Translating Idioms in a Story About Honour
During a translation exercise, a class of 30 students is rendering a short story sentence into Assamese/English. The sentence is: «او برای حفظ آب روی خانواده، خون جگر خورد.» A student submits: 'He ate the blood of his liver to keep the water of the family's face.' The teacher marks it wrong, but the student protests that every word has been translated. The rubric awards 60% for meaning, 30% for idiom, and 10% for style; literal renderings that obscure sense receive no idiom marks. The class has 15 minutes to revise the sentence and to propose a general rule for handling Persian idioms in the exam. The passage goes on to say that the character refused to accept a bribe, so the context is honour, not eating. The teacher wants the revision to keep the emotional force without importing an English/Assamese metaphor that is too casual.
1. Provide a corrected translation and explain why the literal version fails.
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A corrected version: 'He endured bitter suffering to protect his family's honour.' The literal version fails because the two key expressions are idioms, not compositional phrases. «آب روی» literally 'water of the face' means reputation, honour, or face; «خون جگر خورد» literally 'he ate the blood of the liver' means he suffered bitterly and swallowed his grief. The context - refusing a bribe - confirms that the issue is honour and moral endurance, not eating. A literal rendering is not merely awkward; it reverses the register by making a dignified sacrifice sound grotesque. The rubric's 30% idiom component is lost, and the 60% meaning component is weakened because the motive is no longer clear.
2. What general rule should students follow for Persian idioms in the exam?
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First identify a stretch that cannot be parsed word-for-word; then infer its function from the surrounding clause (honour, grief, refusal, etc.); then translate the function in natural Assamese/English. If the idiom has no exact equivalent, use a plain functional phrase rather than a random local metaphor. Keep the literal image in brackets only if the exam asks for explanation. Do not import a casual metaphor that lowers the register. In revision, test the translation by asking whether a reader who knows no Persian would understand the character's motive. The rule is: meaning first, idiom second, literal image only as a gloss.