“I will be a bridge”

It happened while I was studying Islamic Sciences & Arabic Language and literature at Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was on the first day of the last semester of my undergraduate study, that my maulana (or master) asked everyone in class. 

“After graduating, what are you going to do?”

Some of my friends replied that they would start a worldly career, but most of them said they would serve a religious duty by becoming an Ustaz, or religious teacher. My maulana then turned to ask me. I stood up and said, “I will be a bridge.” Then I remained silent as my master looked at me with wonder and doubt, while all my friends were as quiet as a grave.

After a few moments, I explained that “I want to be a bridge that connects between one people to another, a bridge that crosses from one language to another.” As I was saying this, in my head I meant I wanted to become a translator—translating books or verses or any written text.

After my graduation, I returned to Thailand and continued my study in Comparative Religion. I also started reading and writing poetry in various original languages, namely Arabic, Malay, and English. I read and translated some of these poems. The more I did this, the more experience I gained in translation, and unknowingly, and little by little, I realized that my translation functioned as a bridge not only between those languages, but also a bridge that connected myself to my adventure as a poet who writes in the Thai language.

Let me give a background on Thai poetry. We have a long history of poetic verses. Thai poetry dates to the Sukhothai period (13th–14th centuries) and flourished under Ayutthaya (14th–18th centuries), during which it developed into its current forms. The Thai poetical medium consists of five main forms, known as โคลง khlong, ฉันท์ chan, กาพย์ kap, กลอน klon and ร่าย rai; Almost all have rules governing the exact meter and rhyme structure. So we (Thai people) are very proud of Thai poetry, in school we learn how to compose poems in traditional, classical forms. But schools don't teach “modern poetry” or “free verse poetry,” of which I'm a practitioner. Most Thai poets write in the traditional form, maybe just 20% or 30% write in the modern form.
So why is the translation of modern poetry of any language to Thai language very important to our readers. To me, I think a poet can learn a lot from studying translation, both translating OUT to a different language and translating IN to our language.

To elaborate on this: can translation transcend cultural differences? 

I do not believe that translation can completely transcend the original work, but I think it can connect some cultural differences. However, I believe we need to try to transcend or cross these spaces.

A few weeks ago, I joined International Translation Workshop, I found that my poem “Posthumous poems from paradise” was hard to translate into English, because there are gaps in cultural differences that cannot be crossed—something more than words that cannot be reached through "the other language." Still, Ko Ko Thett and I worked hard and tried to do our best to bridge those gaps.

As I'm writing for you right now, I'm also translating my own thoughts into English, struggling to cross the bridge in my head and my heart, the bridge that I sometimes fall under, then I struggled to climb back on it again. 

At last, let me present a poem:

The Missing [2] 

There must be something in this universe
That has strayed from the dimension of time
Something Columbus and Ulysses missed in their explorations 

Something Greek and Arabian astronomers failed to discover 

Something the world’s prophets forgot to preach
Something that vanished between the black holes of space 

Some mistake must have occurred
Between the seams of the human race
That went missing at the time of the Flood 

Something that failed to board Noah’s Ark 

Something unrecorded in the ancient Holy Book 

Something Nostradamus forgot to predict 

There must be some misunderstanding on this earth 

That has been lost from the archives of humanity 

Something Plato did not anticipate
Something Nietzsche failed to mention 

Something Einstein could not calculate 

Something is missing...