Emotion without a Word: An Analysis of Bengali Emotions and Their English Translation

Using Bengali texts and their English translations done by a set of English speaking native Bengali translators and another set of native English translators, we analyze how two specific Bengali emotion words (obhiman and lajja) have mapped onto English. In translating lajja translators use only three English words while for obhiman they choose an array of words with no consistency. This indicates that no English word represents a concept that is close to obhiman’s meaning suggesting that the concept represented by a particular emotion word in one language may not be totally captured in another language. Additionally, the findings indicate emotion words represent concepts with fuzzy borders (as suggested in scripts hypothesis) instead of dots in affect grids as envisioned in evaluation-potency-activity measurements. Such concepts vary in the spectrum of events they denote and in the degree to which they overlap. Subsequently, we, drawing from skopos theory, argue that cultural contexts in translation studies need to be considered rather than looking for exact equivalence of these emotion words.


Introduction
Studies in disciplines like anthropology, psychology, sociology, translation, and communication have considered the relationship between emotions and culture. Starting with Hochschild's seminal study (1983), sociologists have emphasized the important role of culture in shaping emotions. Sociologists such as Heise (1979Heise ( , 2007 have studied emotions cross-culturally using Affect Control Theory (ACT).
One central question that emotion scholars have been interested in is "Do more differentiated societies produce a more refined emotion vocabulary that is more precise distinctions among emotions (Gordon, 1990, p. 148)?" Gordon suggests that a society may develop a plethora of terms to emphasize emotions, which are culturally more important. Similarly, if an emotion is less desirable in a culture, there may be fewer terms to describe it. The anthropologist Weirzbicka (1986) said that emotion words reflect those emotions valued by a particular society. For example, English has no equivalent for the Polish word tesknic (near equivalents include homesick, nostalgic, miss, etc.). She argues that this is because the Anglo-Saxon culture has believed that the feeling generated by the Polish word tesknic is not important enough to have a special name.
The literature on faithful methods of translation overwhelmingly adopts the "equivalence paradigm", according to which the focus of translation must be on the faithfulness of translated forms to that of the source forms. Therefore, the aim of the translation is to achieve a text in the target language that is equivalent-of "equal value" (Pym, 2007)-to the original source-language version. A translation is equivalent if it achieves "the conveyance of identical meaning" (Hult et al., 2008(Hult et al., , p. 1035 between the target and source language versions. However, in the recent past, the focus of translation studies has shifted from equivalence to contextualization of the texts in the culture in which the readers reside. Therefore, although not irrelevant, equivalence is no longer the main objective, and the source text is "dethroned" (Vermeer, 1998). Further, Reiss andVermeer (1984/2013) also stress that it is not possible to produce a target-language text that is fully equivalent in all its features: not just the lexical equivalence favoured by back translation (Note 1), but also grammatical, stylistic, pragmatic, and even reader response equivalence (see e.g., Baker, 1992 for different types of equivalence). Consequently, the translator must decide which aspects of the source text need to be rendered faithfully in the target text. Vermeer (1998) argues that the "cultural" level of the text is more fundamental than its linguistic features. Meaning is ultimately cultural in nature, therefore, unavoidably changes its value when transmitted from one culture to another (Reiss & Vermeer, 1984/2013).
Here, we study two emotion words used in Bengali-obhiman and lajj-in two linguistic and cultural contexts. Obhiman can loosely be translated as anger, while lajja as shame or embarrassment. We have selected these two words because past research has suggested that they do not have exact English equivalents (Parish, 1991;Russell, 1991;Menon & Shweder, 1994). We study Bengali texts and their English translations to analyze how native Bengali and English translators communicate these two emotion words in English to their prospective readers. This helps to understand if there is a systematic www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/sll Studies in Linguistics and Literature Vol. 2, No. 4, 2018 252 Published by SCHOLINK INC. way to communicate the concepts to those readers whose native language have similar concepts, and on the other hand, those readers whose native language, do not have them.
In this paper, we have examined novels, short stories and dramas written in Bengali and translated into English. The reason to choose literary works over other forms of texts is that the former is more likely to be translated. The Bengali works are written by native Bengali speaking authors and their respective translations are done by both native Bengali and English speakers. Ideally, translators are assumed to have deep knowledge of both languages and cultures, hence in the best position to express an emotion in a language which does not have a word for it.

Are Emotions Universal or Culturally Defined?
One of the key questions contested across disciplines is whether emotions are universal or culturally constructed. Izaard (1977, p. 18) quoted that "emotions have innately stored neural programs, universally understood expressions and common experiential qualities". "Culturally universal emotions exist because at least some reactions are 'wired in'" (Thoits, 1989, p. 321). This is the positivist approach, which argues that certain emotions called basic emotions have universal expressions across all cultures (Ekman, 1983).
Certain researchers tried to introduce the role of socialization within the positivist approach. Kemper (1987) claims that certain secondary emotions emerge as individual experiences one or more of the primary emotions.
For example, shame is attached to the primary emotion anger. The anger directed towards self for behaving in a demeaning way will result in shame. Here a secondary emotion emerges from a primary emotion. Kemper (1987) also suggests that more than one primary emotion may combine to form secondary emotions. For example, fear and depression may combine to form anxiety. Turner (2000) also supports this view of combining primary emotions to produce secondary emotions. So the positivist view in the sociology of emotion introduces the role of socialization. As to how many emotions exist, Kemper hints at cultural variations: "The answer seems to depend on how many social situations a culture differentiates and on the degree of motivational interest or concern it produces in its members about them (Kemper, 1987, p. 284)".
Social constructionists also debate about the role of culture in emotional experience. For example, Shott (1979)  the arousal. This belief is shaped by culture and social structure. Fisher et al. (2004) found that people in traditional countries feel certain emotions such as shame and guilt more intensely compared to people in more egalitarian societies. Siemer et al. (2007) argued that how people appraise a particular situation can be shaped by culture, which may induce individuals to respond to the same situation with different emotions.

A Cultural Approach to Emotions: Emotion as Scripts
One important theory that acknowledges the role of culture in emotional experience is the scripts approach in psychology (Russell, 1991). According to this view, each emotion word expresses a "script" (concept); each emotion is an "event", which can be broken up into a sequence of "sub-events". Here is how Russell describes the script of anger: a person is offended by some injustice. This is followed by the victim glaring and scowling at the individual. The victim feels internal tension, agitation, and the desire to fight back. The physiological changes are pounding of heart and tightening of muscles. If the emotion is uncontrollable, the victim may hit back the offender. Based on slight changes in the script, there can be different names given to different shades of anger such as annoyance, fury, rage, and irritation. Russell indicates that scripts of some emotions are more complicated than others. For example, "in happiness, you desire something, get it, feel pleasure, smile, and, perhaps feel kind toward others" (Russell, 1991, p. 442). In contrast, "Jealousy might include anger, but jealousy implies a surrounding situation, a social relationship involving three people, specific motives, behaviors, and consequences" (Russell, 1991, p. 442 Russell and Fehr (1994) indicated that because each emotion concept includes many features, they are more likely to have fuzzy boundaries than to be properly defined. This is the case not only for the secondary emotions but even for basic emotions like anger. The word anger, when translated into other languages, does not have the exact same features (Russell & Fehr, 1994) and therefore the one-to-one translation of emotion words between languages is not possible (Russell, 1991).
The script hypothesis helps us understand cross-cultural differences in emotions. Languages with fewer emotion categories have more general scripts: Each script will have fewer features and encompass a broader range of phenomena. Conversely, languages with more emotion categories will have more specific scripts: more features and narrower range of phenomena. Moreover, the antecedent causes that lead to a particular emotion can be emphasized more in one culture compared to another. As a result, people can react emotionally to different things in different cultures.

EPA Scale
One of the most popular sociological approaches in studying emotions cross-culturally is Affect Control Theory (ACT), a symbolic interactionist theory developed by Heise (1979Heise ( , 2007 and others (Smith-Lovin & Heise, 1988). This theory is based on the works of Osgood, Suci, and Tannebaum (1957), and Osgood, May, and Miron (1975), who described Evaluation, Potency, and Activity (EPA) as three dimensions along which people respond to all kinds of stimuli. They called them "affective response" because emotional expression varies along these dimensions (Osgood, 1962). Heise used this idea to develop ACT. According to ACT, the discordance between fundamental and transient feelings gives rise to deflection, which produces emotional arousal that can be measured along the EPA dimensions. Fundamental sentiments are culturally established affective meanings about social identities, behaviors, and settings while transient sentiments are feelings about a particular event. One of the great advantages of this approach is that these three dimensions are universal and provide an effective basis for cross-cultural research.
One concern with focusing only on the EPA dimensions of emotions is that it may not reflect all the complexities that are represented by an emotion word. By detailed analysis of the Bengali emotions obhiman and lajja, we will argue how scripts hypothesis helps to understand complexities of emotions that are not captured through the EPA scales.

The Cultural Contexts in Translation Studies
According to skopos theory, translation is an act of communicative interaction (e.g., Snell-Hornby, 1988), rather than a narrow linguistic transfer. In fact, a translational action often aims to achieve a specific communicative purpose. This purpose or skopos shapes the translator's interpretation of the commission, as well as his/her expert judgment on what will serve best in the target culture (Vermeer, 1998). A quality translation is one which is adequate to its purpose and "transmitted in a target-culture adequate way" (Vermeer 1998)-not one which is most alike the source text (unless equivalency to the original is the commission that the translator is seeking to accomplish). Furthermore, House (2006, p. 356) views translation as a process of recontextualization; that is, "taking a text out of its original frame and context and placing it within a new set of relationships and culturally conditioned expectations".
Ultimately, the judge of whether the translation has achieved its purpose is the target audience (Nord, 1997).

Lajja and Obhiman
We study how emotion words of one language map onto emotion words in another language when translation/cultural equivalents may not exist. Lajja embraces emotional experiences which are denoted by the English words shame, embarrassment, shyness, modesty, etc., depending on the pragmatic contexts of the discourse. However, none of these English words exactly express the concept of the emotion word lajja (Parish, 1991;Menon & Shweder, 1994 (2010), "The original meaning was pride, but the current usage-anger, or something close to it, at being upset with a loved one. This one word is one whole chapter in any relationship, be it between lovers or between parents and children or between siblings or friends".
The same article quotes a leading Bengali poet Sankha Ghosh: "Try to translate it. Abhiman is not anger or sorrow. It is a temporary expression of a feeling about a loved one that he or she is supposed to address. People speaking in other languages must also be feeling the sentiment. I wonder how they express it". So, although the original meaning of obhiman has a direct translation equivalent (pride) in English, the modern usage may lack a counterpart in the English vocabulary. However, many other Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi, etc.) have the same concept as it is evident from the films and literature.

Research Questions
In this paper, we investigate the following research questions.
(1) How best can the Bengali emotion words obhiman and lajja be translated in English for the native English speakers whose language does not have exact equivalence linguistic expressions for these emotions, and for the speakers of other Indian languages (e.g., Hindi, Oriya, Marathi, Tamil etc.) that have the equivalent emotion words? The answer to this question will enable us to address the broader issue of whether emotions are universal or culture specific. Therefore, our follow-up research question is: (2) Does scripts approach have advantages over EPA dimensions in cross-cultural research?

Expected Patterns in Data
Ethnographic methods used in the past to study emotion words cross-culturally have been subject to criticisms (Note 2). Parish (1991) and Menon and Shweder (1994) have used ethnographic methods to study lajja (Note 3). Although they argue that the meaning of lajja is different from any emotion word in English, the respondents in these studies had limited or no proficiency in English. Therefore, we are unable to know how bilinguals view lajja. For our study, we introduce a novel approach: comparison of emotion words from source texts (Bengali) with their translated counterparts. Using the same data, we are also studying the Bengali emotion obhiman which unlike lajja has not been previously studied cross-culturally. Although no systematic study has been done, people have hinted at the lack of English equivalent of obhiman (Dutta, 2005;Russell, 1991;The Telegraph, 2010).
Previous work has mentioned that emotions are "language dependent", and language actively constructs and reconstructs emotions (Grayshon, 1975;Searle, 1995, p. 62;Pavlenko, 2002, p. 209;www Panayiotou, 2006). If the number of English words chosen to translate the Bengali words is few and repeated consistently, it suggests that the meanings of the Bengali words are prevalent in English too.
When no exact translation exists for obhiman and lajja, native English speakers and Bengali speakers may show differences in their choice of words when translating. Pattern differences may be possible because each bilingual may be influenced by his/her first language in assigning meanings to words in the second language, resulting in bias (Russell, 1991), or the translators may purposefully want to recontextualize these concepts for their targeted readers whose native language does not have them.
One possibility is that native English speaking bilinguals may find it harder to grasp the concept of a Bengali emotion word if no one-to-one translation exists in English. As a result, they may choose a wider range of English words to translate than native Bengali speakers. The latter group may agree more often and choose fewer English words that are closest in concept to the Bengali words in question.
Furthermore, the purpose or skopos influences the translator's interpretation of the text, as well as his/her expert judgment regarding what will serve best in the target culture (Vermeer, 1998   have chosen all translators from the same era but that would have seriously reduced the amount of data.

Coding
Initially, we separated all the English words used to translate obhiman and lajja into two groups: words solely used by native English speaking translators and words solely used by native Bengali speaking translators. This enabled us to compare translations both between and within the two groups. As mentioned before, obhiman has two meanings in Bengali; the original being pride and the current probably lacking an exact English equivalent. Therefore, it is possible that if translators fail to understand the current meaning they may use pride for translation. We observed whether English speakers were using the word pride more than Bengali speakers during translation.
In the case of lajja, both groups usually translated it as shame. We observed the times translators agreed when shame was used. When they disagreed, what words did they use instead of shame? We also used another category where the translators did not use shame and analysed whether the English and Bengali speakers agreed in their choice of words. Our coding technique helped us to compare how many words the translators used to translate obhiman in contrast to lajja.

Results
Our first step was to see how many times the word pride (or proud) was used out of the 36 instances There are ten instances when the English translators used pride for obhiman, and in nine out of those, Bengali translators have also used pride. Because (with the exception of Drummond) we can see that native Bengali and English speaking translators consistently agree when translating obhiman to pride it is possible to conclude that the script of pride and the original meaning of obhiman are very similar (recall the quote "The original meaning was pride" (The Telegraph, 2010)) (Note 6).
The original and current meanings of obhiman may have some overlap in their scripts. In fact, an array of common words used by both groups of translators is wounded/injured/hurt pride. However, the two groups of translators rarely agreed on the cases in which obhiman should be translated as wounded/injured/hurt pride. Even among the Bengali translators there was no agreement (discussion in more detail in the next paragraph). This lends support to script theory's claim that emotions have fuzzy boundaries. The findings suggest that each emotion word represents a concept (similar to non-emotion words) that varies in breadth (i.e., in the range of events they denote) and in the degree to which it overlaps (Russell & Fehr, 1994, p. 202).
The aforementioned pattern also held for other words that were used in translating obhiman. These include the words hurt, resentment, sulking, self-respect, grievance, offense (Note 7), which are not used at the same time by English and Bengali speakers. For example, when an English translator used the word hurt, a Bengali translator used the word offended. Contrariwise, when a Bengali translator used the word hurt, an English translator used the word disappointment and a second Bengali translator used the word petulance. This shows that while both English and Bengali translators used all these six words to express obhiman, they disagreed on the word to be used for a particular instance. We found the same pattern while looking at the word wounded/injured/hurt pride (Note 8).
Out of the twenty instances when English translators translated obhiman as something other than pride, only three words have been used twice or more. These include wounded/injured/hurt pride (four times), sensitive (twice) and hurt (twice). Twelve words were used only once. Hence, the translators use words only once in twelve out of twenty cases (60%). When we observed the larger sample, we saw that in 62% of the cases (23 out of 37), native English speakers used a word only once (Note 9). In contrast, Bengali translators used an English word in a single instance in only 19% of cases. Bengali translators therefore appear more consistent in expressing obhiman in translation, suggesting that native English speakers found it harder to grasp the concept of obhiman and therefore were less consistent.
Alternatively, perhaps they felt that the attempt is futile for potential readers in whose linguistic and cultural environments the concept of obhiman does not exist.
Aside from pride and wounded/injured/hurt pride, no single word was used by either group of translators more than 15% of the time. still easy to envision that the scripts of hurt and obhiman (current usage) are more different than similar. This is in contrast to pride and the original meaning of obhiman that have a lot more overlapping features in their scripts. While it can now be argued that obhiman (current usage) cannot be successfully expressed in English, does it mean that English speaking monolinguals do not "feel" the emotion? We would analyse the emotion lajja before exploring this question.
It has already been indicated that the emotion word lajja does not have an exact English equivalent (Parish, 1991;Menon & Shweder, 1994). Therefore, our initial expectation was that like with obhiman, between lajja and its English counterparts (Figure 1).

Discussions and Conclusion
In sum, pride and obhiman (original meaning) have major overlaps in their concepts. widely popular because they appear to be pan-cultural. As mentioned above, the ACT position is that affective dynamics determine the affective core of an emotion, but not the naming which must fit the circumstances. Therefore, an alternative way is to view emotions as scripts or concepts with certain features: antecedent causes, beliefs, feelings, physiological changes, desires, overt actions and vocal and facial expressions, and consequences unfolding in a causally connected temporal order (Russell 1991(Russell , 1997. According to Russell, none of these features are necessary or sufficient; some may be limited to a few cultures while others are found almost universally. Obhiman may be closer in meaning to hurt in a particular context, to upset in another, and close to disappointed in yet another. This paper has so far established that the concept of obhiman (current usage) does not have any translation/cultural equivalent with any word in English. Does that mean English speaking monolinguals don't feel the emotion obhiman? Though the question cannot be directly answered with our data (and future studies must provide more details), this paper can shed some light on the debate. A common characteristic of most languages is that some words change their meanings with time. For example, in Japanese, the word utsukushiki meant adorable, but as the word changed its meaning to beautiful, the word kawaii now represents adorable (Yomota, 2006;Burdelski & Mitsuhashi, 2010).
The same phenomenon is also visible for emotion words. Stearns and Stearns (1989) argued that the word temper started to have negative connotations in late eighteenth century and therefore the word temperament came into existence to describe the concept that temper once covered. Similarly, the word tantrum-probably originated from a Welsh corruption of "anthem" (Stearns & Stearns, 1989)-its present meaning came into existence after 1750, because the word anger could not express precisely a particular emotion concept that was strongly felt in Britain due to contemporary cultural changes.
Similarly, obhiman's original meaning was not sufficient to express an emotion and therefore the word may have started being used for a separate emotion concept of hurt pride or hurt (though not exactly so).
If native English speakers had strongly felt the emotion obhiman (the current usage), a new word would have emerged to mean obhiman or at least an existing word would have been used differently to mean it. Our analysis lends support to the claim that the concept represented by a particular emotion word in one language may not be totally captured in another. Therefore, at least some emotions can be culture specific, and not universal. In such cases, the translators must make a well thought out decision to represent the source concept in the target language that can be easily comprehended by the readers of the target speech community; thus not always being faithful to the source concept. We argue that skopos theory (e.g., Snell-Hornby, 1988;Vermeer, 1998) can rescue the translator in such a dilemma.
Additionally, our project cautions on the reliance of using EPA dimensions too heavily in cross-cultural studies and instead encourages viewing emotions as scripts with complex features. As Russell (1997) famously said, our efforts should reveal, not conceal that complexity.