Walang Mabanaag (Unable to Decipher) by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles (University of the Philippines Press, 2026)
“Never mistranslate. Translation is sacred,” says a character in Bong Joon Ho’s film Okja (2017). In Walang Mabanaag, the latest offering from the prolific Filipino writer Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles, the poet-translator has committed an unpardonable sin in the practice of translation. He has mistranslated! Gasp!
Arguelles does not understand the Cebuano language and yet he decides to translate into Filipino the debut poetry collection by Jona Branzuela Bering, titled Alang sa Nasaag (Bathalad Inc., 2016). Instead of translating the meaning of the words, he decides to translate purely by sound. He bravely calls it a “mistranslation.”
The sinner has readily confessed. So better keep your calm, members of the translation police force. Be gentle, gatekeepers of language. And be flexible, auditors of translation projects. You can let go of your checklist on translation faithfulness. The auditors will need to sharpen their auditory skills to evaluate the soundness of this translation.
The poet flexes his linguistic skills by using sound as the material for his undertaking. He set out to demonstrate, dare I say it, the right ear for translation.
SABADO, ALAS-SAIS SA BITAG
Ang kuneho sa kuryente
Nalapnos sa biglang pusok
Ng ulan. Bawat patak matindi,
Ang kalsada luhaan
Sa nabuwang na langit.
This is not a “bilingual” edition. We only have the Filipino version in front of us. Asked why he did not have the “translated” poem side by side with the Cebuano original in the book, the poet said he wanted to somehow distance the translation from the original, to recognize their separate artistic presences. The original counterpart looks (or sounds) like this:
SABADO, ALAS SAYIS SA BUNTAG
Ang kutay sa kuryente
Namabdos og daghang lusok
Sa uwan. Kada tagak niini,
Ang kalsada lubnganan
Sa nakuhaang langit
Cebuano and Filipino may be distinct languages, but the same vowels and consonants will carry the workload of the homophonic translator. Below is a translation attempt—a semantic take this time—on the Filipino, since this reader could not decipher Cebuano either. A homophonic English translation of either version will be a far more daunting task; English may be too catholic for this kind of linguistic transformation.
SATURDAY, SIXTH HOUR ON THE DOT
The rabbit in shock
Electrocuted by the power surge
Of rain. Excessive rainfall,
The streets weep
Beneath the crazed heaven.
Noise! The poor fate of the rabbit is the result of sound effects. The poet, known previously for his erasure poetry, sonnet-deconstruction, and other innovative concepts, chooses this time to focus on the sense of hearing.
In “Ang Pagsuko” (“Ang Pagtubo” in the original), the sound creates its own path out of the unwieldy brambles and branches of the original.
Wala akong talinghaga
sa paglingon. Bigo akong mapatitikom.
Sadyang sumusuko ang salita para maghilom.
Original Cebuano:
Wala baya ko mahingangha
sa iyang giingon. Igo ra kong mipahiyom.
Samang ang sabila motubo ra sa hilom.
Translation of Filipino:
I don’t harbor metaphors
about eternal return. I cannot be silenced.
The words surrender to heal.
The poet said it took him almost nine years to complete the task of mistranslation. Along the way, the labor must have been punctuated by ‘hearer’s block.’ As the poet tries to capture meanings out of pure sound, he is also constructing meaning in the target language to fill the pages with legible and intelligible jottings.
It is easy to fall prey to the poet’s mind games. The poet’s project seems to negate the entropy of sense: out of linguistic uncertainty and Cebuano-Filipino incompatibility, it generates new meanings. This is a kind of negentropy (negative entropy)—not a transposition of the original’s meanings, but the creation of new ones through their disruption. Here is how “Lagom” (Summation, “Dagom” in the original Cebuano) ends:
At ang luhang nakapalayo
na sa pangingilid sa itinakdang mga mata.
May isang kathang walang batas
at itinakdang kagalakan ng anti-kanon.
At ang mga saksi ay hindi na
muling makalilingon.
Original:
O ang duha nakahibawo
na nga motipig sa gagmayng mga butang.
O di ba kaha, wan-ay tastas
nga angayng kabalak-an ug atimanon.
Ug ang mga gisi di na angayng
panumbalingon karon.
Translation of Filipino:
And the tears run away
from welling up in their designated eyes.
A literary work doesn’t follow all the rules
and is the toast of the anti-canon.
And the witnesses shall
no longer look back.
In the same anti-canon spirit of the work, the reader squints his eyes even if he can’t see. He marvels at the creative gumption of a poet filling in the blanks, inserting his political commentary and literary intents into innocent words and punctuation marks.
The poem “Dyslexia” probably carries meaning further into terra incognita. Here is the entire poem:
Bugtong!
Ligalig ka sa iyong salita,
ay, kanino ba, natisod
sa pagbasa sa binuod
na istorya.
Nilumot na sa pagbasa
sa inog ng pagbuklat
ng mga mata,
na namimilog:
haraya, haraya.
Original:
Uy, Dong!
Tingalig naa ka ining sakita,
kay, unsa ba, maglisod
man kag basa sa tinuod
nga estorya.
Samot na sa pagbasa
sa tingog sa budlat
nakong mata,
nga naglanog:
ikaw ra, ikaw ra.
Translation of Filipino:
Riddle!
Your words are in turmoil,
ay, for whose eyes, you stumble
while reading
Cliff’s Notes.
Grown barnacles from reading
the cycle of pages the eyes
flip through,
the eyes popped out:
wanted: metaphor.
The invisible process of hearing becomes the work’s subject as much as its final product. The translator deliberately mangles and destroys the original poetry to create a new disharmony of music.
I would like to interview Bering, the author of the source book, to find out what she thinks of this translation project. As a concept, the whole idea of homophonic translation fascinates me. On paper, I mean on the page, the renditions are a riot of comic possibilities.
Meanings are posthumous. I cannot explain why I could not contain my laughter while reading every other poem in this book. It is the same experience I had reading Chi for the first time, the middle collection of Arguelles's Three Books (Broken Sleep Books, 2020), as translated by Kristine Ong Muslim. Chi is an erasure of Say ni Chiz (ICatcher Productions, Inc., 2009), a memoir by Chiz Escudero.
Like Chi, Walang Mabanaag makes its own process of construction visible, transforming material from an existing work into something new while leaving traces of the source behind. But where Chi erases and reconfigures a memoir, Walang Mabanaag remakes poetry through sound, generating new meanings from the distance between the Cebuano source text and its radical Filipino transformation.
Who can begrudge our translator for opting to remain faithful to one aspect of the source text that he does not speak? As Damion Searls wrote in The Philosophy of Translation (2024): “In judging a translation, then, the ideal of ‘faithfulness’ is an empty tautology: we are really judging what the translator sees in the author or text and chooses to be faithful to.” Thus, the translator simply earmarked certain passages for his own hearing.
This volume shows that it is sometimes productive to be in the dark, allowing meanings to serendipitously find their way to you, rather than actively seeking them out. The full weight of existence is hard to bear when data and information bombard you left and right. We need air and airy language to let go of the burden of communication.
This opening stanza from the title poem, “Walang Mabanaag” (Unable to Decipher, “Alang sa Nasaag” in the original), is illuminating, in a manner of speaking:
Nang nakita kita sa daan tungong aplaya,
sinarhan ko na ang lumang bintana
at nag-uwian ang naghuhuntahan. Umalingaw.
Naumid ang baybayin, lumipad
ang mga kabág sa mga tumana:
Nabanaag ba riyan ang anino?
Kaninong anino ang anino sa banaag?
Original:
Samtang nangita kas da’n padu’ng sa atoa,
trangkahan nako ang tanang bentana
ug ablihan ang purtahan. Ug molakaw.
Mamidpid kos baybayon, manimpa’d
nga matubag ang mga pangutana:
Masaag pa diay ang suheto?
Unsa kasuheto ang suheto sa pagkasaag?
Translation of Filipino:
When I saw you on the way to the beach,
I hurriedly closed the old windows
and the gossips went home. A shout.
The coastline receded in shame, the anxiety
was exorcised from the fields:
Has the shadow been detected?
Whose shadow is the shadow in silhouette?
In Walang Mabanaag (Unable to Decipher), Arguelles has robbed us of the sense of sight. All we see are shadows of words with shadowy meanings, trying to escape, but unable to do so, from the constraint of sound and the endless possibilities of humor and wit.
Rather than delivering us from the darkness, the poet deliberately put us right back inside Plato’s cave. It is not always the light that brings illumination and insight. Sometimes, understanding requires not illumination but a willingness to remain in the dark and listen. Ssshhh! Listen. Ssshhh!
