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Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm shows how a revolution could lead to the rise of opportunists, power struggles, infighting, fake news, and ultimately a new breed of authoritarians. Even though Orwell was looking at the rise of Joseph Stalin in post-revolution Russia as the model for his animal farm, we would later see the same sequence of events in Communist Cuba, Chairman Mao’s China, and other places. In this episode, my cohost Su and I discuss Thakin Ba Thaung’s translation of Animal Farm, titled ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး (The Four-Legged Revolution), and how some of the chapters are chillingly similar to what has happened, and is still happening in present day Burma, our homeland. Along the way, we give you the Burmese words and phrases you can use to talk about dictator pigs and dogs in the book, and in the world we live in. (Music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
ဂန္ထဝင် classic
သခင်ဘသောင်း Thakhin Ba Thaung, a Burmese translator of Animal Farm
ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး The Four-Legged Revolution, name of a Burmese translation of Animal Farm
လေရူးသုန်သုန် Wild Gust Blowing, Burmese name for a translation of Gone with the Wind
ဘာသာပြန်တယ် to translate
လက်ထောက်ပုလိပ်အုပ် assistant superintendent of police
မူရင်း original
အနှစ်သာရ essence
အဓိကဖြစ်ရပ် main events
အာဏာရှင်စနစ် authoritarianism
ဖိနှိပ်တယ် to oppress
အာဏာယစ်မူးတယ် to be drunk with power
အာခံတယ် to defy
သုတ်သင်တယ် to execute, to eliminate
လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate by class
စည်းရုံးတယ် to persuade others to join
ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main characters
မျက်မှောက်ကာလ current age
ခေတ်ပြိုင်ကာလ contemporary era
စင်ပြိုင်ပါတီ rival party
ဗန္ဓုလ Bandoola, name of a historical general, also the Burmese name for Napoleon in the Burmese version of Animal Farm
သံကြောင် squeaky voice, name of the character Squealer in a Burmese translation of Animal Farm
အသံပြာပြာနဲ့ with scratchy, raspy voice
ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda
ကိုယ်စားပြုတယ် to embody
လူမှုကွန်ရက် social media
ဝါဒမှိုင်းမိတယ် to be swept up in propaganda
ခို pigeon
သာတူညီမျှ to be equal
ဘုရားမြှောက်တယ် to turn someone into a God
ပဋိညာဉ် pledge, oath, agreement
သားရေကွင်းဥပဒေ rubber band regulation, meaning it bends to serve a group
ကျုံ့တယ် to shrink
ဆန့်တယ် to expand
အခွင့်ထူးခံလူတန်းစား the privileged class
ဇာတ်ကွက် dramatic scene
သစ္စာဖေါက် traitor
သွေးညှီနံ့ the stench of blood
လက်နက်ကိုင် armed, weapon carrying
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
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Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm shows how a revolution could lead to the rise of opportunists, power struggles, infighting, fake news, and ultimately a new breed of authoritarians. Even though Orwell was looking at the rise of Joseph Stalin in post-revolution Russia as the model for his animal farm, we would later see the same sequence of events in Communist Cuba, Chairman Mao’s China, and other places. In this episode, my cohost Su and I discuss Thakin Ba Thaung’s translation of Animal Farm, titled ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး (The Four-Legged Revolution), and how some of the chapters are chillingly similar to what has happened, and is still happening in present day Burma, our homeland. Along the way, we give you the Burmese words and phrases you can use to talk about dictator pigs and dogs in the book, and in the world we live in. (Music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
ဂန္ထဝင် classic
သခင်ဘသောင်း Thakhin Ba Thaung, a Burmese translator of Animal Farm
ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး The Four-Legged Revolution, name of a Burmese translation of Animal Farm
လေရူးသုန်သုန် Wild Gust Blowing, Burmese name for a translation of Gone with the Wind
ဘာသာပြန်တယ် to translate
လက်ထောက်ပုလိပ်အုပ် assistant superintendent of police
မူရင်း original
အနှစ်သာရ essence
အဓိကဖြစ်ရပ် main events
အာဏာရှင်စနစ် authoritarianism
ဖိနှိပ်တယ် to oppress
အာဏာယစ်မူးတယ် to be drunk with power
အာခံတယ် to defy
သုတ်သင်တယ် to execute, to eliminate
လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate by class
စည်းရုံးတယ် to persuade others to join
ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main characters
မျက်မှောက်ကာလ current age
ခေတ်ပြိုင်ကာလ contemporary era
စင်ပြိုင်ပါတီ rival party
ဗန္ဓုလ Bandoola, name of a historical general, also the Burmese name for Napoleon in the Burmese version of Animal Farm
သံကြောင် squeaky voice, name of the character Squealer in a Burmese translation of Animal Farm
အသံပြာပြာနဲ့ with scratchy, raspy voice
ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda
ကိုယ်စားပြုတယ် to embody
လူမှုကွန်ရက် social media
ဝါဒမှိုင်းမိတယ် to be swept up in propaganda
ခို pigeon
သာတူညီမျှ to be equal
ဘုရားမြှောက်တယ် to turn someone into a God
ပဋိညာဉ် pledge, oath, agreement
သားရေကွင်းဥပဒေ rubber band regulation, meaning it bends to serve a group
ကျုံ့တယ် to shrink
ဆန့်တယ် to expand
အခွင့်ထူးခံလူတန်းစား the privileged class
ဇာတ်ကွက် dramatic scene
သစ္စာဖေါက် traitor
သွေးညှီနံ့ the stench of blood
လက်နက်ကိုင် armed, weapon carrying
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
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