Magin_Edward-thesis

218
(LOC) there darkness-EZ.F life-OBL.F will vanish COP.PRS-3SG
‘There the darkness of life will vanish,’
There will my eyes have sight.
(Li) wêrê çav-an dê vek-im, çi_car na gir-im
(LOC) there eye-OBL.PL will open.PRS-1SG, never NEG close.PRS-1SG
‘There I will open the eyes, I will never close them.’
I initially thought that the first line of Shushi’s version was lacking a syllable.
However, the h in ruhnîyê is actually pronounced as a separate syllable, even though the
word is usually not written as ruhinîyê, with an i after the h. Concerning the second line,
Shushi used the word jarî, which she described as ‘misery,’ for the translation of ‘pain.’
The word jarî may be viewed as a slight improvement in the poem, as ‘misery’ perhaps
adds an emotional element to the type of ‘pain’ that requires ‘rest,’ whereas the first thing
one may think when hearing the English word ‘pain’ in Longfellow’s version is physical
pain.
Instead of making the third line a dependent clause, as I had done, Shushi kept it
as the object of the fourth line, beginning the line with the determiner ew, ‘those.’ This
actually keeps the phrasing closer to the original, which is not an issue, as the syntax also
works very nicely in Northern Kurdish. Also, it is worth noting that Shushi’s word for
‘crying,’ girîyan, is synonymous with the word for ‘crying’ in my version, girî. Shushi
used both words in her upbringing and does not discern any difference between them. In
the final line of the quatrain, Shushi gained two syllables by saying rengê sorr, ‘red
color,’ as opposed to simply sorr, ‘red,’ which is what I used in my more literal version.
By doing so she gained two syllables. Another change in this line is the word rewşan,
‘illuminate,’ which Shushi felt was more poetic than my literal boyaẍ, ‘dye.’ Rewşan, a
very positive image, also connects nicely with ‘light’ in the first line of the quatrain—
another application of Boerger’s sixth principle (1997:38).
In the first line of the second quatrain, Shushi added the word her ‘all,’ which is
simply an explication of implied information in the original. She also used diweşin for
‘whither,’ which is a synonym for the word she recommended for my version. In the
second line, she used the emphatic tim (see § 6.1). To express ‘flying fleet’ she decided to