mystique.
We speak about translation as though it is an extraordinary skill possessed only by a select few. Yet millions of multilingual Malaysians translate instinctively every single day. We don't consciously convert words. We convert meaning.
The real challenge begins when meaning refuses to travel neatly from one language to another.
Anyone fluent in two languages can often carry words across.
Carrying beauty, rhythm, memory and intention across at the same time—that is where translators become artists.
About the writer:
Tau Foo Fah is a creature of impulse and odd rituals who claims her best writing happens in her car—where profound ideas and questionable decisions collide. Equal parts observer and instigator, her work blends sharp wit with truths that linger longer than they should. Offstage, she collects stories, eavesdrops with intent, and turns everyday absurdities into something dangerously close to art.
Seni:Kita (pentaspena.pg@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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