The perils of Maltese-to-English translation
Published:
July 20, 2013 at 12:58pm
Maltese uses the same word for ‘foot’ and ‘leg’ – sieq – and the police communicate with the newspapers in Maltese. The confusing result is that Times of Malta and Malta Today are reporting that a leg belonging to a third person was found with the bodies of Mario Camilleri senior and junior, while The Malta Independent has it down as a foot.
Perhaps the police would like to be more specific, making an exception in using English to tell us whether it is a foot or a leg. Not that this will help completely, given that in English, when you speak of finding a leg, it is assumed that the foot is attached.
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Actually it doesn’t. There’s “rigel”. Except that no one uses it because it makes them sound like a character from a Guzè novel.
[Daphne – That’s right. Nobody uses it anymore.]
Bakkster xiref fil-gallerija tal-palazz tal-Konti x-xih. Fil-bitha, mixhuta fuq maghqad tal-gebel, kien hemm xbejba, xaghrha iswed u hugbejha folti, titliegheb ma’ qattus ckejken. Riglejha kienu mibruma u sodi, u Bakkster hass ghoqda tielgha f’gerzumtu….
See, you can’t do erotic novels in Maltese.
You mean there is a word for foot or leg in Maltese that isn’t used?
Not even by a doctor?
“Where’s the pain?”
“In my leg”
“What part of the leg?”
“The part that has a name no-one uses anymore”
Mr Ball, Maltese doctors won’t even use the Maltese word for “penis”. Which turns a visit to the GU into a game of charades.
“Would you take out your part, Mr Baxxter?”
“Which one, Doctor?”
“Your intimate part. Your accessory. Your thing.”
“Thing?”
“You know, THAT. Take it out.”
“My intimate accessory? You mean my skiddies?”
“No no, the thing that is covered by your skiddies.”
“You mean my arse? Doctor, I may have a case of clap like the last night of the Proms but if you’re implying I’ve been buggered….”
Originally sieq was foot and riġel leg.
You seem to imply that saying ‘riġel’ somehow makes you sound ridiculous or old-fashioned. That simply won’t do.
That argument would only make sense if there was an alternative or more modern version of the word. There isn’t, so riġel it must be, and there’s no excuse for the police not to use it or not to know it.
Or are we saying that to be truly authentically Maltese, we must be total ignoramuses and not know the difference between a leg and a foot?
We have to look at this story from another angle as well. Maybe the police and The Malta Independent got it perfectly right and it was journalists at Malta Today and Times of Malta who got their feet and legs all tangled up.
Whatever part of the anatomy, was found, full marks to The Malta Independent for translating the term used by the police correctly.
Ricotta, irkotta.
So little Joey could have put his leg in his mouth last week?
Joseph Muscat was stamping his legs last week. And he stood up (on his feet) to be counted.
Even though Maltese is an official EU language we emphasize so strongly on, we find some words like “rigel” to be derogatory and sub standard, while we use words like gowl, skawts and BDOTI instead of Piloti.
[Daphne – I don’t think it’s anything to do with finding ‘rigel’ substandard. It’s just that most people take the word for leg to be ‘sieq’. Maybe once upon a time human legs were differentiated from table legs and animal legs, but they certainly haven’t been in my lifelong experience. Table-leg: sieq; leg of pork at the butcher’s: sieq tal-porku; dog’s leg: sieq; my/your leg: sieq.]
Can you people even read? I never said anything about substandard or derogatory.
I only said the word sounds archaic.
Now go ahead and prove me wrong. Every language has a whole list of words which are perfectly correct, but which have fallen into disuse, or which are used in specific instances, such as literary form.
God, it’s like talking to aliens from another planet here. Sometimes I wish I’d been the one pushed back to Libya.
Doesn’t “rigel” translate to “lower limb” to use the anatomical term?
Bil-Malti, is-sieq ghandha zewg partijiet: il-qasba tas-sieq u l-pala tas-sieq.
Does ‘il-qasba tas-sieq’ include the foot as well?
Problems also arise when we refer to toes in Maltese.
No, ‘qasba tas-sieq’ is just from below the knee to the ankle.
‘Swaba tas-sieq’ are used for toes.
The Maltese equivalent for foot is “sieq” and the equivalent for leg is “riġel”.
However many Maltese speakers do mix them up or don’t distinguish between the two. Just as many confuse between “id” (hand) and “arm” (driegħ).
On the news it was reported as pala ta’ sieq
The proper terminology is rigel for leg ( two legs = riglejn) and sieq for foot. So it is the police that need to learn how to refer to the anatomical structures in their proper Maltese way.
There is another common usage in churches of “rigel”. A notice attached to the pew immediately in front of you warns not to rest your feet on the kneeler and uses the word “rigglejk”. This thread has posed a conundrum for me in that Maltese lessons for foreigners also teach the word “rigel”.
Many times foreigners use the correct word and sentence structure in Maltese, only to be corrected to use the wrong word (or sentence structure) – perhaps this contributes to the number of Maltese students having difficulties passing the A level exams for Maltese?
On a completely different note: I thought conrad mizzi said that power cuts were a thing of the past.
We’ve been without electricity since midnight and there’s no indication of when power will be restored.
I have to throw all my freezer contents away because now that they’ve defrosted they’re not fit for consumption.
We used to have power cuts, but never this long.
I’m glad I didn’t vote for them, because their inefficiency is monumental.
A riġel is a leg and a driegħ is an arm.
The problem is that Maltese speak in a very imprecise way. Laziness permeates the language and nobody makes an effort to use the correct terms, not even those using Maltese for official purposes.
Any communication, whether written or spoken, tends to be riddled with all sorts of mistakes. Sometimes it just leaves the reader feeling frustrated, sometimes it confuses the reader and sometimes, the reader can’t even figure out what the message being relayed is about.
The Maltese attitude to language (and pretty much everything else) can be summed up in that ubiquitous phrase ‘U iva, mhux xorta.’
It gets us by amongst ourselves but often also makes us look silly and unprofessional.
The original version I read was ‘pala tas-sieq’, therefore foot. Would be good if the police be more precise though.
They fail to mention if any other body parts have been located in the area, was it put there? Was the victim murdered and dismembered elsewhere and dumped there?
Who is investigating this triple homicide? The Secret Service?
In a more democratic society usually police give out certain details, albeit not all so at least the public might shed some light of any suspicious movements in that area that might have happened in the past.
Il-kelma ‘rigel’ nuzaha jien bhal ma nuza’ hugbejn ghal-“eyebrows”.
Il-pulizija jmisshom jimpjegaw lil xi hadd li jaf bil-Malti u jaf is-sistema metrika.
Ragel ta’ hames piedi u tminn pulzieri gie rrappurtat nieqes!?
Kien hemm kollizjoni “head on”!?
Umbghad ma jafux jaqtghu linja fuq kemm ghandhom zmien mara, mara zaghzugha u xebba/xbejba/tfajla jew ragel, zaghzugh, guvni/guvnott.
‘Mara ta’ tmintax il-sena’ smajtha u ‘zaghzugh ta’ tnejn u tletin sena’ smajtha.
Kemm taqta’ qalbek malajr, Daphne.
Kellhom juzaw ‘rigel’, bhal ma uzaha l-RTK wara kollox f’din l-ahbar.
From Id-Denfil, 2013 edition:
“Kull nhar ta’ Sibt filghaxija, Shenayzyenne kienet thejji ruhha sabiex titla’ sa Paceville. Dik il-mawra ta’ kull tmiem il-gimgha ma kienet titlifha qatt. L-ghors taghha kien iz-zfin, ix-xorb u l-loghob bl-idejn ma’ zaghzagh ohra ta’ mparha u anke ma’ rgiel ferm ikbar minnha.
Kienet tizbogh wiccha bi smar ix-xemx artificjali, xufftejha b’ahmar jghajjat u l-kappell ta’ ghajnejha bl-ikhal. Kienet thozz zewg linji fejn suppost kienu hugbejha.
Imbaghad kienet ixxidd il-libsa ssikkata li xtralha z-Ziju Pawlu bhala rigal ghall-ewwel tqarbina. Id-dublett qasir ma kien jghatti xejn minn riglejha, u sahansitra kien ihalli bicca mill-warrani mikxuf.
Hekk kif tilbes iz-zarbun bit-takkuna forma’ ta’ lapes, Shenayzyenne kienet tinzel it-tarag sitta sitta sabiex taqbez fil-karozza tan-namrat taghha Shaylon Jo, li dejjem kien jistenniha quddiem il-bieb tad-dar, bir-radju mixghul jghajjat idoqq id-diski ta’ Tenishia….”
Now why this passage sound artificial?
I’ve often wondered about the etymology of the word ‘lapes’ – pencil. Any ideas?
Hemm zball fid-Denfil tieghek : “zaghzagh” suppost tinkiteb “zghazagh”.
Sori.
Re. Lapes < lapis (Italian, ARCHAIC ITALIAN, dear Lorna Saliba. It's in the dictionary but last used somewhere around the time of Caporetto) < lapis (Latin) = stone.
Tenk ju inti Baxxter!
Yes. I know lapis=stone in Latin. Lapis lazuli and all that.
My query is where does lapes=pencil come from. I don’t know of any other language where the word for pencil is anything like lapes.
“Lapis haematites” = Latin for “haematite”. The reddish stone was used for drawing and writing. I believe Kenneth Zammit Tabona can tell you about some exquisite bozzettos done in haematite.
Hence the two Italian words for pencil:
“lapis” from “lapis”
“matita” from “haematites”
In Spanish, “pencil” is “lápiz”.
I hope that answers your question.
lapis=pencil
the word’s still used in some regions.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/translate/italian-english/lapis?q=lapis
As far as I know: Spanish pencil>lapiz.
Many thanks for explanation of origin of the word lapes.
In the Middle East and the Lebanon I’ve often heard females referring to eye-liner and eye shadow as lapis. Someone explained to me that the origin was due to the colour powders originally made from crushed stone and applied to the lids. I had always thought that it was most likely that there was a transfer in word use from the material applied to the applicator itself.
The origin of the word pencil stems from two latin words meaning tail and small tail/ brush (penis— pincellus). Originally there was no lead involved with pencil and in fact the old French word for pencil ‘pincel’ is derived from is the same stem as for “pinceau:” “brush” in French.
Given the wide and early use of ‘lapis’ across many languages and the later appearance of the word and use of ‘pincel’, my interpretation would be that the oriental manner of applying makeup and crush-stone powders preceded the paint-brush use in the areas that foreign travellers, artists and artisans migrated to, and that at some point the two mingled, with later evolution of the word pencil or lapis, as adopted, to include the insertion of a lead point and to mean the writing instrument and not the pencil case, as it was also taken to mean after the Middle Ages.
I forgot to put this on record: John Bundy’s iced bun/TV program had a change in name from “Ta’ Bundy” to “Ma’ Bundy” they changed the T with an M….”u mhux xorta!”
They read the comments written on this august blog, don’t they.
Isn’t quibbling about sieq/ rigel rather missing the point? Where’s the rest of the body and whose is it?
Recently there was a post on FB by Trevor Zahra where he gave PBS journalists a lesson in basic Maltese and he shows also the mistakes made in Maltese grammar when reading the news on PBS.
I have always known the parts of the limb in question in Maltese to represent the following English words…..
sieq – foot
rigel – leg
qasba – shin
koxxa – thigh
pexxun – calf
pala tas-sieq – sole
ghaksa – ankle
irkobba – knee
gharqub – heel
swaba – toes
[Daphne – This is developing into quite an interesting topic. I grew up in a Maltese-speaking environment but, fascinatingly, while ‘riglejn’ was used for legs, somewhere along the line ‘rigel’ had been weeded out and substituted by ‘sieq’. This was clearly not a mistake being made by one person because I literally never heard the singular ‘rigel’ at all, said by anyone, and that means from the 1960s onwards. It was always ‘sieq’. The other one I never heard used is ‘qasba’ for ‘shin’. The others were in common use. Interestingly, when you ask for beef shin at the butcher’s, it’s not ‘mill-qasba’ but ‘garretta’.]
As far as I know, all are still in use and none are considered, as such, to be old fashioned. Now if the famous Akkademja tal-Malti, who have done so much to ruin the language we studied as children have changed words and/or spelling, I am none the wiser.
This is the same Akkademja that brought us Badgit, Yott and Frigg among other words the spelling of which makes me cringe. At school, we had dyslexic children and other kids in the lower streamed classes who spelt that way and at the time, it was Considered incorrect. Now the “Kakkademja tal-Bigilla” (to use one of the few useful Lowell expressions) has deemed that a phonetic spelling has to be used. Lo and behold, the bastardisation of Maltese has reached new levels (which may I add, irks me so much more than the possible bastardisation of an already bastardised and inbred gene pool though the introduction of African DNA!)
Funny how looking back at my school days reveals that the kids with spelling and learning disabilities were actually light years ahead of the rest of us….we never stood a chance. Not in Malta.
There’s a book published by a doctor where a major part of these difficulties and medical/pharmaceutical terms are answered. He was interviewed by Professor Manuel Mifsud on his Saturday early afternoon programme on my favourite station, RTK.
During the doctors’ dispute in the 1970s we had a high influx of non-Maltese strike-breaking doctors at St Luke’s Hospital who had great difficulties communicating with Maltese patients.
One anecdote was about a patient who had piles (murliti). “Ilma fil-minkeb” was another problem and “hruq ta’ Sant Antnin” was another.
Communication was attempted using ‘morlites’, elbow water and St Anthony’s burns.
I believe that “Qasba” is only used for humans, in the same way that we would never ask for a shin at the butcher :)
[Daphne – One does indeed ask for shin at the butcher’s, Osservatore. And it is given as ‘shin’ in recipes, too. Similarly, in English you would ask for shoulder, leg, ribs, ears, trotters, shank, rump, and so on. It’s not much different in Maltese, which is why ‘garretta’ stands out as odd. Oh, and incidentally, a leg of pork is ‘sieq tal-porku/majjal’ and not ‘rigel tal-porku/majjal’. I bet even you would ask for a ‘sieq tal-porku’. If you went in and asked your butcher for a ‘rigel tal-porku’ you would only get an amused smile.]
“Ghandi ugigh f’riglejja” would mean I have a pain in my leg..possibly my legs as Maltese does not seem to define singular or plural in this case.
By all means, I am no linguist. I just had good teachers and memory sufficient enough to retain certain details. Unfortunately, with language it sees to be the case that only the spoken language ultimately survives. With a majority of people using “saqajja” instead of “riglejja”, it is presumably correct to say that at some point in time, the of “rigel” became “sieq”.
That is how Porta Reale became Putirjal, Omnibus became Nemnebus and so on and so forth…
http://mymemory.translated.net/t/English/Maltese/shin
Yes…rigel tal-porku does sound hilarious. Sieq it is. I would also definitely call it majjal rather than porku.
Had never heard of, nor asked for shin before at the butcher, either in English or Maltese. I am not even sure how much meat it would have on it or how to go about cooking it. Food Network, here I come.
[Daphne – No need for Food Network, because you can get it right here. At an English butcher, you’d ask for shin, and at a Maltese butcher for garretta. It’s ideal for slow-cooking or stewing, in a covered pot with a very rich tomato/red wine sauce. You put it on the lowest heat and it’s really tender. This is a more of a cold-weather dish. You buy it as a chunk and it has a thin layer of fat which you might like to cut off. Shin is also the preferred cut for meat broth. Simmer it in water with chopped carrots, onions, celery and potatoes. Everything has to be done slowly and on the lowest heat, otherwise the consistency is stringy.]
How would one ask for ‘Bullfrog’s Legs’?
“Garretta” as a butcher’s cut or culinary term probably comes from the French: Jarret… de porc,… de veau… etc: The part from under the knee to the ankle.
The precise cut for the Garretta and the Jarret might probably vary. Just as the Eisbein would have its own particularities.
This is an interesting research article by Cassar Pullicino about linguistic aspects in relationship to animals. Page 10 lists Maltese equivalents for various meat cuts:
http://melitensiawth.com/incoming/Index/Journal%20of%20Maltese%20Studies/JMS.04(1967)/orig02cassarpullicino.pdf
There:
garretta leg
xikel shin
This is almost perfect.
Except that pala tas-sieq is foot.
Sole is il-qiegh tas-sieq.
My Maltese is not THAT good but I am bombarded by anatomical terms in Maltese all day long, seven days a week.
For the past fifty years that is.
You’re wrong Daphne, we do have a Maltese word for leg, which is rigel.
In the majority of cases, we use it in the plural (riglejn) which isn’t yet quite obsolete.
We also have id and driegh (reminds us of “Driegh il-Maltin”, but this is besides the point) for hand and arm. So next time don’t jump to conclusions please.
[Daphne – Table-leg: sieq ta’ mejda; leg of pork: sieq tal-majjal (includes the actual leg as well as the ‘koxxa’); a cat’s leg: sieq il-qattus; a chair-leg: sieq ta’ siggu. I know what the words for ‘hand’ and ‘arm’ are, possibly better than many ‘native Maltese speakers’ do, so try not to be patronising.]
Il-korp ta’ Dirghajn il-Maltin mhux Driegh.
I even knew that there was a specific Maltese word for “leg” and an other for “foot”. And I don’t even converse in the Maltese language anymore as there is hardly anyone who speaks or understands that language where I live and even a rare telephone conversation with my sister is done in English.
That is one of the things I look forward to when I do visit Malta is that I get to use my native language in actual practice.
Hemm kelma ghal-‘shin’, u m’hix ‘sieq tal-majjal/porku’ – il-kelma hija ‘xikel’ tal-majjal, u ghadha tintuza.
[Daphne – We’re talking at cross-purposes here. ‘Sieq tal-majjal’ has nothing to do with ‘shin’; it’s the English ‘leg of pork’, which includes the actual leg beneath the ‘koxxa’. When buying a leg of pork/sieq tal-majjal, you get the whole thing. If you ask for the ‘koxxa’, the butcher will chop the leg-bone off. Where pork is concerned, you would ask for trotters rather than shin, therefore ‘xikel tal-majjal’ would, I imagine, be the trotters, which are the actual ‘feet’ with the shin attached. On the other hand, when buying beef shin, you get neither the bone nor the hooves, but just the meat, so I imagine that’s word the word ‘xikel’ does not come into play, because it implies the presence of the bone. Hence the ‘garretta’. Is that Italian?]
Interessanti li minn ‘xikel’ ghandna il-kelma ‘xkiel’ li hu l-irbit man-naha t’isfel taz-zewg saqajn tal-bhima, ilsir jew ikkundannat.
M’ghandniex xi nghidu, li l-bhejjem jixxekklu b’habel marbut ma’ sieq ta’ quddiem ta’ naha u mas-sieq ta’ wara tan-naha l-ohra.
Ix-XKIEL jintrabtu biex il-bhima TITFIXKEL jekk tipprova tigri.
Rahhal li jirgha n-nghag fix-xaghra ta’ hdejna, ixekkel ‘il-muntun biex ma jghammarlux xi nghaga bla ma jkun jaf.
Gorg Pisani kiteb poezija jisimha “Il-Barri” li fakkritni f’dan kollu.
Jonfoh, jithabat, jilheg,
Marbut u mxikkel sewwa,
Il-barri ghajjien mejjet,
Sa fl-ahhar dahal gewwa;
http://www.maltapoetry.com/poeti/gorg_pisani.htm
Il-kelma tkun hemm imma jigi minna li nhabblu ftit rasna biex nuzawha.