Translating Identity?

The main purpose of language, the one that is obvious constantly, on every single day of our lives, is communication. With different nations, with different people – well, and some would probably add the communication with themselves (sometimes quite an underestimated branch). While we as translators do our best to enable communication among cultures and to decipher produced texts and speeches for the ones who do not know the source language, how much of „identity“ are we translating? Or maybe not even translating, but taking away, adding and changing?

Language can unite people and it can divide people. This is the case not only due to different vocabularies and ways of expressing our thoughts, but it can also be the purposeful and conscious emphasis of one’s identity or distinctiveness from others through language.

According to Joanna Thornborrow there are four kinds of identity:

• Master identities (stable and unchanging: gender, ethnicity, age, …)
• Interactional identities (roles taken on in communicational contexts with specific other people)
• Personal identities (characteristic ways of behaviour: hotheaded, honest, forthright,…)
• Relational identities (kind of relationship enacted with a particular conversational partner or in a specific situation)

If we take a closer look, all of these identities produce a different use of language, as well as we can knowingly choose a use of language incongruent with our identity in order to hide our true self.

Imagine a middle-aged average citizen from central Europe. He is shy and not very sociable. His parents taught him to speak in a noble manner, never curse and always speak politely and in a calm, firm tone. In a new surrounding, he decides to start his life all over again. And he starts to use a language full of the newest expressions, swearwords, and to speak his mind – no matter what the sound of that might be. And – just to be a bit more exotic, he adds an African accent. He might still wear his woolen pullover with a red-nosed reindeer, but probably you would rather think his clothes to be a disguise than his language. So, if you are translating – be it a text or a spoken word – where is the dictionary that gives you a sense of that identity, of the true image you should be delivering? Usually we have our routine vocabularies, words and phrases we use with our own identity in our own life. As a translator there are cases, when we need to have the ability to put ourselves in the position of someone else – be it a function, a character in a play, or a real person. For interpreters that might sometimes even come close to acting – using a language and ways of behavior we usually do not, and maybe even cannot, identify with.

What can a translator support or mess up if he or she does not possess the necessary sensitivity for the nuances of human behaviour and, thus, language? Certainly, the character in a book or film can become a completely different person – maybe even loose its purpose – if the language use is changed. If Eliza Doolittle in „My Fair Lady“ would speak standard language, or make only slightly less mistakes in grammar and pronunciation, the whole story would loose its purpose and wit. Mr. Higgins would not even have to be in it. The identity of characters, thus, is a huge aspect of language use and its translation. 

The correct delivery of the identity of a speaker mirrored in his/her language use is an important factor in business meetings as well. A business man speaking using very elevated language emphasizing his elevated position cannot be taken as serious when his speech is translated with simple and unidimensional expressions. That is, his intended image of an appreciated intellectual will not be as clear when the translation misses out aspects of identity. An uneducated person at a court trial, on the other hand, might get a different treatment and the case might be considered differently than if an elevated, or at least very correct and precise language would be used.

After all, the question is whether a translator should have his own translating identity or whether he should be translating identity. Should translators pick one type of language use he always goes for, or should he be able to change his/her own language use in dependency of the identity of the speaker/charakter? 

Translators need to be flexible speakers. Whichever language use they are translating, they need to assume part of the identity in question and to stick to it throughout their translation. Doing a bit of research on the different types of language use in advance wouldn´t hurt. Sometimes it might cost quite an effort to withhold one’s own identity during the translation process.

In the end, this is one of the fascinating aspects of translating. In no other professional field you get the chance to dip into so many different areas of life, circumstances people find themselves in, ways of interaction than you do when observing others in order to translate their language – their identity.

Robots, translation and metaphor

We are living in times of constant change and mechanisation of every possible area of life. Books are replaced by Kindles, organs by 3D-prints, vacuum cleaners by robots and cashiers by automatic cash desks. Do translators need to worry?

Recently I had a conversation with a professor dealing with Artificial Intelligence that I cannot get off of my mind. It was certainly a queer encounter – a young Jane-Austen admirer adoring letters and old books that make you sneeze of dust when you approach them and an elderly professor adoring Artificial Intelligence and everything it provides humanity with. What began as a superficial pro- and con-discussion, quickly evolved into a consideration of the aspects of language that make it truly human and that might be irreplacable by any machine.

Machines have a seemingly unlimited capacity to learn new words, phrases and even whole contexts. In the near future, there will be robots teaching classes, nursing seniors and conducting consultations. But will there be robots completely replacing translators? I bet not. I bet not, because I want to believe in a human language that is resistant to technological progress. Facebook, Twitter and chatrooms actually lead to an approximation of our everyday language to a language that might be used by machines without larger barriers. Nevertheless, even though we are breaking down language to a minimum through these ways of communicating, we are still using aspects of language that, I believe, a machine can never be able to recognize.

There is at least one prominent stylistic device that might be truly resistant to mechanisation: metaphor. A metaphor is the transfer of characteristics of one area of reality to another. When we use metaphors like „He rolled the dice“ (in the sense of „take a chance“), we are giving away a lot of additional information about our mental structure, about our culture and our attitude. This metaphor would not be used in a culture where gambling is forbidden, it could be meant ironically and in some contexts it might as well be a literal statement. Well, one could say that one day machines will have such a huge pool of contexts, cultural information and nuances of meaning at hand that they will pick the right meanings for common metaphorical expressions and idioms. One thing that will be impossible for machines to grasp are creative metaphors. Imagine a conversation between a robot and a human:

„My dog really has a hard time deciding whether to destroy the pillow or the ball.“

„H-e w-i-l-l m-a-k-e u-p h-i-s m-i-n-d.“

„Well, on the one paw he really hates that pillow and the flowers on it. On the other paw, the ball should be stopped from rolling away from him.“

„---„

A robot cannot recognize the transfer of the phrase „on the one hand…on the other hand“ to the animal world and will not be able to make any sense of what he heard. A human being would probably answer with another humorous comment, or at least understand what was said. And there is another aspect that would be lost through robot communication – humour. How should a machine understand irony and comments that are not literal and how should a machine even produce something like that? And further, what would a life without humour and unpredictable conversations be?

Humour, irony, metaphor – all these non-literal uses of language are tools for expressing human emotions and attitudes. A robot can be programmed to sort and recognize these, but he can never truly understand and reenact them. In order to translate texts and utterances, every nuance and facet of the background of the message must be understood and felt. Even human translators are good translators only if they have a sense of style and fine-grained differences and if they are acquainted with the culture of the speaker/writer.

Culture-specific concepts are, even amongst human interlocutors, a very sensitive issue. Some are universal – happiness is in all cultures seen as an upwards movement. When it comes to the center of emotion in our body, things look different. In the Iranian culture, the liver is the seat of emotion – we don’t „fall in love“ and feel this in our heart, rather we „fall liver onto someone“. A machine would, thus, need to be able to 1. recognize the culture the interlocutor comes from and 2. know all cultural concepts manifested in the language.

Besides that, there are plays and literary pieces to be translated, including names and sceneries that need to be adapted to the target culture. A machine cannot have the sensitivity for finding the adequate equivalents to these expressions in a target language.

All in all, it seems impossible to replace human translators. If they do not implant a real brain in a robot and a heart (or a liver) for the reception of emotional waves, it will never be possible for machines to fully replace a human language specialist. It seems as if some aspects of humanity will just stay human.

Just a thought...

Sometimes your head is just so full of thoughts and images and memories that you can´t think anymore. You feel the urge to write something down, to think something through and it´s just not working. It´s like your thoughts are always one step ahead of your brain and all that stays palpable is their color. That´s where it really helps to read good books. Because if you´re lucky, you find thoughts in them you can hold on to.
I recently discovered such a book that was recommended to me by a dear friend (which actually means I didn´t discover it myself after all).
One sentence really stuck in this chaos and haze of adult life: "Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending" (Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts)
What would it be like to really stick to that thought? And to celebrate every minute as a short story. Wouldn´t that elevate our experiences to celebrations of complete awareness and make us live our lives really to the fullest? Even if it were short stories without a happy ending - they are valuable, too. I find myself sometimes rushing through life so much that I start having déjà-vus. I guess that is because I have not processed the moments with awareness and indulgence.
I admit, celebrating every minute might get a bit exhausting. But at least, it makes a difference to think about it. And to try to cherish our time. And the people we spend it with.