"The Burmese are making brilliant signs with brilliant content!”
In the early days of the resistance movement, thousands of Burmese poured out on streets across the country to nonviolently protest the military takeover. For a time the scene had a carnival-like atmosphere, with diverse groups taking part in their own creative ways. This was all put to a sudden end when the military crackdown occurred some weeks later, and the military began shooting people in the head. Back during these days, we were fortunate enough to speak to Brad and May, who had started up a Facebook page which unpacked the memes beginning to appear not just online, but on the very signs that people were holding. In the following excerpt, Brad explains the impetus for founding this page.
“It’s not fake, you just don’t see the Burmese content, which is plentiful, and far more innovative and interesting than the English language content.”
“I saw some Western people criticized the protest signs in the English language that the Burmese protesters were using. This is something I saw multiple times. They said it must be either photoshopped, or it's been staged in some way.
‘Why would the Burmese people be protesting against the Burmese military in the English language? Clearly, it must be fake!’
I responded in a couple of cases saying, ‘It's not fake, you just don't see the Burmese content, which is plentiful, and is far more innovative and interesting than the English language content.’
So the whole idea for our Facebook page ‘Burmese protests memes and signs translated and explained’ came from one of our first posts, which was on ‘The husband and wife roads.’
There were a series of protest signs that long haul truckers had painted on the sides of their trucks. And one of them literally translated to ‘I don't want to go back to driving on husband and wife pan roads,’ and that was absolutely nonsensical to me! So my girlfriend had to explain to me that, first of all, ‘husband and wife’ is actually the name of a snack that's made of two halves of dough fused together. And also there's this sort of dimpled type of pan. So to Burmese speakers, it was immediately obvious what a ‘husband and wife pan’ is. It's the dimpled iron pan that you make this snack in, and saying ‘husband and wife pan road,’ immediately puts people in mind of roads so riddled with potholes that they look like a dimpled iron pan that you would use for street food.
Immediately obvious to the Burmese, even though this is not an existing idiom. This was a new phrase that this trucker had designed to express his concerns as obviously someone who drives a lot. It is basically saying that when the military is in charge, they don't use any of the money that they make to pay for the needs of the people. Like the quality of the roads and lots of other things as well. So if you unpack that little statement, it says so much, right?
And I remember talking to a taxi driver and one of the things he said was, ‘Since the NLD has been elected they've been building roads and they've been paving roads, which was something that was very important and significant to us, a very visible sign of our local government actually investing in infrastructure.’ Despite any other problems that they may have had with the government, it was something that they were really, really, really appreciative of.
The Burmese audience not only understood the imagery and what that snack is, they understand these problems are, as well as the history that the junta has specifically with road maintenance. It took my girlfriend at least half an hour to explain this one sign to me and I just thought that it phenomenal how someone captured that. The Burmese are making brilliant signs with brilliant content!”
