Cross Cultural Interface - 3 Examples.docx

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in Bulgarian: Хитър Петър
in Bulgarian: Настрадин Ходжа, from Persian: نصر الدين خواجه through Turkish Nasreddîn Hoca, Nasreddīn Hoca
see here in bibliography: Propp, V. J.: 1-4
3 Examples for Cross-Cultural Interface taken from the
Hindi Translation of Anecdotes about Hitar Petar and Nastradin Hodja

Understanding foreign humor requires competence beyond the competence in a particular foreign language and culture as even if one has acquired perfection in both, it happens quite often that foreign humor remains a sealed door forever. On the other hand examples show that foreign humor can be grasped without any particular knowledge in the foreign culture or the language of the original. An example par excellence for the latter is the Hindi translation of anecdotes about Chatur Peter – Peter the Cunning and Nastradin Hoja – Nasruddin Hadji from Bulgarian done by Satinder Kumar Vij and Geeta Vij. The translated texts and the multimedia dramatised version edited recently as a CD: "Chatur Peter and Nasruddin Hadji" show how people with no knowledge of Bulgarian language can enjoy the anecdotes by reading or listening to the Hindi texts.
The Hindi edition of "Chatur Peter and Nasruddin Hadji" is a great contribution not only to the Hindi-Bulgarian dialogue but also to what today is referred to as inter-cultural or cross-cultural communication.
Inter cultural communication (ICC) is a modern discipline which, after the end of the Cold War was established at the universities all over the world to examine how communication between people form differing cultural backgrounds can be improved. The Hindi anthology of Bulgarian anecdotes "Chatur Peter and Nasruddin Hadji" and its multimedia dramatised version show how inter-cultural communication can effectively be performed and is an excellent practical example from a period long before the academic subject of the same title has been established as such. Here we will join the discourse on intercultural communication with taking three examples from this translation for illustrating the technical term cross-cultural interface.
Some observations on the texts and their context:
Hitar Petar and Nastradin Hodja are two popular satirical figures from the Balkans. The most folk anecdotes about them occurred in the Balkans during the Ottoman yoke. In this time more than thousand stories about special skills, artfulness and experience of the two figures were generated and re-narrated. Hitar Petar and Nastradin Hodja are a unique cultural phenomenon which is not easy to explain because the two folk heroes – the protagonists behave by large equal to each other in the verbal encounter though each created by the most diverse cultures. While listening to the anecdotes an illusion emerges that the communication between both characters is fictitious, but this is not the case. Both characters show distinct integrity and we can observe how different they are – visually and psychologically.
A surprise about them both meeting in Bulgarian folklore overcomes us because of the age they meet in – it is the time when the two cultures – the Islamic and the Christian, virtually represented in the anecdotes by the two characters – experience the most intense intolerance towards each other: political, social and religious. At this time on the Balkans the Islamic culture of Ottoman empire is the culture of the masters – the oppressors and the Christian cultural is one of the many cultures of the oppressed – the culture of the deprived of rights slaves called in Bulgarian 'raya' spelled in English also as 'rayah' – a plural form from Arabic رعيّة ra`iya meaning 'flock', 'subject' but also 'cattle' – used in Ottoman Turkish as collective denomination for the tax-paying lower class in Ottoman society. Among the various taxes the rayah had to pay at this time was an official tax for "bearing a head on the shoulders" i.e. for being left alive.
Cultural studies have not yet dared to explain the phenomenon 'Hitar Petar and Nastradin Hodja'. Investigations on the subject have always been partial, as for example: analysis of images; analysis the genre anecdote; typology of the plot according to which the anecdotes are divided in anecdotes about both the characters and anecdotes only about Hitar Petar or only about Nastradin Hodja. The latter distinction reveals that both characters meet after being accomplished by the culture they originate from:
the character of Nastradin Hodja refers to a well know satirical figure from the Orient – the scholars identify him with a real person of a well educated man from Anatolia who is believed to have lived around the 13th century. The character is personified by the name of this famous person.
The character of Hitar Petar – Peter the cunning – is personified by a name "Petar" which is the most common name in Christian communities and the only distinction from being "anyone" is that the character from the anecdotes is "Peter the cunning": – which implements that though not scholarly educated. He is a clever, artful person from the mass.
The more we examine the two characters, the more we observe how different they are: the one is famous and the other one is nameless; the one is scholarly educated and the other one is not scholarly educated. This observations increase our surprise to see both of them emerging in the anecdotes as tandem.
To understand this phenomenon we should look at them as pure creation of folk culture. As investigations on folk culture from the last century in general and the studies of J.V. Propp in particular have shown – folk culture achieves its heights within the rituals of speaking. It is strictly canonised who is allowed to speak, when, for how long and who is supposed to just listen and be educated by what he or she hears. The locations where such verbal encounters take place are also canonised and not possible to happen everywhere.
Here we will focus on tree locations which are common for all the cultures participating in the trans-cultural dialogue:
1) The wine house – called in Bulgarian "mehana". The word is equally common in Bulgarian as in Hindi because of its Persian origin: 'meh' = 'wine' and 'hana' from 'hane' = 'house'.
To understand the role of a wine house in the Balkan context we have to bear in mind that in winter time it gets dark there quite early. Consequently many hours of darkness had to be spent somehow. In this time women and children were left at home to prepare for the night and the male members of the families went to the wine house – the mehana – to spend the time and relax. In this context the narratives had to be short, exiting, humorous and aiming at activating all the men sitting around and encouraging them to participate in the verbal encounter.
For this ritual there is also a special technical term in Bulgarian 'raz_dumka', or 'duma duma otvarya' which means 'one word invites for another one'. This term grasps the essence of the ritual and once again underlines that the texts – the anecdotes - are created within the process of narration and are not just re-narrated ready-made texts. Due to the fact that the participants are only men, the language may include also some rude expressions.
Two examples representative for narration at a wine-house mehana from the anthology "Nasrudin Hodia aur Chatur Peter" are the anecdotes "MASAKHRI" and "KYA GANDHE RAJMA KHATE HAI?". (compare translation in Hindi and source text in Bulgarian )
2) The coffee house – called in Bulgarian 'kafene' which, even if not common in Hindi is very easy to grasp because of its Arabic-Persian origin from the components 'kafe' from Arabic 'kahva' = 'coffee' and again 'hana' from Persian 'hane' = 'house'. The encounter here is at daytime and the guests of the coffee-house are of different type as many foreigners moving from one place to another drop in for a cup of coffee. As a result the narratives one can listen to in a kafene on the Balkans aim mostly at teaching the foreigners about some local rules. These texts have didactic character and aim not only in transmitting a particular lesson but also in defining the social roles between locals and strangers.
An example representative for narration at a coffee-house 'kafene' from the anthology "Nasrudin Hodia aur Chatur Peter" is the anecdote "PAHELI". (compare translation in Hindi and source text in Bulgarian )
3) The market – called in Bulgarian, as well as in Turkish, Serbian, Greek, and Albanian: 'pazar', in Hindi, as in Arabic and Persian - 'bazaar' is again common technical term for all cultures we focus on. Common for those cultures are also several features of the 'pazar', or 'bazaar', as for example the fact that there are no restrictions to any social group to go there – as well as in India as on the Balkans people with the most different background come together at the market place pursuing the most different purposes, but all of them defined by one common denominator: business. Not only merchants bringing goods from distant places and buyers looking for special items but all also beggars, fortune-tellers, jugglers, acrobats, thieves and many others come to the 'pazar', or 'bazaar' to practice their 'business'.
Another essential feature of the 'pazar', or 'bazaar', is that the verbal encounter is part of the business itself as the price one will get for the goods, or the services offered, depends not that much on the real value, but on one's personal ability to perform verbal encounters which go far beyond the bargaining for the price.
Example for narration typical for a market place 'pazar' or 'bazaar' from the anthology "Nasrudin Hodia aur Chatur Peter" is the anecdote "BUL BUL aur BATER".
In conclusion we will summarise that we could observe three examples of common locations where verbal encounters have taken place – the wine-house, the coffee-house and the market-place. Those three locations are common for different cultures – in our examples for the Balkan culture in South Europe and for the Indian Culture in South Asia. As a result the creation of narratives at those places makes those texts comprehensive for members of different cultures sharing those locations as common. This role of the three locations gives us the reason to interpret them as cultural-interfaces in the cross-cultural dialogue.

Bibliography:
Vij, Satinder Kumar & Vij, Geeta:
Nasrudin Hodia aur Chatur Peter. Vani Prakashan: 1986
Propp, Vladimir Yakovlevich:
Ìîðôîëîãèÿ ñêàçêè. Leningrad: 1928.
Èñòîðè÷åñêèå êîðíè âîëøåáíîé ñêàçêè. Leningrad: 1946.
Ôîëüêëîð è äåéñòâèòåëüíîñòü. Moskva:1976
Ïðîáëåìû êîìèçìà è ñìåõà. Moskva: 1976




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