Come to terms with this thought

COME TO TERMS WITH THIS

Since I got back from my holiday there’s been a voice in my head saying that I should write a new business comment to help ensure a strong restart to my work – but it’s also true that I’ve now completed my seventh year of translating professionally. What better way to herald that? The place I went to was Malta, which I’ve never been to before; but even so, I have to say that I don’t know what can earnestly be called a great deal about Maltese culture or customs even now (apart from the great siege of Malta in 1565). Or the language. How many people outside of Malta speak Maltese? Oh, what am I saying? English is a national language there anyway!

I think it’s a sensible suggestion that these comments I write reflect me looking at new ideas and matters that matter in relation to what I do, whether they’re well-known or unusual or specialist or mundane (or, indeed, interesting). Now, admittedly, my trip to Malta was a very sedate one – of course, I did fly out to meet my now-retired parents out there – but in retrospect it should have been enough to remind me that the world is bigger than the UK (as if I needed reminding of that considering how much I’ve travelled on holiday, not to mention my Year Abroad at the University of Paris when I was at university) and that there are other cultures and other traditions, which, all things considered, deserve no less (displayed) appreciation and respect than those of my own country.

So there I was out there in a country I’ve never visited before, but I was anything but nervous or intimidated (not least because I was able to spend far more time playing Super Mario on my Nintendo 3DS than actually interacting with the locals or the new environment). And I never spent a second learning Maltese beforehand – seriously, I’ve never actually seen any Maltese language learning products in my life. I couldn’t even actually read it. To think that I’m a renowned linguist and the only Maltese I can remember is “It-tipjip joqtol” (“smoking kills”; seen on cigarette vending machines) and “Il-waqfa li jmiss”(“next stop”; during bus trips). And I don’t even know how you pronounce those. But I’m going to go on / speculate about these quotes anyway (or, in other words, come to terms with them, or try to)…

With the former I got to thinking that “It-tipjip” meant “smoking” and “joqtol” meant “kills”, but that the real “smoking” bit lies in “tipjip” and that the preceding “It-” specifies it somehow; like it signified a transitive verb action, maybe, or it indicated “smoking” as an action that actually was over an extended period of time and not just an action that occurred (started and ended) all in the space of an instant. I don’t know – I don’t speak Maltese; it’s just my open mind, my “‘real’ imagination” at work, if you know what I mean. As for the latter: it’s pure speculation but I think that, while “waqfa” means “next”, the “Il-“ just before it is supposed to be an article for the noun to follow. In other words, not just “next”, but “the next” (not all languages work the same; I’ve been well aware of that for a long time). Meanwhile, the word that means “stop” – the noun, not the verb – is, according to my educated guessing, “jmiss” while the “li” just before it signifies that this noun doesn’t simply denote something on its own but that it is but one of a sequence. And the most fitting translation of “jmiss” may not be “stop” as such but, say, “station” or even “point” (after all, the German expression for “bus stop”, “Bushaltestelle”, translates literally as “bus stop point”).

This is but another reminder that, sometimes, to really understand something in another language it’s necessary to adopt an angle or approach which is wildly alien to you simply because it doesn’t and cannot apply for your own language.

I’ve been to quite a few foreign countries in my life and have always thought I’ve seen French culture reflected in, say, France’s haute cuisine, or the little-known martial art savate; or German culture reflected in, say, Germany’s industry record (certainly its cars) or the public spirit that was shown during the fall of the Berlin Wall; or Spanish culture reflected in, say, bullfighting and the custom of siestas. That’s just a few examples, and casual ones at that. I’ve been to all these countries and more. And while the cultures of all of them may indeed have their merits that warrant universal appreciation (and certainly do get it, to varying extents), perhaps what I haven’t appreciated so readily is how it’s expression of different ways of thinking. Of course it’s not uncommon for one country to place a higher emphasis than another country when it comes to its people adhering to any given positive quality. But what I really want to get at is this: depending on what a country’s tradition really is in essence, you might find yourself surprised at how, when it comes to any particular concept or matter, to them it’s just too significant to be limited to something that’s simply a matter of opinion. Good or bad? Who’s to say? You know, have you already thought, “oh, it depends”? It was only recently that I got to thinking that a “real” culture bears phenomena which suggest a need for a kind of learning which transcends the kind of learning that people agree to pursue merely for the sake of ensuring that they will never have to worry about something again, or to make something strictly “easier” forever. But at the end of the day, no-one knows everything. Maybe, just maybe, there are certain things that only a less intelligent person could realise or say as a memorable quote (I think of Forrest Gump).

I used to think that you could tell the most about someone from what they call what they’re most proud of in life. And it doesn’t have to be particularly “big” or glamorous to be beautiful or admirable (or whatever). Then I got to thinking that, if one is serious about consideration of who they are in society – not just as an individual – then it’s probably this: what they think that people who are not as clever as they think they are, and people who are not as stupid as they are, would agree about them (openly or tacitly? You decide.). Like it or not, a person’s imagination will inevitably have some sort of bearing on who they really are, and this does apply whether they CAN “help” it or CAN’T “help” it. Ideas about people, social policies, relationships and… well, their ideas continue to fuel the debate about what does and doesn’t work, what is right and what’s not right, in any given instance of translation work and rendering messages from one language into another. If you want to translate something challenging, then you will definitely have to come to terms with “things” sooner or later if you’re serious about being correct or just not too dismissive, and I personally don’t know how to come to better terms with these “things” than what you’ve just been reading.

So you see, as monotonous as translation can be sometimes, having access to the Internet means I have no excuse to be that bored or depressed. So if I won’t voice things about language and translation that are just waiting to be voiced, then who will? It is why I write these comments.