Some Questionable Interpretations

Te Ao Hou, September 1964, Page 50

Some Questionable Interpretations Not that all of the translations, descriptions and explanations are always correct, clear and adequate. For example, on page 38, the proverb ‘Ka mahi te tamariki wawahi tahā’ is translated as ‘Well done, children who break the calabashes!’ The explanation which follows is, ‘A saying applied to a man who deliberately injures his relations, and is likened to mischievous children who break their parents’ calabashes.' But in their translation, the words ‘well done’ are an interpolation; they are not in the original, neither are they implied, and the translation should simply be, ‘The calabash-breaking children are at work’. Furthermore, this reviewer has often heard the great Maori leaders of this century (Ngata, Pomare, Buck and others) being affectionately referred to as calabash-breaking children—that is, as agents of change who broke new ground to come up with new policies and new innovations to improve the lot of their people. So although this proverb may originally have been used as a term of censure, it is not used only in this way; it is often used in a complimentary sense. On page 80 ‘he po tutata, he ao pahorehore’

is not followed by a translation as is the case with most of the other proverbs quoted, but by an explanation: ‘at night all are assembled, by day all are scattered.’ My translation is ‘near at night, vanished by day.’ The meaning of this is that resolutions made in the evening often fade on the morrow. This is also the meaning of a more commonly used proverb which is not included here: ‘he ahiahi tukaha, he ata pahorehore.’