Signing Your Life Away in the US.

 
It was precisely 7pm when the doorbell rang. Our appointment was originally scheduled for half an hour later. Freeway traffic at this time is never good and she lives a long way from me. Still she had called earlier to see if we could start the liaison early. Like some love-starved teenager, I welcomed her suggestion most agreeably.

The front door opened and in popped a cheerful smiling lady whom I judged to be
an Asian. Before the night was over, I had gathered all her personal information deemed interesting to me. She was Cantonese and had migrated to the States over 30 years ago. I gathered she must have been a toddler then, for she spoke with flawless and accentless English; a mother of two girls; recently went back to Canton with her mother and daughters for a visit; did not have enough time to drop by Hong Kong. Wow! A gathering of four generations under one roof!

I have a knack for culling such information from strangers with my ineffable charm. It is not because I am nosy. On the contrary, I find myself bored in general and such things do amuse my mind. It is like the thrill of a hunt. After all, before the night is over, she would leave me, with all my vital personal data - imparted out of necessity. Before anything could proceed further, I had to prove my identity to her. The California driving licence being the most preferable form in this situation.

Before going any further, let me introduce you to Kim. Yes, she is a stranger, but a very special one. You see, she is a notary public sent by the escrow company. Signing this one inch thick pile of documents in her presence is a must. For the rest of the world, an inch is equivalent to about 25.4mm! With the authority vested in her, she is the only one who can bear witness to our act. I have no choice, due to the low rate of 6.25% in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage on some US$355,000 loan. This is very good. With every silver lining, though, a few dark clouds come tagging along. One has to provide checking account numbers, social security numbers, loan document numbers and, worst of all, a hefty cashier’s cheque of over $1,300 to cover the cost of the home loan. This is why banks seem so eager to lower their interest rate. They make a killing right on the spot first! Refinancing at a lower rate does not mean it is always the best for everyone. One has to calculate if the upfront fees are worth the while. No point in doing so if you are going to sell your home within five years when these costs cannot be recovered.

I digress.

No one ever reads these loan documents. They are filled with jargon only a real estate lawyer would love. Hence, the notary public also functions as a sort of advisor and interpreter explaining what the signatures are for. Almost every page has to be signed or initialed. Sometimes it is ridiculous to affix signatures and initials on the same page, within inches from each other. Such are these inconveniences of legal redundancies.  In the good old days, less than ten pages of signature were required to ensure a legal binding contract. Now there are extraneous documents - to acknowledge the right of the consumer to withdraw the agreement within three business days; to agree that the loan offered is not based on the race, gender or age of the borrower; to confirm that the homestead is occupied by the signer; or to waive all rights of privacy and allow government agencies such as the tax bureau to paw through all that personal information! With the advancement of the ubiquitous computer technology, bank account numbers now have to be divulged so that excess charges can be refunded and mortgage payments deposited electronically and automatically.

The good old-fashioned requirement of signing in black ink is no longer preferred. Most institutions now want you to sign in blue ink! This is because the photocopying process is so good that one cannot distinguish if the signature is photocopied. This is to prevent fraud. One look at the colors will easily verify a signature. 

Time ticks slowly away as the mind boggles, awash in legal mumbo-jumbo. You think the English language is hard? Just wait until you try to read and understand one page of legalese!  Once those are out of the way, the signing process becomes rather routine. You just sign whatever you are given, interspersed with some explanations here and there. You just have to trust her! After all the signatures are gathered, she double checks everything once more to ensure all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed. No one wants to do this again! You know the finality of the process when your thumb print is requested on her official book of records.

Talk about technology! Not too long ago, getting a thumb print was a messy process. Your thumb is all black from the ink and if you don’t clean it thoroughly thumb prints will appear on everything you touch. Then an inkless version came but still can be quite messy. Of course nowadays, high quality digital fingerprint scanners, but in home visit situations, this is not feasible. I am truly impressed that inkless pads have advanced to such a point that the ink is invisible on your thumb. When you first press onto the paper, the print is invisible. As the ink dries, it becomes darker and darker on the paper but not on your thumb! Something new learnt every day.

Wait! Wait! Not so fast! I thought we were done due to prior experience in home refinancing. Well, there is something new this time! One more important document to prove that she provided a meaningful service!

Precisely at 8:15pm, she waltzed off into the darkness of the night. Hopefully never to see her again! I am happy and she is happy. And why not? You asked. The answer, my friend, is the $150 in her virtual pocket. Not bad for an hour and a half. Perhaps I should change my job too.

After note: With all these careful checks... She is human after all. Yesterday the escrow called to inform me that there was still a place where the signature is missing! It was a minor one because the paper had been initialed. Such are the fail safe redundancies of legalese. Thank goodness all I have to do is to print out the initialed document attached in the email. Sign it, re-scan it and emailed it back to them. Thank God for the convenience of modern technology.

Autumn Thoughts

天淨沙 – Heavenly Pure Sand

This is the introductory part of a nine part Yuan Dynasty miscellaneous lyrical song poem (散曲) by Ma Chi Yuan (馬致遠). The majority of his plays are dealt with Taoism and the title may have something to with Taoist mysticism. The “sand” in the title may mean the masses. Since I am no expert on this, I refrain from conjecturing how this title should be translated in any other way.

This essay offers a glimpse how a translation takes place in my mind. Whether right or wrong, this is how it went in my mind.

枯 藤 老 樹 昏 鴉。
withered vine old tree evening crow

小 橋 流 水 人 家。

small bridge flowing water man house/dwelling

古 道 西 風 瘦 馬。
ancient way west wind skinny horse.

夕 陽 西 下，
evening sun west down

斷 腸 人 在 天 涯。
broken intestine man on sky edge.


On the surface, an English translation would be a breeze for anyone with a good command of both languages. The characters used are common and there is no allusion referenced. Indeed, one translation might be,

A withered vine, an ancient tree, crows at dusk

Upon closer inspection, questions begin to arise. Stripped of its adjectives, the first line merely lists three different objects, a vine, a tree and a crow. Is this really the intent of the author? Chinese, unlike English, does not have plural indicators. Neither it is wrong to translate it as

Withered vines, ancient trees and crows at dusk

Hence various permutations can be used. However, the picture painted becomes subtly different.

This essay focuses on what goes into my mind when I attempt an English translation. Different people may have different interpretations. This what makes poetry so interesting.

The first tool in my translation arsenal is common sense. In real life, there is usually more than one vine growing. So translating it into a plural form makes more sense. However, neither common sense nor cultural background nor experience can determine the singularity for the rest. Before going further, I have an issue on translating the Chinese character, 老. This character means old, ancient etc. The choice of word used is very important for different cultures have different shades of the meaning. For example, “ancient trees” may conjure up scenes of horror to the western mind. Therefore for a more colorful translation, even the word “gnarly” can be used since old trees are gnarly. However, this would run afoul of cultural experience. What is valid in one culture may not be valid in the other. We have to look for clues in the poem as a whole.

The next line again follows a same pattern of listing three objects, a bridge, a river and human dwelling. Again the question of singularity or plurality comes into play. Again common sense comes to rescue. One bridge is enough for one river. Why the need for more than one? Unless there are many rivers to begin with. One dwelling or many abodes, we still cannot decide. Keeping this in mind, we move on to the next line.

In the third line, the same pattern of three objects ensued. A road, wind, and a horse. By now we have a feeling of singularity of the road and horse. Wind cannot be counted in daily life but poetically it can do so.

In the fourth line, there is no ambiguity. There is only one sun. Finally we now have arrived at the last sentence. It does not talk about the masses but one singular person’s emotions. With this all the ambiguity of singularity or plurality is resolved according to my reasoning and interpretation.

In my version, I used the neutral word, “aged” instead of “old” or “ancient”. I purposely avoided the use of “ancient,” because in the third line the word 古 (ancient) is used. I do not like words repeated, if they are not for emphasis. Also, I have added extra words not found in the original poem to give it more color and feel in the target language. Classical Chinese poems tend to be concise and ambiguous. Many words are left out to let the reader fill in the blanks. For example, I used the word “perched”. Common sense will tell you that the crow’s first action would be to perch rather than any other action. One can certainly argue that the crow might fly rather than perch. However, in filling this imagery, the entire scene will not tie up nicely with the last image of a broken- hearted man standing alone.

I used the word “brooklet” instead of a river. This is because of the explicit adjective used to describe the smallness of the bridge. At first I too translated 人家 (human abode) as “a few mere huts”. On second thought, I decided it would be more appropriate to do so in the singular form (“one mere hut”) to tie up with the rest of the poem to emphasize loneliness. After all, hermits do exist in Chinese culture. However, this kept nagging me. The use of人家 as singular does not conform to the usage of the term. Indeed, in Cantonese, it can also mean “they” or “them”. Perhaps I am falling into the trap of reading between the lines and conjecturing too much. In the end, I reverted to my original decision. On looking at it, the ends of the first two lines matched in plural forms.

My other reasons:

I chose “brooklet” over other synonyms such as “stream”, “riverlet” or even “rivulet” because it I like it better over others.

“Sighing” is another additional word I used in the translation to emphasize the melancholy of the poem. “Blowing” does not pack the same punch. Considering the title of the entire song is Autumn Thoughts (秋思), the words “withered”, “aged”, “twilight”, “ancient”, “west” and “skinny” all describe how ancient Chinese view the season.

瘦馬 is easy to translate as “skinny horse”. However, it somehow does not quite fit poetically in the target language. One translator uses “emaciated”, skinny when one is starved. However, I believe that it is skinny through old age rather than starvation. On an interesting note, the last name of the author means horse. This conjecturing if the author has placed himself in the poem is something no one but himself knows.

天涯 (Heaven’s Edge) should not be translated literally as the “horizon”. It is short for 天涯海角 (corner of the ocean) to mean a-far-away-land, a place of fantasy, the ends of the earth, or worlds separated apart. I prefer to translate it as the edge of the world, to mean that he is one step away from his grave.

The astute will notice that I did not add the word, “stand” in the last line which can be inferred from the poem. It is analogous to adding “perched” for the first line. I did not because “standing” may then be construed that at any moment he may jump off the edge. For all we may know that he was sitting at the edge to reflect upon his past in his twilight years. Perhaps filled with regrets; but he could be clinging onto life as long as possible. This kind of conjecturing is totally subjective for there is no more information after this line upon which to draw.

Withered vines, an aged tree and a crow perched in twilight,
One little bridge over a brooklet, some mere huts.
An ancient road, the west wind sighs upon a scrawny horse.
The sun is setting,
A broken-hearted man on the edge of the world.



Tuesday, February 28, 2013

Some other English translations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Zhiyuan

http://chinesepoemsinenglish.blogspot.com/2010/09/ma-zhiyuan-tian-jing-sha-autumn.html

http://clearharmony.net/articles/Fun_with_Yuan_Dynasty_Songs_“An_Autumn_Reflection”_in_the_Song_Format_of_“Heavenly_Pure_Sand”-a31174.html