This is a translation issue that I raised a while ago on a Linked in group Fono Samoa as well as Facebook. I have been working on and off on a book entitled “The Weeping of the Cicadas” and wanted to check if my translation was correct. Technically the title in Samoan is “A fetagisi alisi” which I would have translated as “When the cicadas weep” but for lyrical reasons I exercised my poetic license to use “The Weeping of the Cicadas” which would probably translate as “O le tagi o alisi” or perhaps more accurately “O le fetagisiga o alisi”.
The title comes from the admonishment given by elders in Samoa
to children about being sure to return home in the evening before nightfall for
evening prayers.
Usually we were told “ia e foi mai ae le’i
fetagisi alisi” or alternatively “ia e foi
mai pe a fetagisi alisi” the first basically means to return
before the alisi start
to fetagisi while the second basically allows a
little bit more time in that you were to return once the alisi started to fetagisi.
Although the first version was most often the one used since everyone knows
that if you allow any room for interpretation, kids will find some way of
stretching things to fit.
The reason I did not translate alisi and fetagisi above
is because these were the two words that were the ones that I found myself
wondering about for several reasons. Initially I translated them as cicadas weeping. But then for each word I
realised that maybe I was wrong in my interpretation.
First of all there was the problem of what an alisi was. All
I know is that was a bug that made this sound at dusk which as indicated was
the signal to be home or else -
Now the problem that I have found in the past not only with
translating words from Samoan to English or French to English and vice versa is
that sometimes not only do some words have several meanings which means that in
interpreting and translating you need to know which one is applies in that
specific instance as illustrated in the case of when is a chateau not a castle? LINK. In other cases one language
may lump a whole host of things under one word that in the other language are
very distinct and have separate words for
This lumping of things under one word is the case with the alisi. Like I said all I remember is that it was
a bug that made that noise at dusk. But lots of bugs do that. Well in this
specific case crickets, grasshoppers and
cicadas. So I went hunting for them on-line
to find photos and what I found did not help resolve the problem that much.
First I found crickets which looked like the bugs we used to
find teeming in the chicken shed especially in the feed storage room as well as
outside in the long grass. Back then we referred to these as mogamoga which is cockroach.
Except in reality there are a number of bugs that get tagged with that label
which are not related to cockroaches at all (like the poor crickets which for
all this time I thought were a species of cockroach). Some are the big brown cockroaches
which are simply mogamoga while others are given a suffix to further identify
them like the black stink bug which is referred to as a mogomoga
sauga. Although even in that case I have heard other types of
stink bugs called mogomoga sauga so all that
really means is that it is a bug that smells bad. At least the black one is
actually a species of cockroach but the others that I have had the misfortune
of crossing that are a completely different species of insect. I think it would
be safe to say that they are not even of the same Order.
However, since this is a blog about etymology rather than
entomology I’m not going to discuss the taxonomy of these critters. Maybe I
will cover it in my blog Flora and Fauna –Plants and Critters someday. So let us get back to identifying
the elusive
alisi. And they were elusive because whenever you tried to find them
they would all shut up and wait for you to go away before starting up again.
So mistaking crickets for cockroaches was just the beginning
of the problem. I also found that grasshopper looking insects were another type
of cricket (it seems that sometimes the term gets used interchangeably by the
general public).
The discovery that grasshoppers and cicadas are also referred
to as locusts did not help. Although following a bit more research I discovered
that while the term locust for cicadas is misnomer locusts are actually certain
types of grasshoppers which become locusts in certain conditions. That is their
behaviour and morphology radically changes and this transformation turns them
into locusts.
But I
digress and as fascinating as that is ... I will have to cover that in the more
appropriately named Flora and Fauna – Plants and Critters blog.
So back to identifying the alisi. The other creatures that fit
the bill were grasshopers.
We had lots of these too. And they were called alisi or at least we called them that. I also found cicadas
which we also had and distinctly remember being called alisi as well.
So I had three creatures which all made noise at dusk and
one was called a mogamoga while the other two shared the title of alisi. Incidently G.B.Milner’s Samoan Dictionary translates alisi as
cicada
and cricket but
strangely makes no mention of grasshoppers.
To be completely honest I am still not sure if the crickets that we maligned by misidentifying
them as cockroaches are indeed called mogamoga, or if that was just our incorrect
name for them. I have found that often children use the wrong words for things
which can lead to problems in the future if these mistakes are not corrected. I
realise that language does change over time and that sometimes these changes
are due to such “mistakes” however, I will be looking just at such an issue in “There is no such
thing as Teine Sa: It is Telesa and Saumaiafe.” Now again forgive me for getting side tracked and let us get
back to the mysterious alisi.
I managed to find some sound files to compare the sounds
made by the crickets, grasshoppers and cicadas and the noise made by the
cicadas was the one that most closely resembled the one I was familiar with
which was an intense thrumming that heralded dusk and filled the air with its
intoxicating song. I remember always being annoyed that evening prayers
coincided with alisi prime time because usually by the time lotu afiafi was
over the alisi were silent. I loved listening to them because they had this almost
hypnotic effect that carried you to a state of awareness that I can only
compare to that reached through meditation. Interestingly I discovered that the
Ancient Greeks held the cicadas in high regard. But that alas I will also have
to consign covering that in my blog Flora and Fauna – Plants and Critters and get back
to the subject at hand.
To cut to the chase after looking at all the information I
decided that I would use cicadas although that does not mean that crickets
would be incorrect. Also as you will see latter the whole “is an alisi a cicada
or cricket
or grasshopper
question” takes on a completely different and surprising dimension in Part 2 of The Weeping of the Cicadas: To weep or to sing? That is the question.
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