Urdu Study Group

[vijayjohn]

Vijay, feel free to work on this text with eskandar if you have the time!

Okay, thanks!

عمران خان نے اپنے اس سفر میں وہ سب کچھ کیا جو ان کو کرنا پڑا۔ اور وہ سب کچھ کہنا پڑا۔
On his journey, Imran Khan did everything he needed to. And he needed to tell everything.

ملک کا سب سے بڑا مسئلہ کیا ہے؟ ختم نبوت۔
What is the country's biggest problem? The end of the prophecy.

آپ کا سیاسی مخالف کون ہے؟ غدار اور مودی کا یار۔
Who is your political opponent? Ghadar and Modi's friend.

Of course, there was waaaaay more new vocab in this for me than for you, eskandar bhai!
نیا نیا - recently(?)
جيتنا - to win (I know, I know, I should know this verb because it's related to my own name, but I didn't really! I mean, I took one look at the word جيتا and thought 'living' because I didn't know the infinitive form of 'to win').
مُصر - insistent(?)
امراض - illnesses
ماہر - expert
منشی (pl. منشیات) - drug(?)
منصوبه - plan
اشتہار - advertisement
مرد نامرد ہو جاتا ہے - man becomes unmanly (okay, I guess this one was a little self-explanatory, but I didn't parse it correctly at first, I don't think)
عرصه - time period
خود کو بدلا - changed himself (why not ?خود کو بدلایا?)
بیچ (کرئیر) - mid-(career)
قاري - reader
قارئین - readers
نظریاتی - ideological, theoretical
حکمران - ruler
خیالات - plural of خیال
معصوم - guileless, innocent (naive?)
آدھ معصوم انقلابی - half-naive revolutionary
محله - district, neighborhood, etc.
بٹوارہ - apportion(ing?)
قرونِ اولیٰ - The Initial Centuries (of Islam)
فتوح - victory
فتوحات - victories
نبوت - prophecy
مخالف - adversary

-اچھی اور سستی was also confusing the hell out of me. I kept reading it as "good and laziness" which didn't make any sense, until I remembered the word سستا I wonder if the meaning is that drugs became [good] and [cheap] (two separate qualities) or [good and cheap], as in "good and ready" -- just meaning "very cheap". The latter would, of course, be an anglicism, but those are a dime a dozen in Urdu, especially Urdu journalism.

I interpreted it as saying that drugs became better, i.e. more appealing (in this case, to younger people), and cheaper.

The next sentences were much more difficult:

جنگ اخبار کے پرانے قارئین کو یاد ہو گا کہ عمران خان نے اپنی نظریاتی جنگ کا آغاز کالم لکھ کر شروع کیا تھا جس میں انھوں نے اپنی براؤن صاحب والی تھیوری پیش کی تھی جس میں ہمیں یہ بتایا گیا تھا کہ انگریز تو چلا گیا لیکن اس کے لے پالک دیسی انگریز ابھی تک ہمارے حکمران ہیں۔

Old readers of Jang News will remember that Imran Khan had started writing his own critical frontpage(?) column in Jang where he presented his own Mr. Browne theory, in which he told us that the English had left but their adopted Desi Englishmen are still our rulers.

That's way better than what I would've come up with (I would never have guessed "Mr. Browne theory"! What does that even mean in English? I thought they were saying he met up with some actual British dude named Mr. Brown or something ). Maybe something like: "...writing his own front-page editorial column in Jang..."?

When one [issue] becomes two issues (?), the revolutionary party becomes split into as many factions [as there are issues].

Maybe they meant something like 'if two things come out of one, [it's no wonder that] the revolutionary party gets twisted/split into so many factions'? If that makes any sense

he warmed our hearts

Are you sure this part is right? I read this as something more like 'he made our blood boil'.

he studied tuition from Pakistan's old vagabonds (???)

I'm more inclined to think they mean from the Gargas of Pakistan (Platts lists this meaning for گرگ, too).

and passed with such good grades (?) that man, people are still stuck counting [them].

I think maybe something like 'and passed with such good grades that (his) friends to this day praise him as having fallen into difficult straits'?

I wonder if پاس here is the English "pass" or if it means that "he returned with such good numbers"?

Oh, maybe.

[eskandar]

The end of the prophecy.

Pretty much. It's a major issue in Pakistan, used to declare takfir on Ahmadi Muslims. See here.

آپ کا سیاسی مخالف کون ہے؟ غدار اور مودی کا یار۔
Who is your political opponent? Ghadar and Modi's friend.

Basically that Imran Khan's opponents are traitors (غدار) and friends of Modi (ie. enemies of Pakistan).

مُصر - insistent(?)

Dunno why this word doesn't seem to be in Platts but it's the active form (مفعل) of اصرار (insisting, obstinacy).

منشی (pl. منشیات) - drug(?)

I think it always appears in the plural as منشیات drugs.

معصوم - guileless, innocent (naive?)

At least in India, I think it's also slang for a gay man (meaning, in that context, "harmless" - not a threat to women ) - just thought I'd add this as a bit of trivia.

بٹوارہ - apportion(ing?)

This is one of the common words used to refer to Partition, the other being تقسیم .

I interpreted it as saying that drugs became better, i.e. more appealing (in this case, to younger people), and cheaper.

Yes, I think you're right.

That's way better than what I would've come up with (I would never have guessed "Mr. Browne theory"! What does that even mean in English? I thought they were saying he met up with some actual British dude named Mr. Brown or something ). Maybe something like: "...writing his own front-page editorial column in Jang..."?

Nevermind, I just figured it out. It, like everything else in the accursed BBC, is a literal translation from English: "brown sahib theory." I need to stop reading BBC for language practice, their quality of writing in Persian and Urdu is just terrible. And yes, I think "editorial" is correct and makes more sense here.

he warmed our hearts

Are you sure this part is right? I read this as something more like 'he made our blood boil'.

Why? دل means heart, not blood. And, without more context, there's no reason why telling stories of the early centuries of Islam would be enraging rather than heartwarming.

he studied tuition from Pakistan's old vagabonds (???)

I'm more inclined to think they mean from the Gargas of Pakistan (Platts lists this meaning for گرگ, too).

Ah, that makes much more sense!

and passed with such good grades (?) that man, people are still stuck counting [them].

I think maybe something like 'and passed with such good grades that (his) friends to this day praise him as having fallen into difficult straits'?

I don't understand where you got "praise" from here, or why friends would praise someone for having fallen into difficult straits. Nevertheless your reading of یار لوگ as "friends" makes much more sense than my reading which parsed it as یار، لوگ which is way too colloquial for a news piece.

[vijayjohn]

Thanks so much, eskandar bhai!

یہ صحافی کچھ مشکل سوال پوچھ رہا ہے، یہ کیا چاہتا ہے؟ لفافہ۔
This journalist is asking some difficult questions; what does he want? To show off.

یہ لوگ جو آپ کو ووٹ نہیں دے رہے، یہ کون ہیں؟ گدھے کے بچے۔
Who are the people who aren't voting for you? Children of donkeys.

New vocab for me:

صحاف - journalist
لفافہ - ostentation

The end of the prophecy.

Pretty much. It's a major issue in Pakistan, used to declare takfir on Ahmadi Muslims. See here.

Good grief, I had no idea Ahmadiyya was such a major issue in Pakistan until I read about it just now. I'm still trying to wrap my head around what Ahmadiyya is in the first place.

معصوم - guileless, innocent (naive?)

At least in India, I think it's also slang for a gay man (meaning, in that context, "harmless" - not a threat to women ) - just thought I'd add this as a bit of trivia.

Wow, how interesting!

بٹوارہ - apportion(ing?)

This is one of the common words used to refer to Partition, the other being تقسیم .

Oh, OK. I only knew تقسیم before now.

I need to stop reading BBC for language practice, their quality of writing in Persian and Urdu is just terrible.

Then maybe I can try copying something out from my issue of Jasoosi Digest so we can work through that instead (or in addition, depending on how you'd like to go about it )?

Why? دل means heart, not blood.

I realize that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this may be an expression that doesn't really translate literally into English. While گرمانا can mean both 'to become warm' and 'to become hot/heated', the other meanings Platts lists for it at least are 'to be or become angry; to become enlivened'. To me, that suggests that it has a connotation of being angry rather than pleased. (But to be fair, if I'm wrong about misreading 'warm/comfy' as 'hot/angry', this wouldn't be the first language where I've made that mistake!).

And, without more context, there's no reason why telling stories of the early centuries of Islam would be enraging rather than heartwarming.

Well, this is the sentence right after they said Imran Khan quickly became a Wahhabi Muslim, so I thought maybe they were saying this was part of his Wahhabi propaganda. It definitely is possible, though, that I have a terribly poor understanding both of the nature of Wahhabi propaganda and of what they're actually saying.

I don't understand where you got "praise" from here

گنتی. Platts lists گننا (second result here) as meaning 'to praise, laud' (but also 'to think upon, consider, judge of; to put in practice, to practice; to multiply').

or why friends would praise someone for having fallen into difficult straits.

I thought maybe they were trying to say his friends praised him and excused his shortcomings as having been the result of falling into difficult straits. But I dunno.

[eskandar]

یہ صحافی کچھ مشکل سوال پوچھ رہا ہے، یہ کیا چاہتا ہے؟ لفافہ۔
This journalist is asking some difficult questions; what does he want? To show off.

That's one meaning, but in this context لفافہ has a particular meaning. It means "envelope," and (at least in Pakistan) has come to euphemistically mean "bribe" (as you put the bribe money inside an envelope), and "lifafa sahafat" has emerged as a term implying that journalists are bribed by various parties to write what they write. It's the equivalent of the expression "fake news" in PK discourse. (I didn't know about this either - just learned it through Googling).

Good grief, I had no idea Ahmadiyya was such a major issue in Pakistan until I read about it just now.

The anti-Ahmadiyya laws in Pakistan are absolutely draconian. It's terrible.

Then maybe I can try copying something out from my issue of Jasoosi Digest so we can work through that instead (or in addition, depending on how you'd like to go about it )?

Sounds great! I'd like to finish this article just because I prefer to finish what I start, but let's definitely do Jasoosi Digest as well. Don't waste your time transcribing, just post pictures if you can. Or we can do the Jasoosi Dunya series, which I've always wanted to read (classic Urdu detective fiction). Here's a PDF of volume 1.

I realize that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this may be an expression that doesn't really translate literally into English.

On the contrary, my suspicion is that this is another expression translated a bit literally from English - which would explain why it doesn't quite match the semantic range of گرمانا .

Well, this is the sentence right after they said Imran Khan quickly became a Wahhabi Muslim, so I thought maybe they were saying this was part of his Wahhabi propaganda. It definitely is possible, though, that I have a terribly poor understanding both of the nature of Wahhabi propaganda and of what they're actually saying.

Yeah, the Wahhabis love the early centuries of Islam because they view that as the time when Muslim society was at its best, so they want to return to the norms, practices, etc. of that era. That's why it makes no sense to say "he made our blood boil" in this context.

گنتی. Platts lists گننا as meaning 'to praise, laud' (but also 'to think upon, consider, judge of; to put in practice, to practice; to multiply').

Ah I didn't think to look it up for some reason. I'm still not very convinced by my own reading or by yours, I think we need a native speaker to explain this one! As Khayyam says,

اسرار ازل را نه تو دانی و نه من
واین حل معما نه تو خوانی و نه من!

[eskandar]

عمران خان نے ایسا کچھ نہیں کیا جو سیاست دان طاقت میں آنے کے لیے نہیں کرتے۔

Imran Khan didn't do anything that politicians don't do in order to come into power.

طاقت حاصل کرنے اور اسے اپنے پاس رکھنے کی کچھ مقبول تھیوریاں ہیں۔ بعض دفعہ گاؤں کو بچانے کے لیے گاؤں پر بم گرانے پڑتے ہیں۔ بعض دفعہ ایک سسٹم کو تباہ کرنے کے لیے سسٹم کا حصہ بننا پڑتا ہے۔ ٹھگوں کو ختم کرنے کے لیے ٹھگ کا بھیس بدلنا پڑتا ہے۔ کرپشن اور چوری ختم کرنے کے لیے چوروں سے یاری کرنی پڑتی ہے۔

There are a few popular theories about achieving and maintaining power. Sometimes in order to save a village, you have to bomb the village. Sometimes in order to destroy a system you have to become part of the system. To do away with thugs you have to disguise yourself as a thug. To end corruption and theft you have to become friends with thieves.

New vocab
ٹھگ thug (I knew that the English word comes from Hindi and yet I still couldn't guess this one )
بھیس بدلنا to disguise oneself, to feign

[eskandar]

عمران خان نے اپنے سیاسی سفر میں ایسا کچھ نہیں کیا جو سیاست دان طاقت حاصل کرنے کے لیے نہیں کرتے۔ ہمسایہ ملک میں ایک شخص نے وزارت عظمیٰ حاصل کرنے کے لیے قتل عام کروایا تھا۔

In his political journey, Imran Khan didn't do anything that politicians don't do in order to achieve power. In the neighboring country in order to achieve [the post of] Prime Minister one person had organized a genocide.

اس عظیم سفر کے اختتام پر عمران خان کی نپی تلی اور دردمندانہ تقریر سن کر باقی قوم کی طرح میری آنکھیں بھی نمناک ہوئیں اور یہ پچھتاوا بھی کہ ہم نے اپنے مسیحا کو 22 سال تک سیاست کی تاریک اور بدبودار گلیوں میں کیوں بھٹکنے دیا۔

At the end of this great journey, hearing Imran Khan's measured and sympathetic speech my eyes watered like everyone else and this regret, too, that why had we let our messiah wander for 22 years in the dark and fetid streets of politics?

New vocab
نپی تلی measured, balanced
پچھتاوا regret, remorse
بھٹکنا to go astray, to wander

[vijayjohn]

Okay, clearly this text is way out of my league because I have no idea about Pakistani politics or the finer points of Islam or anything like that, and it relies heavily on references to all of these things. But I'll keep trudging on anyway, just as long as you don't mind how awfully wrong my translations are.

پھر انھوں نے حضرت عمر فاروق کا فرات کے کنارے بھوکے کتے اور بادشاہ کی ذمہ داری والا قول سنایا تو میرے آنسو تھم گئے۔ میں یہ قول جنرل ضیا الحق سے لے کر مصطفیٰ کمال تک سب سے سن چکا ہوں۔
Then when he declared the hungry dogs on the banks of the Euphrates of the great age of Al-Farooq and that emperors were responsible, my tears stopped. I had heard this declaration from everyone starting from General Zia ul-Haq to Mustafa Kamal.

I'm not even going to bother writing out the new vocabulary this time since I have no idea what the part at the beginning means, at least. Still, here's some more new vocabulary for me from before I came across the above text (it includes words/phrases I just didn't point out before!):

ولایت - country
غدار - traitor
سیاست دان - politician
طاقت - power
مقبول - accepted, popular
دفعه - moment
بعض دفعه - sometimes
پر بم گرانا - to bomb
تباہ کرنا - to destroy
حصه - part
ہمسایہ - neighboring
وزارت عظمیٰ - prime minister
قتل عام - genocide
عظیم - great
اختتام - end
دردمندانہ - sympathetic
نمناک - moist, dank, damp
تاریک - dark
بدبودار - fetid
بھٹکنا - to wander

I think I actually sort of knew بٹنا before, and I definitely learned ٹھگ before. I didn't know بھیس (or any of the other new words you've ever mentioned) but then realized it's from the Sanskrit word वेष! We have [ˈʋeːʃəm] as a loanword from Sanskrit in Malayalam, too.

Then maybe I can try copying something out from my issue of Jasoosi Digest so we can work through that instead (or in addition, depending on how you'd like to go about it )?

Sounds great! I'd like to finish this article just because I prefer to finish what I start, but let's definitely do Jasoosi Digest as well. Don't waste your time transcribing, just post pictures if you can. Or we can do the Jasoosi Dunya series, which I've always wanted to read (classic Urdu detective fiction). Here's a PDF of volume 1.

Thanks for this and everything else, but are you sure pictures are enough? The print in Jasoosi Digest is pretty small, if you didn't already know. I tried to take a picture of the first page, and it looks like this:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mnqaI ... JIf_Bq8VPt

This is a close-up of the top right-hand part of that page:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=17SnwC ... Yq9huOH7WW

and this is another of the left-hand side of that:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SAYO7 ... _wMGnL2dtL

This is the November 1994 issue btw.

[eskandar]

Okay, clearly this text is way out of my league because I have no idea about Pakistani politics or the finer points of Islam or anything like that, and it relies heavily on references to all of these things. But I'll keep trudging on anyway, just as long as you don't mind how awfully wrong my translations are.

No problem at all. We're all at different levels, that's how you learn! And I don't always catch the references to Pakistani politics myself (like the bribe thing a few posts back - had to Google that).

پھر انھوں نے حضرت عمر فاروق کا فرات کے کنارے بھوکے کتے اور بادشاہ کی ذمہ داری والا قول سنایا تو میرے آنسو تھم گئے۔ میں یہ قول جنرل ضیا الحق سے لے کر مصطفیٰ کمال تک سب سے سن چکا ہوں۔
Then when he declared the hungry dogs on the banks of the Euphrates of the great age of Al-Farooq and that emperors were responsible, my tears stopped. I had heard this declaration from everyone starting from General Zia ul-Haq to Mustafa Kamal.

You translated this well, you just didn't get the reference! "Then [when] he made the declaration about the responsibility of emperors and of Umar al-Farooq for hungry dogs on the banks of the Euphrates, my tears stopped. I had heard this declaration from everyone from General Zia ul-Haq to Mustafa Kemal.

Thanks for this and everything else, but are you sure pictures are enough? The print in Jasoosi Digest is pretty small, if you didn't already know. I tried to take a picture of the first page, and it looks like this:

The pictures are big enough to read in the close-ups, though they seem a little cut off at the edges. I prefer reading the original nasta'liq print, and this way there's no chance of accidental typos that lead to head-scratching parsing errors. (This happens often, sometimes even with native Urdu speakers, over on Wordreference).

[eskandar]

ہم پر خدا کی رحمت ہے یا ہماری گندی عادتوں کا ثمر ہے کہ بچا ہوا کھانا ہر جگہ پھینک دیتے ہیں کہ ہمارے فرات کے کنارے کوئی کتا بھوکا نہیں سوتا۔

God's mercy is upon us, or it's the result of our dirty habit of throwing leftover food everywhere, that no hungry dog sleeps on the banks of our Euphrates.

عمران خان نے اپنی تقریر میں پینے کے آلودہ پانی کا ذکر کیا تو یاد آیا کہ جب وہ ورلڈ کپ جیت کر آئے تھے تو اوکاڑہ کے 36 چک سے لے کر کراچی کے ناتھا خان گوٹھ تک ہر کوئی نلکا چلا کر یا ٹوٹی کھول کر بےفکر ہو کر پانی پیتا تھا۔ بوتل میں بند پانی صرف پرانے سیٹھوں، نو دولتیوں یا براؤن صاحبوں کا شوق تھا۔

In his speech, Imran Khan mentioned polluted drinking water, and I remembered that when he had returned from winning the World Cup, from the 36 estates of Okara to Karachi's Natha Khan Goth, every tap (running, or carelessly opening broken), water was drunk Bottled water was only the predilection of old Sethis, nouveau riche, or brown sahibs.

[The underlined part was super confusing for me! I think it means you could drink from every tap, whether the tap was running, or it was broken and you'd just turn it on without thinking about the problem]

New vocab
چک - landed property, estate
نلکا - tap

[eskandar]

آج یہ حالت ہے کہ کراچی کی غریب سے غریب تر کچی آبادی میں بھی ہر کوئی اپنے بچوں کو نلکے کا پانی پلانے سے ڈرتا ہے۔ کھوتی ریڑھی پر چھوٹی ٹینکی رکھ کر لوگ پانی بیچتے ہیں اور لوگ اپنا پیٹ کاٹ کر خریدتے ہیں۔ ناظم آباد، گلشن اور کورنگی کے بازاروں میں دکانیں کھلی ہیں جہاں پر چھوٹے چھوٹے فلٹر پلانٹ لگے ہیں۔ جو لوگ منرل واٹر کی بوتلیں خریدنے کی استطاعت نہیں رکھتے، وہ یہاں سے خریدتے ہیں۔

Today it's such that even in Karachi's poorer-than-poor shanty towns, everyone is afraid of giving their children water to drink from the tap. People sell water out of little tanks on open handcarts, and people deprive themselves/go hungry in order to buy [it]. In the bazaars of Nizamabad, Gulshan and Korangi stores have opened where they've installed little tiny filter plants. Those people who cannot buy bottles of mineral water, buy from there.

New vocab
کچی آبادی shanty town
کھوتی ریڑھی open handcart

[eskandar]

آپ نے دیکھا ہو گا کہ کابینہ سے لے کر کور کمانڈروں کے اجلاس تک ہر افسر ہر وزیر کے آگے ایک منرل واٹر کی بوتل پڑی ہوتی ہے۔ ہم جیسے کم ذات صحافی بھی کہیں جاتے ہیں تو میزبان سلام بعد میں کرتے ہیں پہلے ایک منرل واٹر کی بوتل پکڑا دیتے ہیں۔

You will have seen that from the Cabinet to the court of the Core Commanders, before every officer, every minister, sits a bottle of mineral water. Wherever we lowly journalists go, hosts first offer us a bottle of mineral water and then greet us. [Kind of confused about the role of پکڑا here ]

عمران خان کروڑ نوکریاں دے سکیں نہ دے سکیں، ٹیکس کے پیسوں کی چوکیداری کریں نہ کریں، کشمیر آزاد ہو نہ ہو، ان کی کی بات سن کر ان کے نوجوان پرستار سگریٹ نوشی اور ماں بہن کی گالیاں دینا بند کریں نہ کریں، اگر وہ ہماری جان اس منرل واٹر کی بوتل سے چھڑوا دیں تو مان لیں گے کہ ان کا 22 سالہ سفر رائیگاں نہیں تھا۔

Imran Khan can give or not give crores of servants , guard tax money or not , free Kashmir or not, listening to his speech his young fans can give up smoking and insulting mothers and sisters or not - if he frees our souls from these mineral water bottles then we will believe that his 22 year long journey was not a waste.

New vocab
اجلاس court, sessions
کم ذات lowly
چوکیدار security guard
پرستار fan, worshipper
چھڑوا دینا to cause to be released, let go, freed
رائیگاں waste

[vijayjohn]

All right, I'm gonna try to put an end to this article's misery once and for all!

اس کام کے لیے انھیں ورلڈ بینک یا چین سے بھیک مانگنے کی بھی ضرورت نہیں۔ کراچی سے دیسی ساخت کے دو چھوٹے فلٹر پلانٹ منگوائیں، ایک اپنے گھر میں لگوائیں، ایک جی ایچ کیو کو تحفے میں پیش کریں۔ اور منرل واٹر کی اس وبا سے ہماری جان چھڑوائیں۔
For this task, he doesn't even need to beg the World Bank or China. Let's get two small, nationally made filter plants ordered from Karachi, get one installed in our own houses, present one amazing GHQ , and free our souls from this plague of mineral water! [I'm struggling to figure out what the part about the GHQ means. I assume they mean this GHQ, right?].

اور آوارہ کتوں کی زیادہ فکر نہ کریں، آرام سے سوئیں کیوں کہ دریا کے کنارے آزاد گھومتا کتا اپنے رزق کے لیے بادشاہ کا انتظار نہیں کرتا۔
And let's not worry too much about homeless dogs; let's sleep tight because the dog roaming free on the riverbank isn't waiting for an emperor to feed it!



New vocabulary for me, not including what you (eskandar bhai ) already listed but including a few words/phrases I can understand but definitely not produce:

فرات - Euphrates
ذمہ - obligation, responsibility
قول - declaration
حضرت عمر فاروق - Umar al-Farooq
ثمر - fruit, result (I confused this withتمر. Aren't they etymologically related? Please say yes!)
پھینک دینا - to throw away(?)
تقریر - speech
آلودہ - polluted
اوکاڑا‬‎ - Okara (I'd just never heard of this place before)
بےفکر - careless?
نو دولتی - nouveau riche
یہ حالت ہے کہ - it's such that
ٹینکی - tank
بيچنا - to sell
اپنا پیٹ کاٹ کر - to deprive oneself or go hungry in order to (...)
بوتل - bottle
استطاعت - power, ability, possibility
کابینہ - Cabinet
پڑی ہوتی ہے - there sits
میزبان - host(s)
مان لینا - to believe
سالہ ___ - ___-year(-long)
ساخت - making, make, construction, manufacture, fabrication
وبا - plague, pestilence
رزق - means of subsistence

The pictures are big enough to read in the close-ups, though they seem a little cut off at the edges. I prefer reading the original nasta'liq print, and this way there's no chance of accidental typos that lead to head-scratching parsing errors. (This happens often, sometimes even with native Urdu speakers, over on Wordreference).

Of course! The fact that they're cut off at the edges probably has something to do not only with the small print size but also with the fact that I took these pictures with my phone, it's a magazine so I had to hold the right-hand page down so it would stay open, and I suck at taking pictures.

عمران خان نے اپنی تقریر میں پینے کے آلودہ پانی کا ذکر کیا تو یاد آیا [...]

In his speech, Imran Khan mentioned polluted drinking water, and I remembered that when he had returned from winning the World Cup[...]

Would "he remembered" be impossible in this context?

Wherever we lowly journalists go, hosts first offer us a bottle of mineral water and then greet us. [Kind of confused about the role of پکڑا here ]

Maybe what the author means by پکڑا دیتے is closer to 'fetch/get us' than to 'offer us'? I.e. they don't go "would you like something to drink? Oh, btw salaam!" but rather they go (inside, I guess?) to get mineral water and then come out like "oh hi!".

عمران خان کروڑ نوکریاں دے سکیں نہ دے سکیں، ٹیکس کے پیسوں کی چوکیداری کریں نہ کریں، کشمیر آزاد ہو نہ ہو، ان کی کی بات سن کر ان کے نوجوان پرستار سگریٹ نوشی اور ماں بہن کی گالیاں دینا بند کریں نہ کریں، اگر وہ ہماری جان اس منرل واٹر کی بوتل سے چھڑوا دیں تو مان لیں گے کہ ان کا 22 سالہ سفر رائیگاں نہیں تھا۔

Imran Khan can give or not give crores of servants , guard tax money or not , free Kashmir or not, listening to his speech his young fans can give up smoking and insulting mothers and sisters or not - if he frees our souls from these mineral water bottles then we will believe that his 22 year long journey was not a waste.

I think maybe this means:

Whether Imran Khan can provide crores/millions of jobs or not, whether he can protect/guard tax money or not, whether Kashmir becomes free or not, whether his young fans can give up smoking and insulting mothers and sisters upon listening to his speech or not, if he frees our souls from this mineral water bottle, then...

چوکیدار security guard

My understanding of this word is much worse than it should be because I've seen the word chowkidar plenty of times in Indian English, just not in a South Indian context from what I remember! I used to read a lot of Indian English comics when I was growing up (because I didn't know much Malayalam or whatever yet), and there's one joke in Tinkle Digest (that magazine name sounds so wrong in American English ) where a classical singer is so unpopular that everyone in the audience leaves except the chowkidar who's just waiting for him to also leave so he can finally lock up. This has led to the strange consequence that I now think of a chowkidar as being the guy who locks public places up.

[eskandar]

present one amazing GHQ , and free our souls from this plague of mineral water! [I'm struggling to figure out what the part about the GHQ means. I assume they mean this GHQ, right?].

You're right about GHQ. تحفہ means 'gift' so تحفے میں پیش کریں means 'present as a gift' here.

Here are a couple points on the vocab you mentioned, I'm too lazy to put them all in quotes.

قول - declaration - also literally a "saying". It's the Arabic verbal noun of قال يقول 'to say'

ثمر - fruit, result (I confused this withتمر. Aren't they etymologically related? Please say yes!) - sorry, both are indeed from Arabic, but they're two different roots! thamara 'to bear fruit' vs. tamr 'date'

پھینک دینا - to throw away(?) - also 'to throw, toss' - I think you can say, for example, mujhe pheNk do! 'toss it to me!' so it's not only used for throwing something away per se

Of course! The fact that they're cut off at the edges probably has something to do not only with the small print size but also with the fact that I took these pictures with my phone, it's a magazine so I had to hold the right-hand page down so it would stay open, and I suck at taking pictures.

If it would be easy for you to scan them with a flatbed scanner, that would probably resolve the issue, but don't go through any trouble. We can make do in any case.

عمران خان نے اپنی تقریر میں پینے کے آلودہ پانی کا ذکر کیا تو یاد آیا [...]
In his speech, Imran Khan mentioned polluted drinking water, and I remembered that when he had returned from winning the World Cup[...]

Would "he remembered" be impossible in this context?

Remembering, memory, etc. are indeed associated with ذکر, but the verb ذکر کرنا has a narrower range and is pretty exclusively 'to mention' if I'm not mistaken.

Maybe what the author means by پکڑا دیتے is closer to 'fetch/get us' than to 'offer us'? I.e. they don't go "would you like something to drink? Oh, btw salaam!" but rather they go (inside, I guess?) to get mineral water and then come out like "oh hi!".

Could be!

... This has led to the strange consequence that I now think of a chowkidar as being the guy who locks public places up.

I mean, that's correct in that the guy who locks public places up is indeed the chowkidar...he just has more tasks in addition to that!

[vijayjohn]

Here are a couple points on the vocab you mentioned, I'm too lazy to put them all in quotes.

I realize these things, but I was hoping maybe the roots forثمر and تمر were ultimately related.

If it would be easy for you to scan them with a flatbed scanner, that would probably resolve the issue, but don't go through any trouble. We can make do in any case.

Okay, I can try doing that! I have a scanner. I may have to wait until Saturday or something, though, since then I'll have more time to do it.

عمران خان نے اپنی تقریر میں پینے کے آلودہ پانی کا ذکر کیا تو یاد آیا [...]
In his speech, Imran Khan mentioned polluted drinking water, and I remembered that when he had returned from winning the World Cup[...]

Would "he remembered" be impossible in this context?

Remembering, memory, etc. are indeed associated with ذکر, but the verb ذکر کرنا has a narrower range and is pretty exclusively 'to mention' if I'm not mistaken.

Sorry, I meant the یاد آیا part. Since the dative subject isn't specified in that sentence, and the rest of the sentence is about Imran Khan (Imran Khan's speech, Imran Khan mentioned water, Imran Khan returned...), I was wondering why the subject in this case would be 'I' rather than 'he'.

[eskandar]

I realize these things, but I was hoping maybe the roots forثمر and تمر were ultimately related.

Could be. I'm no Semiticist. One source seems to imply so.

Okay, I can try doing that! I have a scanner. I may have to wait until Saturday or something, though, since then I'll have more time to do it.

Cool!

عمران خان نے اپنی تقریر میں پینے کے آلودہ پانی کا ذکر کیا تو یاد آیا [...]
In his speech, Imran Khan mentioned polluted drinking water, and I remembered that when he had returned from winning the World Cup[...]

Would "he remembered" be impossible in this context?

Remembering, memory, etc. are indeed associated with ذکر, but the verb ذکر کرنا has a narrower range and is pretty exclusively 'to mention' if I'm not mistaken.

Sorry, I meant the یاد آیا part. Since the dative subject isn't specified in that sentence, and the rest of the sentence is about Imran Khan (Imran Khan's speech, Imran Khan mentioned water, Imran Khan returned...), I was wondering why the subject in this case would be 'I' rather than 'he'.

Oh, I see! Yes, I think that would be possible. I just translated the way that seemed to make the most sense to me. For some reason if it was Imran Khan who remembered, I would want to say عمران خان نے اپنی تقریر میں پینے کے آلودہ پانی کا ذکر کیا تو ان کو یاد آیا to make it clear that it was he who remembered, not I.

[Saim]

You guys sure have given me a lot of work to do! I did really like this text though; I've always wanted to read opinion pieces in Urdu but it's still too difficult for me to do on my own. Thanks!

Here are words that are new to me.

post 1:
نیا نیا - just?
مُصِر - insistent, adamant
منشیات - drugs
نامرد - impotent, unmanly

post 2:
قارئین - readers (قاری - reader)
لے پالک - adopted child
پالک - adopted
دھڑا - faction, party
بٹنا - to be divided
فتوحات - plural of فتح
جھلکیاں - highlights (what is the singular form?)
چکّر - wheel, orbit, rotation

post 4:
لفافہ - envelope, bribe

post 6:
ہمسایہ - neighbour
قتلِ عام - genocide
اِختتام - end
نپی تلی - measured, balanced
نمناک - moist, wet with tears
پچھتاوا - regret, remorse
تاریک - dark
بدبودار - fetid
بھٹکنا - to wander, lose one's way

post 7:
فُرات - the Euphrates
کِنارہ - bank
تھمنا - to stop, cease

You guys seem to have skipped this paragraph:

یہ حکمران اور عوام کے رشتے کے لیے ایک خوبصورت اور شاعرانہ استعارہ ہے، لیکن حقیقت یہ ہے کہ میں نے کراچی کے سمندر کے کنارے کبھی کوئی بھوکا کتا نہیں دیکھا، میرا بہت سا وقت اسی شہر کے آزاد اور آوارہ کتوں کو دیکھتے ہوئے گزرتا ہے۔ ہاں کبھی چھاؤں نہیں ملتی، گرمی میں پانی کی تلاش میں دور تک چلنا پڑتا ہے لیکن خوراک کی کوئی فکر نہیں۔

شاعرانہ - poetic
استعارہ - metaphor
چھاؤں - shade

This is a poetic and beautiful metaphor for the relationship between a ruler and the people but the truth is that I have never seen a hungry dog on Karachi's coast, my [lots of] time seeing free and stray dogs in Karachi has passed. Yes sometimes there is no shade[?], in summer it keeps walking far looking for water but there is no idea of a diet[?].

post 8:
ثمر - fruit, result, outcome
بچا - remaining, leftover
آلودہ - polluted, dirty (I knew آلودگی - pollution, but not this one)
نلکا - tap
ٹوٹی - tap

post 9:
تر کچی آبادی - shanty town?
ریڑھی - handcart
پیٹ کاٹنا - to starve oneself
اِستطاعت - financial ability
کی استطاعت رکھنا x - to be able to afford x (?)

post 10:
کم ذات - lowly
پکڑا دینا - to hand over
چوکیداری - security guard
پرستار - fan, worshipper
چھڑوا دینا - to cause to be released, let go, freed
رائیگاں - waste

post 11:
بھیک مانگنا - to beg (بِھیک - alms)
وبا - epidemic
رِزق - daily bread, sustenance

لے پالک - adopted (took me a while to realize spinach was not involved)

[بٹوارہ] is one of the common words used to refer to Partition, the other being تقسیم .

Interesting. In Punjabi it's ونڈ.

صحاف - journalist

صحافی (with an ی at the end)

صحّاف means bookbinder according to Oxford.

In his speech, Imran Khan mentioned polluted drinking water, and I remembered that when he had returned from winning the World Cup, from the 36 estates of Okara to Karachi's Natha Khan Goth, every tap (running, or carelessly opening broken), water was drunk Bottled water was only the predilection of old Sethis, nouveau riche, or brown sahibs.

I don't think this is I think it's ٹُوٹی, but rather ٹوٹی - tap. I imagine نلکا and ٹوٹی refer to two different kinds of taps. Maybe this is one to ask WordReference about.

[Kind of confused about the role of پکڑا here ]

Oxford gives put into one's hand or clutches, hand over for پکڑا دینا.

Imran Khan can give or not give crores of servants

The word in the text is نوکریاں (plural of نوکری), not نوکر. It's about giving people jobs.

guard tax money or not

I think this is a reference to this Imran Khan quote:

"آج میں آپ کے سامنے وعدہ آپ سے کرتا ہوں: عوام کے ٹیکس کے پیسے کی میں حفاظت کروں گا۔"

He is referring to the fact that he is going to make sure everyone is paying their taxes (reassuring people on this point by saying that he will take good care of this tax money).

[vijayjohn]

So what are we doing next and by when? The Jasoosi Digest thing? If we do that, should we still type the lines out as we translate them?

Also, I was thinking of maybe opening a new thread for transcribing and/or translating audio/video samples in Hindi and Urdu. I think one of the hardest parts of understanding the spoken language is all the regional variation, but I find that documentaries and movies sometimes are a good source of samples of non-standard speech. They may come with subtitles, but it's still a bit hard to make sense of them sometimes. I thought I'd ask whether y'all think this might be a reasonable idea.

جھلکیاں - highlights (what is the singular form?)

جهلکي jhalki, literally 'flash' or 'glance'

You guys seem to have skipped this paragraph

Whoops!

Yes sometimes there is no shade[?], in summer it keeps walking far looking for water but there is no idea of a diet[?].

Maybe "yes, sometimes, it doesn't find any shade; in summer, it keeps walking far looking for water, but (at least) it doesn't have to worry about its diet"?

تر کچی آبادی - shanty town?

The تر, as I understand it at least, is part of the expression غریب سے غریب تر 'poorer than poor', so کچی آبادی means 'shanty town' as eskandar said. تر- is the comparative suffix in Persian if you didn't already know. (I mostly know this just because the peripheral varieties of Romani (meaning basically any variety of Romani that isn't spoken somewhere in the Balkans) have this, too, as -der. Baro = big, bareder = bigger).

کی استطاعت رکھنا x - to be able to afford x (?)

I wouldn't have guessed that it meant something that literal; I would've guessed something more like just 'to be able'.

بھیک مانگنا - to beg (بِھیک - alms)

I only know this word because it's a native word and Malayalam borrowed it from Sanskrit (I've also seen bhiksha in a translation into English of a Mahabharata story for kids in Tamil). As a kid, I had also heard an old Malayalam movie song from the seventies that uses the word [bʱiʈˈʃugi] 'beggar-woman' a lot, but I had no idea what it meant and misheard it as [piˈt͡ʃugi].

لے پالک - adopted (took me a while to realize spinach was not involved)

I'm not sure I'll ever get over that one.

صحاف - journalist

صحافی (with an ی at the end)

صحّاف means bookbinder according to Oxford.

Oops again! Thanks!

[eskandar]

my [lots of] time seeing free and stray dogs in Karachi has passed. Yes sometimes there is no shade[?], in summer it keeps walking far looking for water but there is no idea of a diet[?].

I think it means "much of my time passes seeing free, stray dogs in Karachi. Yes, sometimes shade can't be found, in the summer they have to [پڑتا ہے = has to] walk far in search of water, but there is no worry [فکر] of food [خوراک]". The idea, I imagine, is that there's enough garbage on the streets that dogs don't go hungry per se.

صحّاف means bookbinder according to Oxford.

Also a bookseller (cf. Turkish sahaf which is a secondhand bookseller).

I don't think this is I think it's ٹُوٹی, but rather ٹوٹی - tap. I imagine نلکا and ٹوٹی refer to two different kinds of taps. Maybe this is one to ask WordReference about.

Good call! I asked here.

So what are we doing next and by when? The Jasoosi Digest thing? If we do that, should we still type the lines out as we translate them?

Up to you guys. I will have to dip out pretty soon. I'll try to check in when I can but I'll have less time for Unilang starting next week or sooner.

Also, I was thinking of maybe opening a new thread for transcribing and/or translating audio/video samples in Hindi and Urdu. I think one of the hardest parts of understanding the spoken language is all the regional variation, but I find that documentaries and movies sometimes are a good source of samples of non-standard speech. They may come with subtitles, but it's still a bit hard to make sense of them sometimes. I thought I'd ask whether y'all think this might be a reasonable idea.

I think it's a great idea, albeit a challenging one. I have enough difficulty understanding standard Hindi/Urdu when spoken quickly, let alone regional accents and dialects.

کی استطاعت رکھنا x - to be able to afford x (?)

I wouldn't have guessed that it meant something that literal; I would've guessed something more like just 'to be able'.

Exactly. It's the Arabic verbal noun (maSdar) from the verb استطاع - يستطيع 'to be able'.

[Saim]

So what are we doing next and by when? The Jasoosi Digest thing? If we do that, should we still type the lines out as we translate them?

I don't have the energy to do another translation exercise this week. If we do the Jasoosi Digest text I'd only want to underline the words I don't know, reproduce them here and then look for them in other sentences. To be honest it seems like a pretty long text, I'm not sure how many lines I would be able to get through in a week.

Also, I was thinking of maybe opening a new thread for transcribing and/or translating audio/video samples in Hindi and Urdu. I think one of the hardest parts of understanding the spoken language is all the regional variation, but I find that documentaries and movies sometimes are a good source of samples of non-standard speech. They may come with subtitles, but it's still a bit hard to make sense of them sometimes. I thought I'd ask whether y'all think this might be a reasonable idea.

Definitely. It's quite an intensive activity so maybe not this week but we should definitely do it at some point!

The تر, as I understand it at least, is part of the expression غریب سے غریب تر 'poorer than poor', so کچی آبادی means 'shanty town' as eskandar said. تر- is the comparative suffix in Persian if you didn't already know. (I mostly know this just because the peripheral varieties of Romani (meaning basically any variety of Romani that isn't spoken somewhere in the Balkans) have this, too, as -der. Baro = big, bareder = bigger).

Of course, I don't know how I didn't recognise it.

[vijayjohn]

I don't have the energy to do another translation exercise this week. If we do the Jasoosi Digest text I'd only want to underline the words I don't know, reproduce them here and then look for them in other sentences. To be honest it seems like a pretty long text, I'm not sure how many lines I would be able to get through in a week.

Yeah, it's not that easy. We could just do another ghazal instead, or we could do a Facebook post or something (I'm slightly reluctant about a Facebook post only because I'd have no idea how to look for one and I don't really want to force you to put in the extra effort of finding one). Or we could even skip a week. Let me know what you think and/or if you have any ideas, thanks!