Thai Literature Made Easy

So you’re in Thailand maybe since years and you’re not able to speak a single coherent Thai sentence. Told me an Aussie friend here recently whose local business spiraled downwards that in a meeting with his Thai in-laws the long unsaid was finally said to him: “You don’t speak Thai, that’s why!”

There’s a hidden world out there, right in front of your tip of the nose, indecipherable. There’d be plenty of resources by now if you’re serious about learning Thai – just to mention the phenomenal Learn Thai Podcast or the resource-rich Women Learn Thai (you illiterate men don’t get scared off by a name).

For all who wish to take a short cut but still dig deeper, there’s Frenchman Marcel Barang with his new website Thai Fiction; an oeuvre in the making that’s not only a treasure trove of Thai literature translated into English and French. That site serves as that polite kick in your bottom encouraging you to “Know Thailand: Read Thai.” Here’s the man himself:

Dozens of Thai book translated, you must master the Thai language better than many Thais by now Marcel.

Certainly not. My Thai-educated daughter keeps correcting me. I’ve only been at it for thirty-one years and am still learning. I was 33 when I started learning Thai: at that age, Christ was already nailed on the cross. It’s too late in life to be totally fluent. But fear not: there are very good dictionaries around, especially the (frustratringly incomplete) Donmern-Sathienpong, and the best translators are not those who are well versed in the language they translate (although that helps of course) but are good writers in the language they translate into.

Why Thai literature, why this fascination of yours?

Happenstance and professional interest: in a previous life, I taught French, English and fine arts; in the current one, two things happened: I learned Thai and had a row with my boss, who left me with nothing to do on full salary for six months, so I decided to busy myself with Thai novels. One thing led to another: Thai Modern Classics in the early 90s and again now, with a successful incursion into French translation in the meantime.

In case you wonder, my boss is my friend of 35 years through thick and thin and his name is Sondhi Limthongkul – never mind his politics: without his sponsorship, there would be no full-time literary translator from the Thai named Marcel Barang.

Is Thai literature unique? If so, what makes it unique?

Too encompassing a question. The safe answer is, literature is, beyond an exercice in beauty, a mirror for a given country at a given time, and a key to understanding what makes that country tick. So if you want to understand Thailand, read Thai novels and short stories. In other words, Know Thailand: Read Thai.

Thai books one must read?

The best are all on thaifiction.com – all but one: High Banks Heavy Logs by Nikom Rayawa, well translated by David Laird and published by Penguin Australia. More specifically, one absolute, if incomplete, masterpiece, The White Shadow by Saneh Sangsuk, which you’ll love or hate, depending on which side you dress; The Judgment, Mad Dogs & Co and Time by Chart Korbjitti; and all the others of the 20 Thai Modern Classics series and budding thaifiction series.

Is there such a thing as a perfect translation? Impossible? What are your main guidelines in difficult cases when there are no equivalent words or phrases?

Perfection in translation is like objectivity in journalism: an ideal, always striven for, never reached. A good translator is like a middle-of-the-road politician or diplomat, always striving for the best compromise. Jokes and puns seldom translate, so you search for equivalents; any footnote explaining a pun is an admission of failure. My method is unorthodox: I favour the word-by-word approach, and it works wonders to respect not just the meaning but also the style of an author. When I translate twenty authors, I must end up with twenty different styles. I don’t believe in “the genius of the language” as an excuse for substituting your personal style to the author’s. If the matter interests you, I wrote at some length On literary translation from the Thai in my blog.

The classic Thai authors, who are they?

How do you define “classic”? If you mean classical literature of yore, the usual culprits are Sunthorn Phu and See Prart, poets both. The Thai novel is less than a hundred years old and the classics are the first generation of great novelists, namely Dorkmai Sot (Noblesse Oblige), Seeboorapha (Behind the Picture) and even Ma-lai Choophinit (The Field of the Great).

What about Thai poetry then?

Beautiful, exceedingly beautiful, but very seldom meaningful throughout the ages, although the post-1973 generations have given some muscle to the rubber skin that glitters. But as you know poetry doesn’t translate, the few current translations on the market are appallingly bad, and I’m not enough of a poet, let alone could I find the time, to translate Thai poetry myself.

What authors are currently hot?

My money is on Siriworn Kaewkan (The Murder Case of Tok Imam Storpa Karde and A Scattered World) rather than moddy Prabda Yun. The 2009 SEA Write Awardee, Uthis Haemamool, yet untranslated, is promised a great future if he learns how to write krachap (concisely). And I keep an eye on a whole pool of new talents in the short story genre who will sooner or later bloom into full-fledged novelists. These days more than ever, the Thai short story is where the action is.

How has your work with Thai literature formed your Thailand? It’s a no-brainer I gather that being into Thai literature must lead to a deeper cultural and social understanding?

It does that. Actually, it’s a toss-up whether I learned more about Thailand from my would-be-hi-so middle-class ex-wife over a quarter century or from Thai literature in the past fifteen years. Different things for sure. If you want to understand today’s Thai political scene in depth, only read Thutiyawiseit, a novel of the 70s by Bunluea – oh, but I forget you won’t have access to it, though it’s fully translated: her heirs, the elusive ML Bunluea Fund, have yet to approach me to give me permission to publish; I’ve been trying to get their attention since last February. Same thing for the royal side of things with that masterpiece of royal propaganda, Four Reigns by Kukrit Pramoj, the 1,262 pages of which I’m busy translating (yet again without permission, but it must be done). But there are dozens of other novels, each with a particular focus highlighting this or that aspect of Thai society, very often in a fairly crude light quite alien to the fluff peddled in sponsored magazines or in bestselling romances.

What’s the predominant theme of Thai classics and Thai literature – are they a harbinger of modern-day Thai soap operas? Or a completely different genre?

Thai classics of centuries past run the whole gamut of human foibles, as do modern-day Thai soaps. However, the former, being rooted in myth and folk lore, usually of ancient Hindu origins, more often than not have a magical dimension obviously missing from the latter. Thai soaps stem primarily from the popular sub-literature, imported mainly from the West, if you discount ghost stories, which are part of the common popular stock. They basically or increasingly carry urban middle-class values, whereas Thai classics, for all their depicting common people, were more geared towards palace entertainment.

Your favorite Thai novel?

Jao Jan Phom Hom by Mala Khamchan. Untranslatable, at least by me: I’d need to know Scouse or Welsh besides English, despite that one year in Cheshire in the late 60s.

How does Thai literature deal with the current political crisis? Or it’s not dealt with at all?

There’s a fairly strong line of short stories that deal with current events and transpose them to some extent. Some are worth translating and indeed, I’ve translated a few on a monthly basis (first Monday of the month, Outlook section) for the Bangkok Post, which frowns on the most daring ones in its paranoid wisdom: one exceedingly droll tale by Kanthorn Aksornnam was refused because the baboon in it that bit President Bush’s ears was baptized Bin Laden …

Thais are not known to be eager readers. So any Thai writer has to be a romantic? Are there authors making money?

Romantic? Nah. Nuts, rather. Apart from peddlers of romance or crime stories, Thai writers who can live off their writings can be counted on the fingers of one hand: there is Chart Korbjitti, there is Win Lyovarin and then there is – uh, well, you tell me.

Most resort to serializing their novels in magazines, which favours volume over quality, or have other jobs. It takes a madman like Saneh Sangsuk to live in penury in the boondocks for the sake of his art, and even he must make ends meet by neglecting his world-class writing in order to translate English novels that are trash compared to his own.

True Thai writers are held in high esteem in literary circles that can’t possibly number more than ten thousand true readers given that a novel selling 3,000 copies in a year is a definite success (I’m not talking S.E.A. Write here, which multiplies sales by ten or a hundred as social, hip phenomenon) – and are ignored by the rest of the populace. Which might explain why their foremost translator into English and French, with his decoration from the Translators & Interpreters Association of Thailand, is still hassled by officialdom every year for the renewal of his “non-immigrant” visa given that in their eyes he is a mere “specialist in the English language” and a Frenchman to boot. Sigh.

You’re about to write your own coming-of-age novel? In Thai?

I’m not that corny, thanks. And certainly not in Thai, which I can’t type. But then, I’ve been mulling over bilingual French-English memoirs of the three dozen women in my life. But this can wait, as putting my talent to servicing other people’s creative genius is more urgent.

Merci bien Marcel.

(I’d be interested in readers’ recommendations – fiction and non-fiction for that. Thanks!)