Tribute to the 17th United Nations Chinese Language Day
Portrait of Confucius
On the 17th United Nations Chinese Language Day we celebrate the timeless charm of Chinese characters a carrier of thousands of years of Eastern wisdom poetry and cultural heritage
Five years ago during the 12th UN Chinese Language Day one of the three core thematic lectures selected by the United Nations “The Mysterious Dongba Hieroglyphs” was solemnly held at our Dongba Culture Academy My respected master the 17th-generation Grand Dongba Priest Aheng Dongta appeared on the front page of the official United Nations website As a wise man of the Naxi people and the soul inheritor of Dongba culture he brought the world’s only living pictographic script to the global stage letting the wisdom of Dongba culture and the brilliance of Eastern civilization shine on the international stage
Dongba hieroglyphs are the living fossil of Naxi civilization a cultural code spanning millennia and a spiritual bridge connecting the past and present and linking civilizations As the sole female inheritor and international communicator of the Dongba culture of the UNESCO Memory of the World I will always stay true to my mission as a cultural messenger delving into the translation and research of Dongba ancient books to let this precious human cultural heritage revitalize in the new era Taking language as a bond I will promote dialogue and mutual learning among different civilizations injecting oriental energy into world peace and cultural prosperity
“Scene from “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by The Joffrey Ballet. (Photo: Cheryl Mann)”
Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Joffrey Ballet
Zellerbach Theater
Berkeley, California
Midsummer Madness
“We had this beautiful summer house in the Swedish countryside. My favorite thing was to run in the field in front of the house and pick seven different flowers to put them under my pillow. Tradition says that if you put these flowers under your pillow before you go to bed, you will dream of your future love.”—Anna von Hausswolff
When you go to see a performance titled “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” even when warned ahead of time it will be set in the pale summer night of Sweden, you can be forgiven for expecting a dependably Shakespearian outing, though this time with maybe a Scandinavian Oberon and Titania and a regiment of local gnomes, a confusion of misguided romantics bounding through an Arctic midnight forest, and maybe a donkey-headed Svenska Bottom and his rude mechanicals defying the stagy and the stage-struck and a teasing trickster of a northern Puck declaring while displaying to all the world: “What fools these mortals be!”
And you might even be forgiven if, in the opening moments of the performance, you feel slightly disappointed that, no, this is not quite what you are about to be graced with this chilly spring evening.
But then, if you have always loved a surprise, especially when it is packaged as a bonbon and then explodes into a party, your expectations are turned on their head and go leaping in cartwheels across the stage, as if the whole theater had been turned into a circus expressly for your entertainment, and you find yourself with little alternative but to let yourself be blissfully carried away for the rest of the enchanted evening. There are a lot worse disappointments! And it’s easy enough to imagine Puck roaring with laughter up his gossamer sleeve.
Such, anyway, was this viewer’s experience when Cal Performances brought The Joffrey Ballet to the Zellerbach Theater on the UC Berkeley campus over a weekend this April. I’m still sorting out all the chaos of revelries that made it one of the most memorable evenings of a season that has had, frankly, a lot of competition.
The dance was divided into two parts, the first running a little under, the second a little over an hour, but who’s counting? The proof of any wonder is how fast it seems to fill any pocket of time with riches, and yet how brief it all seems in the end.
The first half opens, with deceptive minimalism, with a buffed up young man (a fine Dylan Gutierrez, who served as our point of contact for the evening; it’s his dream, after all, that we’re sharing) as he tries, unsuccessfully, to go to sleep in the glaring Scandinavian midsummer night. His bed stands in front of the stage curtain on which random sayings are projected, immediately dissolving: “Pick some strawberries!” “Meet me in the meadow,” “Sven is drunk,” “I prefer Christmas,” “Do you still love me?” . . .
A graceful young woman (the excellent Victoria Jaiani, who will be our main point of romance for the evening) bearing a sheaf of hay, dances down the aisle and up to the stage, waking the young man and then whisking him away through a crack in the curtain, which opens up to a wild, choppy confusion of dozens of dancers thrashing and dashing and flailing across a stage blanketed with golden hay like a vast field at the height of harvest season. From here on, we are far from the forest of Arden, but never far from magic.
The first act unfolds as a kind of bacchantic fertility rite, a revelry of farm workers dancing and playing, not only in, but with the hay, at the foot of a tall, mask-like pagan symbol, integrating a cross, an arrow, and two eye-like wreaths, erected above them.
The dancing workers whisk about, flail and harvest and roll the hay up into tub-like bundles which as used as little stages for couples dancing for love and delight, and they finally cast it all back into a long, luxurious play on the eternal idea of a sweetly innocent roll in the hay, quite literally.
A long table is then rolled out, and the hay is swept gaily off the stage, and the host of workers gather and celebrate the harvest in a traditional banquet. A solitary singer (the magical Anna von Hausswolff, who will appear at especially mysterious and lyrical moments) comes out and sings of the peace and joy of the long festival of summer in these cold and northern climes.
Then the revelry resumes, leading up to a long, strange, mysterious moment, when all the dancers, arranged in an almost intimidating phalanx stretching from end to end of the stage, approach the edge and, wreathed in enigmatic smiles, stare at the audience as if waiting for us to . . . do what?
There was nervous laughter, nervous applause, a little bout of rhythmic clapping, tense silence, and childlike wonder at what it all meant, as the dancers gazed silent as the midsummer sun on the puzzled mortals beneath them, then, just as mysteriously, dissolved back into seemingly random reveling.
The first act ended with one of the evening’s most magical moments, as the dancers moved up and down the long banquet table, bearing candelabras, until they stepped down to and across the darkened stage, off the stage, into the audience and up the aisles, with candelabras still aloft, until they froze, staring at the audience with mad charm.
The first half had many such marvels of enchantment. But it provided nothing to prepare us for what we would see in the second: a fever earthquake, tidal wave of inventions without end, technique without boundaries, a pagan unleashing in a teeming, ecstatic nightmare – for what would a dance about a dream be without the challenge of a nightmare? And everybody rose to meet it, conquered, and conquered again and again for the rest of a dream no one wanted, honestly, to wake from.
Because when was a nightmare ever more turbulent, tumultuous, tumacious, titillating, terrifying fun? Not only did the choreography raise its game to undreamed of heights, and the dancers follow, ever braver and more victorious than the last, but so did the set, the lighting, the props; nor forget the brilliance of music and musicians, never left behind, indeed often leading, including, later, in a soft passage after the seemingly endless rolling frieze of thrills of the opening, the already mentioned singer, who capped many a manic moment with a soft, still climax.
Did I forget the humor? Unforgivable! Because this was a production that, in its deeply romantic and pagan heart, knows how to laugh, out of pure high spirits and unshackled joy. I will mention only the giant Max Ernst fishes landing at unexpected moments or parading enormously across the boards, and the gleeful gigglers prancing in the odd corner at the odd moment, and the tutu-refined would-be swanners undermined in their earnest pliés by the gleeful gigglers and snarky bystanders, and the dueling immaculately haberdashed duo of headless gentlemen (Edson Barbarosa and Aaron Reneteria) bouncing around the stage with arms flailing and trading slaps at each other’s invisible heads, and the half-naked chef (danced with elegant insouciance by Fernando Duarte) parading around en pointe and buff-butted for much of the act in a chef’s hat and apron – and nothing else, my friend. He was, no doubt, a stand-in for the chef of this spectacular banquet of a production, the choreographer (and set designer) Alexander Ekman, as fine a magician of dance and stage as, I believe after this evening, we now have among us.
The music, a heady combination of contemporary and classical, pop, experimental and traditional Swedish folk music, and played live by a sextet of strings, piano and percussion, was by Michael Karlsson. The ingenious lighting design was originally created by Linus Fellbrom and re-created, not least the ribbons of lights hanging above the audience in the image of a circus tent, for the Zellerbach performance by Chris Maravich.
I think the fairies of Arden would have mightily approved.
_____
Christopher Bernard is an award-winning poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. His most recent book is the poetry collection The Beauty of Matter: A Pagan’s Verses for a Mystic Idler.
First, some announcements. Tao Yucheng invites the winners of the poetry contest he hosted earlier this year to contact him at taoyucheng921129@proton.me. He’ll send out the prize money this month. He also announces that no one person won the Honorable Mention (there was a tie among multiple pieces) so he will automatically enter those pieces in the next competition, which will be at a yet-to-be-determined date this summer.
Also, contributor Mykyta Ryzhykh has a new book out, Tombboy, from Lost Telegram Press.
“In his book, as in books of poems written in poetic forms and free verse, language moves through a pattern, and the basic organizing unit is the line. In tombboy, the line may be a syllable, a sign, an image, or even a dot… Readers may rightfully assume that many, even all the poems in tombboy are anti-war poems… yet it would be inaccurate to infer these concrete poems are doctrinaire, or purely political. Nor are they autobiographical. But they are personal, intuitive, original, and memorable, each with something to show…” – Peter Mladinic, author of House Sitting, Knives on the Table and many other books
“tombboy is filled with an experimental spirit, combining fearless phrasing with satirical madness. The result is a fascinating examination of the human condition… it seems there are no limits to his masterful creativity. Each page of this book will grab your attention. tombboy deserves a prominent spot on your bookshelf.” – Roberta Beach Jacobson, editor of Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and smols poetry journal
Welcome to Synchronized Chaos’ mid-April issue: A Chorus at the Threshold. This issue presents a chorus of voices singing, speaking, sometimes whispering, at different types of thresholds. People of different ages and backgrounds come together in this issue, each sharing thoughts, observations, and feelings at points of shifting and transformation.
Some of these thresholds are deeply interior. Adalat Gafarov Izzet oglu’s poetry is contemplative and reverent, with a focus on spirituality and the search for meaning. John Edward Culp speaks to self-discovery, love, and finding one’s own rhythm in life. Duane Vorhees’ poetry forms a cohesive meditation on struggle, distance, and the human effort to bridge impossible gaps—whether spiritual, emotional, or existential. Mesfakus Salahin’s piece highlights self-exploration in times of solitude, as Maja Milojkovic laments the increasing unwanted loneliness caused by the setup of much of modern life. Mahbub Alam probes the highs and lows and capacities of human nature, highlighting the need for empathy and compassion. Prasanna Kumar Dalai’s poetry is romantic and melancholic, expressing deep emotions and longing. Poet and physician Anwer Ghani suggests that despite our attempts to conceal our emotions, they can still be sensed and felt.
J.J. Campbell’s writing touches on his inner shadows: feelings of isolation, the desire for a simple, authentic life, and the pain of his loneliness and inner demons. Ana May likewise writes from the doorway between suffering and transformation, insisting that pain must be faced if it is ever to yield meaning. Fhen M.’s eerie poem recollects the legend of G. Bragolin’s Crying Boy painting surviving house fires, meditating on trauma and memory. Thi Lan Anh Tran depicts the complex, multilayered social and psychological effects of both romantic love and war. Amina Kasim Muhammad’s poem illuminates how people rebuild after the loss of a loved one, growing around rather than overcoming grief. In David Sapp’s vignettes and Eva Lianou Petropoulou’s scenes of personal and public tragedy, ordinary life itself becomes a threshold where loss is transfigured through memory and grief into reverence.
Other voices gather at the threshold between childhood and adulthood. Yeon Myeong-ji and Hamdamova Dilzodaxon Halimjon qizi craft scenes of family love, care, and loss. Their work, and Jacques Fleury’s return to his father and their childhood treehouse, all stand in that tender doorway between then and now. Sarvinoz Bakhtiyorova depicts the impact of remembering one’s past and how that can shape one’s identity. Here, affection survives distance and the past remains startlingly alive.
Nature, too, shifts throughout this issue, with pieces about seasons and the liminal spaces between dreams and reality. In Stephen Jarrell Williams’s idyllic vision, the act of learning to fly becomes an awakening into another mode of being. Elaine Murray’s visionary reflections on natural landscapes, Charos Ismoilova’s gratitude for the sunrise, Ananya Guha’s pensive thoughts on seasonal time, Graciela Noemi Villaverde’s vision of a world where humans protect and care for the natural world, Joseph Ogbonna’s song to a nightingale, and Brian Barbeito’s dream journey scenes of birds, constellations, and moonlight all invite us to the threshold between the visible and the unseen. Sayani Mukherjee’s luminous piece on the sacred mystery of existence completes this movement, reminding us that existence itself is a continual process of change.
History and heritage form another vital threshold in these pages—the place where inheritance meets the present moment. Dr. Jihane El Feghali’s tribute to Lebanon, radiant with resilience and memory, stands beside Ilya Ganpantsura’s portrait of Pushkin, writing in a nation poised between autocracy and intellectual freedom. Abdulaxilova Sevara’s meditation on Yusuf and Zulayha reveals divine and human love, earthly devotion blended with spiritual transcendence. Eva Lianou Petropoulou shares the tale of miraculous holy fire burning the day before Easter in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Lan Xin acknowledges the shared humanity and commonalities within the heritage of the world’s people, finding harmony within global religious teachings, and Bhagirath Chowdhary echoes that sentiment in his poem. Mohizoda Xurshiq qizi Roziqova discusses Uzbekistan’s legacy of teacher-apprentice training in the trades as Shokhida Nazirova highlights the Uzbek government’s investment in youth education, athletics, and personal development. The works rooted in Uzbek heritage further remind us that culture survives through crossings: hand to hand, teacher to student, voice to voice.
The chorus also rises at the threshold leading to justice.
Sim Wooki confronts racism and colonial power, while Patricia Doyne and Manik Chakraborty write from the brink where historical violence and oppression not only cast a shadow upon the present, but continues to this day. Alan Catlin and Stephen House stand at the moral threshold of witness, asking what it means to remain human before scenes of suffering, ecological damage, and collective harm. These are works that refuse the comfort of distance. They ask us not merely to observe, but to consider the ethics of paying attention.
Jernail S. Anand looks at compassion, care and the consequences of individual actions. Mykyta Ryzhykh highlights the dissonance between our ideals of gentleness and innocence and abusive human behavior that falls short of these ideals. Asalbonu Otamurodova’s reflections on boundaries offer another kind of threshold: the necessary line where care for others must meet care for the self.
Art itself becomes another form of threshold, creating space for various ideas and sensibilities to meet and overlap. Noah Berlatsky considers how even a weathered, broken artwork can convey meaning, how the breakage can become part of the work. Doug Hawley and Bill Tope’s joint short story humorously compares an ordinary couple with historically famous idealized sculptures of people, finding in favor of the average, imperfect, but real, married couple. To’lquinay Ubukulova points out creative people’s current dependence on technology of various sorts. Jerrice J. Baptiste’s poems and paintings of women highlight their individuality, strength of character, and connection to the natural world. Juraeva Aziza Rakhmatovna interviews Croatian writer and poet Ankica Anchia, illuminating her love for her nation and birthplace as creative inspiration.
Ummusalma Nasir Mukhtar celebrates the power of writers to move society forward through their creativity, as Bill Tope explores his personal literary motivations. Ri Hossain analyzes themes in his own poetry, highlighting his combination of materialism and surrealism and how he renders urban realities through free verse. Gionni Valentin’s fragmented thoughts, images, and reflections explore themes of creativity, self-discovery, and the human condition. Kandy Fontaine describes post-Beat poetics, defined by inclusivity, community, focus on embodied and lived experience with living writers, and rejection of hierarchies and trophies. Patrick Sweeney’s tiny poetic fragments touch on art, identity, nature, history, and relationships. Joshua Martin’s poems combine lexical debris, media fragments, bureaucratic residue, and historical ruin, while Mark Young’s fragmented transmissions emerge from different frequencies of reality.
What binds these many works is not sameness, but shared arrival. Each piece stands at some edge—of understanding, of memory, of identity, of survival—and from that edge it calls out. The result is a true chorus: not a single melody, but many voices meeting in resonance.
Chorus at the Threshold sums up this collection because every page invites crossing. Between sorrow and wonder. Between history and dream. Between the self we have been and the self we are still becoming. Yet, many of these doors remain open, so that the thoughts and impressions in one “room” carry forward along one’s journey or can be remembered.
May you enter these pages with openness, attentiveness, and the quiet recognition that something in you may emerge changed.
CHALLENGES IN THE TRANSLATION OF IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND UZBEK: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
Kurbanova Mohinur Abdumuxtor qizi
2nd-year Master’s Student
“English Language and Literature” program
Faculty of Foreign Languages, Uzbekistan
Pedagogical University named After Nizami
Abstract: This study explores the challenges involved in translating idiomatic expressions between English and Uzbek languages. Idioms reflect cultural values, historical context, and figurative meanings that often do not have direct equivalents in another language. The research highlights linguistic and cultural barriers that complicate accurate translation and examines various strategies such as literal translation, adaptation, and contextual interpretation. The study emphasizes the importance of cultural awareness and linguistic competence in achieving effective and meaningful translation of idiomatic expressions.
Keywords:
idiomatic expressions, translation challenges, English language, Uzbek language, cultural differences, figurative meaning, equivalence, translation strategies
Annotatsiya: Ushbu tadqiqot ingliz va o‘zbek tillari o‘rtasidagi idiomatik iboralarni tarjima qilishda yuzaga keladigan muammolarni o‘rganadi. Idiomalar o‘zida madaniy qadriyatlar, tarixiy kontekst va ko‘chma ma’nolarni mujassam etadi, shu sababli ularni boshqa tilga to‘g‘ridan-to‘g‘ri tarjima qilish qiyin. Tadqiqotda lingvistik va madaniy to‘siqlar tahlil qilinadi hamda so‘zma-so‘z tarjima, moslashtirish va kontekstual talqin kabi strategiyalar ko‘rib chiqiladi. Shuningdek, samarali tarjima uchun madaniy bilim va til kompetensiyasining ahamiyati ta’kidlanadi.
Kalit so‘zlar:
idiomatik iboralar, tarjima muammolari, ingliz tili, o‘zbek tili, madaniy farqlar, ko‘chma ma’no, ekvivalentlik, tarjima strategiyalari
Аннотация: Данное исследование посвящено изучению трудностей перевода идиоматических выражений между английским и узбекским языками. Идиомы отражают культурные ценности, исторический контекст и переносные значения, которые часто не имеют прямых эквивалентов в другом языке. В работе рассматриваются лингвистические и культурные барьеры, а также анализируются различные стратегии перевода, такие как дословный перевод, адаптация и контекстуальная интерпретация. Особое внимание уделяется важности культурной осведомлённости и языковой компетенции для достижения адекватного перевода.
Ключевые слова:
идиоматические выражения, трудности перевода, английский язык, узбекский язык, культурные различия, переносное значение, эквивалентность, стратегии перевода
INTRODUCTION
Language is not merely a tool for communication but a reflection of the sociocultural landscape of its speakers. Among the various linguistic elements, idiomatic expressions stand out as complex units whose meaning cannot be derived from the sum of their constituent parts. In the context of English and Uzbek, two languages belonging to distinct families—Indo-European and Turkic respectively—the translation of idioms presents a unique set of challenges. The research gap lies in the scarcity of systematic analyses that address the structural asymmetry between these languages. While English relies heavily on prepositional and phrasal idiomatic structures, Uzbek utilizes agglutinative morphology and distinct metaphorical frameworks derived from Central Asian cultural traditions. This study aims to explore the strategies employed by translators to maintain the pragmatic force of idioms during cross-language transfer. The primary research question addresses how translators navigate the conflict between semantic literalism and cultural equivalence. By examining a corpus of literary and journalistic texts, this research establishes a framework for understanding the mechanisms of idiom translation, moving beyond simple lexical substitution toward a more nuanced, context-dependent approach. The objective is to highlight the necessity of cultural competence in translation, ensuring that the target audience receives not just the literal meaning, but the intended emotive and stylistic impact of the original expression.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study utilizes a qualitative comparative methodology, focusing on a descriptive analysis of idiomatic expressions collected from contemporary literary works and media outlets. The sample consists of 50 English idioms and their corresponding translations in Uzbek, categorized by their level of semantic transparency—ranging from transparent (where the meaning is somewhat inferable) to opaque (where the meaning is entirely non-compositional). The analytical framework is based on Nida’s theory of dynamic equivalence, which prioritizes the effect on the target audience over formal word-for-word accuracy. Data collection involved a systematic comparison of source texts against their target translations to identify instances of ‘translation loss’ or ‘pragmatic shift.’ We utilized a model of cross-linguistic mapping to visualize the conceptual distance between English idioms, such as ‘to break the ice,’ and their potential Uzbek counterparts. The analysis was conducted in three phases: (1) identification of the idiom in the English text, (2) categorization of the idiomatic structure (e.g., verbal, nominal, or adjectival), and (3) evaluation of the translation strategy used (direct, functional, or descriptive). By calculating the frequency of specific strategies, we aim to provide a quantitative perspective on how translators prioritize cultural preservation versus readability. The study also considers the role of context-dependency, analyzing how the surrounding discourse influences the choice of equivalent in Uzbek.
ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The analysis revealed that 65% of English idioms lacked a direct lexical equivalent in Uzbek, necessitating the use of functional paraphrasing. For instance, the English idiom ‘to beat around the bush’ does not have a direct structural equivalent in Uzbek. Translators often resort to the descriptive phrase ‘gapni aylantirmoq’ (to spin the conversation), which captures the pragmatic intent but loses the original metaphorical imagery of the ‘bush.’ Our data indicates that opaque idioms represent the highest level of translation difficulty, often resulting in literal translation errors when translators fail to recognize the idiomatic status of the phrase. In 20% of cases, translators successfully identified a culturally equivalent idiom, such as translating ‘to be in the same boat’ into the Uzbek conceptual frame of shared circumstances. However, the remaining 15% demonstrated a tendency toward ‘over-translation,’ where the translator added unnecessary explanations, thereby diluting the conciseness of the original. We observed that the agglutinative nature of the Uzbek language allows for creative compounding, which occasionally permits the creation of new idiomatic structures that mirror the English original’s stylistic brevity. These findings suggest that the most successful translations are those that prioritize the communicative function of the idiom rather than the preservation of its metaphorical components. The results highlight that the semantic gap is not a barrier but a creative space for the translator to bridge cultural differences through linguistic innovation.
CONCLUSION
The translation of idiomatic expressions between English and Uzbek is a complex task that demands a high degree of cultural and linguistic synthesis. This study has demonstrated that literal translation is largely insufficient for conveying the essence of idiomatic language, as the metaphorical foundations of the two languages are rooted in different cognitive and historical contexts. Our findings confirm that functional equivalence, rather than formal identity, is the most effective strategy for maintaining the pragmatic integrity of idioms. Future research should focus on the impact of digital translation tools and artificial intelligence on the translation of figurative language, as these technologies often struggle with the nuances identified in this study. Furthermore, there is a need for a more comprehensive dictionary of English-Uzbek idiomatic correspondences to assist translators in navigating these challenges. Ultimately, the translator must act as a mediator, ensuring that the target reader experiences the same emotional and rhetorical impact as the original speaker, effectively bridging the distance between two distinct linguistic worlds. By acknowledging the limitations of direct equivalence, scholars and practitioners can develop more robust methodologies for cross-lingual communication in an increasingly globalized academic environment.
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Maja Milojković was born in Zaječar, Serbia. She is the deputy editor at “Sfairos” publishing house in Belgrade, Serbia. She is the vice-president of the association “Rtanj and Mesečev poetski krug”. She is the author of 2 books: “The Circle of the Moon” and “Trees of Desire” She is the editor of the International Anthology “Rtanjski stihopevi” One of the founders of the poetry club “Area Felix” from Zaječar, Serbia and the editor of an international e-magazine for creative literature and culture “Area Felix”.
