Ang Asno at ang Bumili rito

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Today, I translated another work which still features a donkey. This is the third time and I hope that you will like it. According to the source I saw, the moral lesson here is that a man is known by the company he keeps or is it a donkey? In the story, the donkey joined "the one that was most idle and the greatest eater of them all." Below is the translation:

Isang tao ang nagnanais na bumili ng isang asno. Nakipagkasundo ito sa may-ari na susubukin muna ang hayop bago bilhin. Iniuwi niya ang asno at inilagay sa bakurang nilatagan ng dayami kasama ang iba pang asno. Doon, bumukod itong asno sa karamihan at sumama sa isa na pinaka batugan at pinaka matakaw sa lahat. Nakita ito ng amo at nilagya ang asno ng tali. Matapos ay dinala nito pabalik sa may-ari. Sa pagtatanong kung bakit, sa maikling panahon ay nasuri na ito, sinabi ng tao na, "Hindi ko kailangan ng pagsusuri; alam ko ng magiging katulad lang iyan ng sinamahan niyan."

After you read the above, I want to share my experience with this particular work and some of the highlights of the text. First of all, the number of sentences in the original (then again maybe not) and my own words differs. The Filipino translation have seven sentences in all compare to only four on the source. As always, it is a challenge for me and I guess for other translators out there to grasp the essence of the original and transfer it to the translation without compromising the intelligibility of the work. What I did was to divide the thoughts in the source to the nearest possible fragments ready for translation. I did this because the source have either compound sentences or complex sentence or both. Another thing that I want to mention is my lack of Filipino vocabulary related to the farm or countryside. The appearance of the straw-yard in the source gave me at least and hour of headache just to find and appropriate equivalent. After that, I gave up and just wrote a phrase which hopefully best describe a straw-yard. This work gave me an assignment to search for specific words in Tagalog or Filipino (if any). By the way, I live in the Manila so don't blame me for lacking on countryside words. Anyway, I promise to make it up for you.

Now, let us go to the icing. The first word to highlight is nagnanais which means to like or to wish. I prefer this over gusto which is a word borrowed from Spanish. Although gusto is more popular these days, I am promoting our own. I cannot consider myself a purist. It is just that nagnanais sounds nice so why have an alternative. Nakipagkasundo is the past tense of the verb to agree with. It is interesting that this word is derived from sundo. Sundo from the other hand means either the verb to fetch or the one whose duty is to fetch. Thinking of this, maybe an agreement or kasunduan expect an action from either party or something like this. May-ari means owner. It is from the word ari-arian which means property. May, not the English May (either the month or the auxiliary verb) indicates existence or possession. Having this in mind, it is safe to say that may-ari is the one who possess properties. And before I forget, ari is also used in Filipino as a euphemism for the genitals of both sexes.

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