Haiku and the Pictograph in EL, "All the rivers" - January  2006 -


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This is an EL (Earth Language) experimental page to enjoy
the image of a haiku/short poem originally in English/Japanese.
When you can't see the Japanese parts, please don't mind and just skip those parts.
地球語の文字や文字絵を用いて詩的表現や翻訳を試みる実験のページです。


A Happy New Year to you!
Here I’d like to share with you an image through this haiku by John Kinory in England,
first published in “Frogpond” and from the bilingual haiku web magazine “ Lishanu #1”.
There also is the Hebrew version of this haiku in the Lishanu site.

Constantly flowing water carries us into endless thoughts.
Through this haiku, I recalled my childhood question seeing a rapid stream:
“Why doesn’t the sea overflow?”
Later I learned about the dynamic circulation of water on this planet:
Seawater evaporates to become rain and again comes back to land.
Water is always connecting with the world.
The water on the biggest roof of the planet, the Himalayas, is the origin of
the main large rivers in Asia; and Himalayan water goes to all of those rivers
such as the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus rivers.
In spite of that fact, now China cuts down a lot of Himalayan forests,
and dumps their nuclear wastes there: the Buddha’s land Tibet that once was called “Shangri-La.”
From there, the pollution with the earth and sand flow down all over Asia,
to deliver disasters to the lower areas of those rivers, changing the climate widely, I heard.
How are you using water and flowing to the sea?
The sea sucks up everything, connecting all places.
The sea looks quite full, gathering all people’s thoughts and actions.

Original haiku by John Kinory

あけましておめでとうございます。
06年は、イギリスのJohn Kinoryさんのこの俳句とともに
あるイメージを皆さんとシェアしたいと思います。
これは、バイリンガル俳句のウェブマガジン、 Lishanu 1号からいただきましたが、
最初の発表は“Frogpond”に掲載されたということです。
Lishanuのページには、ヘブライ語訳もあります。

とめどなく流れつづける川を見ていると、思いもまた果てしなく浮かびます。
この俳句で、こどものころ流れつづける川を見ながら、
海はなぜ溢れないんだろうと、不思議だったことを思い出しました。
海水が蒸発し、雨となって帰ってくる循環について、やがて知りました。
水は常に世界中をつないでいます。
世界の大屋根ヒマラヤの水は、黄河、揚子江、メコン、ガンジス、インダスなど、
アジアの主要大河の源です。
にもかかわらず、中国によってヒマラヤの森はどんどん切り崩され、
核廃棄物が捨てられ、かつてのシャングリア、仏の地チベットから
アジア中に汚染と土砂が流れ下り、
下界に災いを、遠くにも気象変化をもたらしているといいます。
あなたは、どのように使った水を海に流していますか?
海はすべてを吸い取って世界をつなぎます。
みんなの心と行為をためて、海ははちきれそうです。


Original haiku by John Kinory:
All the rivers
go to the sea.
It looks quite full to me.


The Japanese translation:
川みんな海に行く。海あふれそう

The EL translation:



The symbols in the pictograph:

: nature, : river, : water, : the sea, : full

The ideograms in the translation:
{ abstract concept such as rate in this case, existent}:
all, whole (as the fundamental ideogram) (全)
{ flowing, water, place}: river (河川)
Instead of compounding the symbol for "plural" with "river", I used the plural ideograms for more visual power.
: the grammatical symbol to form a d-verb: meaning that the subject becomes in the condition shown by the following character/phrase (D動詞符)
{ heading, wave/water flow}: flowing (流れ), : flow (vi.) (流れる)
The original word is {, move} (go), but I took plural here for the visual expression of the continuous flowing.
{ heading direction, preposition} : to, for (~へ/に向かって、後続語が前の語を修飾)
{ place,wave)} (the place that always has waves): the sea/ocean (海)
: period (in a sentence) (終止符)
{ ,received/container; change a d-verb (eg: see, read, kick..) into a passive form}:
       the passive d-verb mark (受身のD動詞記号)
{ back,pronoun maker} (This hand sign is the back pointing thumb at the center of the chest) :
I, my, me (in this case, "my", modifying ) (私の)
{ for the shape,sense)} (eye-shape): eye, see (v. with ), look (with that passive ), show (vt. with )
(目、D動詞:見る、その受け身で「見える」、E動詞:「見せる」
: look to me ( the subject looks ... by my eyes-work) (私の目に(主語が~と)見える)
{ preposition, {equally, recognized}: similar, about}: like (preposition), similarly as (~と同様に/の)
{ ,container/received)}: full, filled (満)

Translations by Yoshiko
* Thanks the author, John, for your kindness to help my English here.

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