Lost in Translation

I'm currently taking a literature class about Filipino history. We've tackled books by Foucault, Ileto, and Rafael. Foucault's book, The Archaeology of Knowledge, criticizes our perception of history by deconstructing the discourses that were impressed on us (what? I didn't understand it either). Ileto's Pasyon and Revolution is about Filipino history from the perspective of the masses, or the lower class, taking into account folk Catholicism and Filipino literature and how it shaped their understanding of current events. Rafael's Contracting Colonialism is about language and how Filipino cultural conversion partially failed due to poor translation (...apparently. I've only read the book's introduction; we've yet to discuss the book in class). And that is pretty much the situation I'm in now -- completely lost in translation while my teachers throw around Tagalog words.

In chapter one of Contracting Colonialism Rafael lauds the humor of Jose Rizal in his work, Nole Me Tangere, where Rizal describes the fictional Catholic priest's Spanish sermon. The Filipino's can't understand him because they don't understand Spanish, but they do understand a few words here and there, so what they get from a sermon about obedience and loyalty to the government is instead a sermon about the King and punishment (okay, I forgot the actual passage -- but you understand the point Rafael was trying to make). This is how I am in my literary class: about 90% of the lesson goes over my head, with the leftover 10% I create my own lesson. But what's a little more interesting are the words I do know, the words that make my ears perk up when I hear them. But the English words that perk up my ear are actually Filipino terms. Unfortunately, those two don't translate very well. For example:

English

≠

Tagalog

trite = "banal" = holy

*sigh*