Ngaba (4)

This post continues on with the Ngaba translation and covers the text following the red line at the bottom of column one and continues to the end of column two in the scanned page below. You can click on the image to view a larger version. Key vocabulary and a translation are listed below.



Vocabulary:

ကော်ဇော ။ carpet
ကျပ်တင်း ။ tight
လယ် ။ (should be လည် = neck)
အစ် ။ to squeeze or throttle
ညှစ် ။ to squeeze
လည်ပင်း ။ neck
အတင်း ။ forcibly, harshly, violently
လက်ငုတ် ။ the family trade
အတော ။ interlude
လှသိင်္ဂီ ။ a clothing brand name
ဖျင် ။ cotton
လွဲပြီး ။ except for, apart from
ကပ် ။ to come close
ညား ။ to become man and wife, get married
ကောက်စိုက် ။ to transplant paddy
သရက်ထည် ။ printed cotton
ပေးကမ်း ။ to give away in charity
ကရိကထ ။ a bother
ရင်ရှား ။ to wrap a sarong high up the breast
လွယ် ။ to carry, bear, bear a responsibility; easy
ချည်း ။ only, just
ရှင်မီး ။ “chemise” (as in a woman’s smock under shirt)
စက်စက် ။ in drops, very
တုံးလုံး ။ naked
ဗလာ ။ plain, nothing

Translation:

At that time, together with the monk’s mother’s funeral flower train a beautiful tramcar cut in a light run across a great emerald green carpet spread out over the rice field. Because it came in the midst of Ngaba’s fright, while [he] tightly grasped the light post [his] wife Mi Paw [went] “Kwee! Kwee!” with the sound of a throttled neck [as he] squeezed and [she] cried out “Here! Here! Why the hell are you violently grasping my neck?” Upon hearing [the sound of those] words [he] woke up startled. That night, after thinking about Yangon, [he] could not sleep and husband and wife sat and talked and when the rooster crowed [their] talk was still not done.

"Ah... [I] still remember. Was it not in that way, on a subsequent night that Mi Paw said her belly was soar and [we] had to get married?"

After Ngaba’s father passed away, U Tha Gaung came and had him work the family trade, [which has now been] more than ten years, nearly 15 years. During that interlude, aside from a Hla Thaingyi cotton shirt and a See Sein sarong, Ngaba had not even once had any other special clothing. From the start of getting married with Ngaba, Mi Paw had three or four paddy transplanting shirts and three or four bodices of thick material. As for printed cotton sarongs, [her] relatives had given [some to her] as charity and [so she] had about five or six. After [their] daughter was born, as theirs was a farmer’s life, it became [her] habit, after [she] had taken the responsibility of feeding milk to the child, to wrap [the child in] her sarong high up her chest while working in the field, which was not much of a bother. [Their] daughter Mi Nee came to be a flush maiden flower. For her, if [she] had a single sarong for transplanting paddy, that was sufficient. For when [she] went to make a donation, [she] would collect old sarongs that her aunt gave [her] and sew [them] up as a quilted sarong and she would only have that. Because [she was] a blush maiden, she lived with only a single smock shirt, and as that was soon insufficient, Mi Paw had sewn two sweat-absorbing shirts for [their] daughter the previous year. It cost about five baskets of rice. However, [his] beautiful young daughter would wear a smock under shirt and on the outside [she] would often wear [her] sarong wrapped up around [her] chest. Because the small cotton outer shirt that [she] got as a gift from U Tha Gaung’s house was very new, she would not wear it. As for her four younger brothers, usually [they] would just be plain and naked.