Translation Romani has decided to maintain use of the word Romani in all language versions of this website, inclusively and in reference both to the language and people of all the diverse ethnic communities throughout the world, i.e. Roma, Sinti, Manuš, Calé, Romanichal, Kalé, and many others. Please read the important notes from our translators for explanations and other translations currently in use locally, nationally or regionally.
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And the English translation of this book is "A False Dawn - my life as a Gypsy woman in Slovakia." [Narodila jsem se pod stastnou hvezdou]. I'd like to read a short piece now from the English translation, and this is about how she started to write the play that you've just mentioned.
I was writing in Slovak. It didn't occur to me that I could write differently. But in my head my characters' lines came out in Romani. Whoever heard of a Romany woman getting angry in Slovak because her little daughter had grown up and fallen in love not with a fellow with some steady job, but with some swell of a musician. Those beautiful verbal skirmishes of ours, full of peace and good feeling that I wanted to start my play with couldn't even be translated into Slovak. My husband was starting to get irritated with my efforts, getting angry and saying: 'Give it a rest girl. You can see it's too hard for you, so what are you working yourself up for?' [...]
