Te Haumihiata Mason - a linguist, translator, lecturer, and tutor of te reo Māori - was meant to be retired, but her career continues with her recent appointment to the Board of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori.
To see if she was up for the role, The Hui host Julian Wilcox put her reo to the test in a quickfire round of translating famous English sayings to reo Māori.
Wilcox: “Do or do not, there is no try.” [A quote from Yoda in Star Wars]
Mason: “Mahia te mahi, hei aha noa iho rānei.”
Wilcox: “There are none so blind as those that cannot see.” [A quote from English Writer, John Heywood.]
Mason: “Kāore he kanohi pura, atu i te kanohi kāre e pīrangi kite. Koirā pea te tikanga.”
Wilcox then quoted a famous line from the Shakespearean story ‘Romeo and Juliet’, a play that Mason has famously translated into reo Māori.
She said when translating something from English to Māori, it should be what it means, not a direct translation.
“Ko te nuinga o te hunga e whakamāori ana i te kōrero Pākehā, e kī ana, ‘wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Ko te nuinga e whakamāori ana i te ‘Kei hea koe?’ Kao. Ehara koina te tikanga o te kōrero. Ko te kōrero kē e pātai ana, ‘he aha koe i tapaina ai ko Rōmeo?’”
Mason is responsible for te reo Māori translations of other works, such as Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl.
Te reo Māori comes easily to the new Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori board member as she grew up speaking it, and she also went to the University of Waikato in her 30s to earn her Bachelor of Arts in education and te reo Māori.
While speaking to Wilcox, she shared some encouraging words to aspiring Māori language speakers.
“Āe kia kaha tātou. Ahakoa te mea e ako ana tātou, e whai ana tātou. Ko te reo Māori tētahi. Kāre e oti i te tekau tau, i te rua tekau tau, i te toru tekau tau. Mutunga kore ērā mahi. Te whai i te reo.”
Watch the full story from The Hui in the video above.
