ingenliv

I am in Korea. I arrived 3 days ago. It is now Sunday night. It has been an embarrassing, fun, and tiring weekend. Aside from my “day job” at Sungmisan School on Friday morning and afternoon, I’ve been attending the “Occupy Finance Capitalism” Basic Income Conference in Seoul. I was responsible for interpreting for the speaker from the U.S. I was worried that I wouldn’t do such a good job, and I was right. My English is better than most people here, but my Korean is not. I am not used to thinking in Korean so much. My vocabulary and my pronunciation need a lot of work. It must have been frustrating for people to listen to me. I sensed that people were sympathizing me, too.

It did help a lot to look at the speech beforehand and have time to do a rudimentary translation of the piece before the presentation. I think I’m better at written communication than oral communication. But then again, I’m also not. That’s what I’ve been working on this last winter term. It seemed as though I was having an easier time talking things out than writing. But when I’m interpreting, I’m not allowed to “talk things out.” I can’t think; I must present. Maybe it’s just that I present better through writing, but think better through talking.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing so far in my trip to Korea. It was also like 2-3 hours of transportation every day, and that’s tiring. My room looks as though my bags threw up in it, and I haven’t had time to clean it up yet. I haven’t had time to do leftover homework from last term. By the time I get back home, it’s just about bedtime. But I’ve been having lots of fun, too. It was awesome to be there and be with these people, listening to their discussions and learning great ideas.

All week this week I go to work. My first week is going to be an observation week, observing a different grade level each day and working towards figuring out what I would like to do for the semester. Hopefully I’ll have time in the evenings and next weekend to share some more details about my time here so far and do homework!!!

Body is bodhi tree
sijelo li kasi Poti
(body is bodhi tree)

Heart is like clear mirror stand
insa pilin li sama ilo pi ala anpa tawa lipu pi lukin sama
(inner feeling part is like no-fall tool for same looking sheet)

Strive to clean it constantly
o tenpo ali la weka e jaki lon ni
(always remove dirt on it)

Do not let the dust motes land
o ken ala ni: ijo jaki lili li anpa tawa ona
(don’t let the following happen: little dirty things fall to it)

Bodhi really has no tree
Poti li jo kin e kasi ala
(bodhi really has no tree)

Nor is clear mirror the stand
kin la lipu pi lukin sama li ala ilo pi anpa ala
(nor is the same looking sheet the no-fall tool)

Nothing’s there initially
tenpo pi nanpa wan la ala li lon
(at Time 1 nothing was there)

So where can the dust motes land?
la ijo jaki lili ken anpa lon seme?
(so the little dirty things can fall where?)

Notes

li comes between subject and predicate
e comes between verb and direct object
tawa for, to
lon on, at
la comes between sentential adverb and main clause; works as ‘then’ in an if/then statement
o introduces command
ni this, that; definite object pronoun
ken can, enable
kin indeed, too; intensifier
seme question word

Line 1
Poti: The guy who did the translation of these poems by Shenxiu and Huineng seemed to think it’s important that bodhi stays bodhi and that translators don’t translate it further, so I tokiponized the word. In toki pona, words that are not in the vocabulary and introduced through tokiponization are capitalized, whether common or proper.

Line 2
insa pilin: feeling inner part, heart. Feeling here does not necessarily mean emotion, but a thing the mind does. Sometimes, if you think something, the word pilin is used.
lipu pi lukin sama: same-looking sheet. There’s no word for mirror in toki pona.
ijo pi anpa ala: no-fall tool. There’s no word for stand in toki pona.

Line 3
There’s no word for clean in toki pona, so I wrote it out as “to remove dirt (weka e jaki).” This may be problematic, since the next line says to not let dirt fall on it, in which case there would be no dirt to remove. But that is true even without toki pona. Maybe this says something about the contradiction of the original poem.
I’m not sure whether o is supposed to come before or after the sentential adverb.

Line 4
ni is a nifty little tool in toki pona that allows you to break up complex sentences that are hard to write in toki pona. You may think that the sentence in that line is not so complex, but it is essentially two sentences put together, as seen in the toki pona version.
ijo jaki lili little dirty things. jaki can work as both noun and adjective–dirt and dirty. But dust or dust motes is more “particular.”

Line 7
tenpo pi nanpa wan Time No. 1.  There is no word for begin or start in toki pona. This is actually the convention for saying ordinal numbers, whenever Time 1 was.

Line 8
I began the line with the word la. I’m not sure that this is allowed conventionally. I thought it would sort of be one sentence with the line above it. It’s a poem, and much of toki pona depends on context anyway. But there is also the problem that there is another la before it, making it two la’s in one sentence.
In toki pona, the questions don’t begin with a question. Instead, the question word seme substitutes the part of the sentence that is unknown, and you use a question mark.