The Flow of I Fino'-ta

One of the earliest Chamoru translations of an American pop song I ever did. 

I came across it recently while I was searching on some old external hard drives. 

It is to the tune of the Coldplay song "Clocks"which came out in 2002. 

I remember I had started translating the song, working to come up with some basic lyrics. 

I was hindered in my translation by the fact that the title frankly, gi minagahet was weird or sucked in Chamoru. 

Clocks, didn't make sense in Chamoru. It may barely make sense in English for the song gi minagahet. 

"Reloh siha" mungga yu' nu enao lol. 

This was very early in my Chamoru learning journey, I was functionally fluent, but still making mistakes all the time and my Chamoru sounded like it was stiff and dry, straight out of a grammar book, because I lacked the basic organic feeling of being part of a language community. 

The ways that emerge sometimes for an individual, a family, a village, a people to build off of the rules. To break them or ignore them. To play around with the language.

Sometimes this can be a structural matter, it becomes about how something is said in a language, which isn't tied directly to the grammar itself, but the established metaphor for the language. 

When you learn from a book or a class, you may not get those right away, they may come later in textbooks, or you may only get them by joining the natural, everyday speakers and users of the language. 

My love for collecting and investigating the Chamoru way of saying things stems from the fact that at the beginning of my language journey, I could speak Chamoru, but that didn't mean I could speak it the way your average speaker could. 

I had learned the rules, but hadn't learned the rhythm, the flow, the feel. 

Even up until now I still struggle with those sorts of things. The textbookish sense of the language that was first instilled in me, versus the the way I hear others commonly use it. 

But finding that flow and feel was mainly fun, sometimes frustrating, usually because it meant I had made mistakes and was being corrected or teased. 

But it was primarily fun, because it was universe building. It was secret discovering. It was lore-laden. It was like the building blocks of the world slowly humming and phasing into view. 

I was invited to dinner one night by one of my professors, Anne Perez Hattori. She was meeting with one of her friends, the Chamoru poet C. T. Perez, who I had read so much from, but had never had the honor of meeting yet. 

At this point in my life, I was trying to use Chamoru everywhere I went, even with people who couldn't really speak it. 

And so at dinner, C.T. Perez was impressed with my Chamoru, even though it was admittedly rough. Like many of her generation, she understood much, but struggled to use the language herself.

She used a phrase that I hadn't heard yet up to that point while we were talking "mattochi-hu."

My brain broke it down, while she explained what it meant, and immediately, I thought about it in terms of the unfinished translation for Clocks that was sitting in one of my notebooks. 

I finished the translation later that night.

The finished product is below. 

***************

Måttochihu 

Umabak yu’ gi i pakyo-mu

Chaochaochao lao suette yu’

Chubasko ya taifitme, pat osino bei tekuni (hao)

Magof mafoyung-hu, mahålla ya sesso naofrågu (nene)

Måtmos yu’ ya mångge hao? Pinacha’ yu’ lao nao’ao hao (nene)

Hågu, I chi-hu

Hågu, I chi-hu

 

Taifinakpo’ I tasi, enkubukao-hu taiguini, (ombre)

Sesso un na’kilili, guaha na biahi nai un goggue (yu’)

Na’dafflok yu’ mangguaiya, na’klåru humitå-ta, (sångan)

Kao guahu I amot-mu? Pat Guahu I chetnot-mu? (Fehman)

Hågu, chi-hu

Hågu, chi-hu