Tongue Tied

This past week has really made me sympathize with language translators.  Generating accurate translations is a lot more difficult than it seems. This is perhaps why electronic translators many times fail to encapsulate and formulate coherent translations. Some hurdles include translating phrases with heavy cultural baggage (i.e. Idioms, history), sometimes having to explain ideas outside of the participant’s knowledge, not knowing vocabulary, trying to explain concepts for vocabulary that doesn’t exist, and keeping in mind cultural and social cues while speaking to either person on each end of the discussion, while attempting to produce sentences with correct grammar and syntax.  I was asked by a French graduate student doing research on black eye beans to help him translate interviews with farmers and collectors in Ambato-boeny (a city near Mahajanga) in the West.  We interviewed union members, independent farmers, government employees, and middle-men. Each interview was very different from the next.  Depending on how technical the language they used was I would at times sit perplexed trying to fill in the linguistic gaps with my own logic. I translated from English to Malagasy and vice versa.  And because English wasn’t the graduate student’s native tongue there were moments when I tried to make sense of his meaning too.  I think of all the literature I’ve read in my life that had been translated from its original language, and wonder to myself how much of the meaning is lost.  Really translation work seems to be a skill that one can always improve at without ever reaching perfection.  Words themselves are packed with meaning, and sometimes their true meaning is lost when translated literally.