Next to Math, Filipino was my worst subject in school. Blame it on the prohibitive mentality at home and in an earlier school that speaking the native tongue was "bad and wrong": helpers were forbidden to speak to us in anything other than (somewhat broken) English, we were actually fined for every Tagalog word we spoke on school premises, and my brother and I were planted in front of every episode of Sesame Street (34 years later, he's still its biggest fan).
But I managed to find ways around the restriction - Wakasan komiks nicked from the yayas or rented out at 10 centavos from a nearby store, illicit viewings of old LVN movies and the saga of Flor de Luna, and a keen ear for chismis on the Barros side of the family that had me fully comprehending Ilocano at an early age (a purely auditory skill; I still can't speak it without sounding weird). All that sneaking around did me a whole lot of good when I moved to another school where everyone else spoke Filipino, except that I still struggled with the vocabulary way into the sixth grade ("What do you mean, sirit?").
Unfortunately, my proficiency was limited to conversational Tagalog. To this day, my head swims if you give me more than a paragraph of written Filipino; I hardly made it halfway through Florante at Laura, much less the Tagalog translations of Noli Me Tangere/El Filibusterismo without going into verbal shock.
Which is why it's very strange that I find myself translating written work in English to the native tongue. Anna Liza and all, English is still my first language - I think it, speak it, dream in it, and am more comfortable with it than any other. I can speak straight Filipino - if I were speaking in the streets - but my written grasp of the language still leaves much to be desired. And yet, through all these years of translation, I've been discovering the beauty and expressiveness of the Filipino tongue, which captures so much of the soul of its speakers.
I suppose I underestimate my proficiency in artistic expressions of Tagalog. Now that I think of it, I wrote numerous scenes for radio and TV broadcast at the College of Mass Communication, not to mention sketches for the long-running LIVE A.I.D.S. series in my SAMASKOM days. I also wrote a short play, entirely in Tagalog, as a requirement for the last class I attended before qualifying for my undergraduate degree: a modern parody of the Noli's Donas Victorina and Consolacion duking it out in the afterlife, staged at the Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero theater and performed by cast members of the UP Repertory. My PI 100 prof, Jess Ramos, loved it so much that he even requested my permission to have it re-staged for a Rizal conference; I still can't believe I could have written something so socially incisive yet entertaining (I've never bothered to keep tabs on the copyright of these works; the play might still be out there, just like the Utol scene I wrote which is allegedly still being used by UP Broadcasting majors almost 20 years from when I first wrote it for a TV production class).
Much later, even in law school, Filipino writing jobs still presented themselves. In my senior year, now-Senator then-plain-old-Kiko Francis Pangilinan had me write and produce his legal segments for the daily TV show Hoy Gising!, all entirely in Tagalog and masa/sub judice-friendly legalese.
Fast-forward to several years later, when mission work for the He Cares Foundation had me not only reading the Gospel in Tagalog, but preaching it as well. Plus there was the unbelievably time-consuming job (up to 11 hours for a wedding!) of translating the Liturgy into reader-friendly Filipino for Father Steve Tynan, every Saturday for almost two years.
Today, I still do a lot of translating work - mainly for the Augustinian Recollects through my good friend Father Boyax (apparently their Bisaya/Ilonggo is much better than their Tagalog skills; on the other hand, my Tagalog is far better than my Bisaya - again, another auditory language skill picked up from my father's side of the family, murag). I've done the translation of two videos for them, and just now wrapped up another on the life of St. Ezekiel Moreno. Also in the works (a long overdue project, my apologies) is a translation of the late Senator Raul Roco's book of quotations, commissioned by his wife Sonia. Religion and politics, translated in the style of Honey Oliveros. Kinda awesome, huh?
My TWT partner J and I have discussed plans of turning the tables and actually translating Filipino films to English; that would be even more awesome. TWT has also inspired me to study alibata (our logo is written as such), the native pre-Hispanic script of the islands, which is as beautifully written visually as it is verbally. And the beautiful Filipino language has me constantly fascinated as, in my translations, I've found (in my trusty English-Filipino dictionary) some gorgeously profound words I've never even heard before like tudlaan (target) and satsat (tonsure), as well as more than one really great word for "result": kinauwian, humantong, nagdulot etc. One of my favorite Filipino words that I prefer over the Spanish variant: sansinukob (universe). Root words: san/isang (all/one), sukob (encompassing, sheltering) - an all-encompassing, all-sheltering ONE. Gorgeous. The things you find in translation are pretty cool.
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