Tomorrow was today, and tomorrow never comes

1

“Mañana fue hoy” was the title of an exhibition I happened to walk past.

I quickly “understood” the title as “Tomorrow was today.” I also quickly realized that I understood it in English, a language that shares much more grammatical similarities to Spanish than my mother tongue, Thai. But how would I translate this sentence into Thai? We do not have tenses in a way that we conjugate a verb according to our place in time. Es and fue and será would be translated to khue (คือ), just the same.

This sentence was witty exactly because of the conjugation of the verb ser (to be), whose past tense is fue. By placing the verb in the past, the sentence rearranges the previously linear and horizontal understanding of time.

Another sentence that I found particularly witty was painted on a sign in a small pulquería. It reads: hoy no fío, mañana sí, which perhaps could be translated to “Today there is no credit, but tomorrow there is.” But it will always be today when we read it. It will always be the present when we read the sign. So, always pay in cash, because tomorrow never comes.

2

From July to August 2021, every Monday and Wednesday, I walked to Aeromoto and stayed there for roughly eight hours. There, I relished searching for books, and reading them. I also worked on my translation work, as part of Namkheun Collective1. Our first project was “Namkheun Manifesto,” where we selected and translated manifestos from English to Thai. In our current project called “A raindrop caged awaits a raging storm,” we are translating letters written by Thai political prisoners accused and incarcerated for the harsh lese majeste law (Article 112)2, during 2020-2021 mass protests in Thailand3. Initiated and will be published by soi4, a platform for writing, editing, and publishing in an expanded field, the project is ongoing in parallel with the intensifying demonstrations.

During those eight hours I wandered in my storage of words, crossing in between English and Thai. Trying to find the “right” words would be a false and flawed statement, because sometimes, and most of the time, it is impossible. For example, there are a variety of pronouns in Thai. A random YouTube video once told me that there are roughly 32 ways of the pronoun “I” alone. One could use the word “we” (เรา-rao) if one wants to refer to oneself politely, or the word “they” (เค้า-kao) if one wants to be more casual and youthful. So, an I could be a we or a they; the third and second pronouns could become the first, depending on how one wants to designate distance and respect. The pronouns could also change depending on the relationship you want to emphasize in the room. If a mother is talking to her child, she could refer to herself as “mother” (แม่-mae) and to her child simply as “child” (ลูก-loog).

What I did in those hours at the library was to think: how do I translate this— a particular sentiment.

Some have accused translation as an uncreative work, a mere mimic of an original thought. Translation, however, is not simply arranging building blocks of words according to syntax and equating meanings according to a neat table. A cliche saying—“read between the lines”—could be my response. Reading between the lines as an act of translation is to read beyond the words apparent to the eyes, to dwell in the empty space between the visible, to be sensitive to what those words evoke, and dance among the sensibilities, both the familiar and unfamiliar.

This Thai pronoun situation is difficult and, certainly, impossible to be completely transplanted into English or Spanish. The translation will sound discordant, strange, peculiar. Ah, so much is lost in translation! Again, they say.

But as I folded my screen, removing myself from the well of work, or even at this very moment when I was typing this sentence in English, my ears heard these cacophonous sounds and messages vibrating, quaking, in the air in Spanish, a language I have recently started learning. “Pasemos tiempo juntos?” my partner asked. I understood it as something like let’s hang out. Immediately, I translated the question into English as: let’s spend time together, and into Thai something along the lines of use-ing the time together. But the verb in Spanish is actually pasar, to pass. Time is passed, not spent, used, wasted or invested. It passes, as it must and simply does.

Ah, so much is lost in (direct) translation! Instead of spending time together, I could translate the sentence as passing time together. Although usually the time in English can only be “passed” when such a period is a time spared, unoccupied by tasks, I would stand by this translation. It’s slightly off and might have lost the “smoothness” and “fluidity” of a sentence more familiar to the native ears, but simultaneously it introduces another way of how one wants to relate to time. We don’t know what we don’t know, and in that peculiarity, we traverse new terrain. In translation, what’s lost is revived, reanimated by rekindled meanings.

3

The activists who wrote the letters I was translating were out on bail, but only for a while. Now they are back in a pandemic-ridden jail, and many have indeed contracted the deadly variant within days of being re-incarcerated. Before an ominous monarchy-military complex in Thailand, the movement is plagued by conflicts. Jokes of literally killing feminists were entertained by self-proclaimed fighters of democracy. The rift between a non-violent group and a more anarchist-leaning one deepened and threatened to destabilize the whole movement. Amidst the social and political whirl, I wonder if my work of translating anything, even matters anymore? Sometimes, I am at a loss for words, in any language.

I kept working, though with questions and doubts hovering over me. Working in two projects (Namkheun Manifesto and A rain caged awaits a raging storm), where one is to translate from English to Thai and another the opposite, I used to think that the work was to “bring in” the insights from the outside and “pass on” the lessons from home. But during the process of that exchange, I realized that what was important was the limbo space in-between. In that space where I strive to translate words, what’s between the lines, behind the movements, I realized that despite language and history foreign to me, I could still be moved by the struggle. And if so, then there must be a glimpse of resonances that seep through the seemingly indestructible wall of differences, and there must be a translucent web that joins and unites us beyond identities and categories.

But to be moved, what is it that is required? Empathy? Shared solidarity? Intersectionality? So many different ways to translate these syntaxes of shared struggle. So many ways one writes about oppression and suffering, but also love and joy. Perhaps by translating, by speaking between languages, reading between the lines, being between meanings, I would be able to feel what cannot be said, expressed, or captured by words and terms. Perhaps it might be necessary for us to be lost in translation, just so we would be revived again with grammars initially strange or even dubious to us, with imagery unimaginable to the world we are accustomed to, just so we could witness varied ways of relating to what’s around us—the worlds within a world.

I don’t have the answer to these questions I posted. I’m asking to ask, but even without answers, it needs to be questioned repeatedly and relentlessly. And that, I will do. The sign in the small pulquería returned to my memory, this time just a bit differently. Today there is no answer, but tomorrow there is (maybe). But tomorrow never comes. And here we are, returning to today, again and again.