THE DELIGHTS OF INTERNATIONAL BINGE WATCHING
I have returned to Resurrection: Ertugrul. Things are getting interesting in Episode 49 [don't start!] The subtitles continue to delight. The bad guy, who is the blood brother of the Shah, father of the hero, is pushing the hero's brother for the slot of next shah. The subtitles repeatedly have him referring to this sturdy young warrior as "my niece." Apparently, there is something about Turkish that mixes up "niece" and "nephew" in translation. Either that or this is Turkey's #metoo moment.
Playing with google translate for couple of minutes seems to confirm that the Turkish word yeğen (in practice it's usually marked with a suffix or two - Turkic languages are into suffixes in a big way) can mean either "niece" or "nephew". So, yeah, kinship systems make for tricky cross-cultural translation issues.
ReplyDeleteCompare English with Latin, for example, we have the words "uncle" and "aunt" where Latin has four words to indicate whether it's a maternal or paternal sibling you're referring to. Hence the complex cultural nuance behind the original meaning of the word "avuncular" . . .
Nice. Thank you for putting a patina of scholarship on my low amusements. :)
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