Social Literacy and Translation

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SOCIAL LITERACY AND TRANSLATION

I am eager to challenge the idea that, as a professional translator, I live in a bubble when I am doing my work in my office (or rather, the study at where I live). And I remember how happy and proud I was to post my blog on what I called “situational awareness” in connection with translation, which featured a project involving a Welsh children’s story, way back on 3rd April 2018. If nothing else it certainly represented an exercise in a certain kind of independent thought that I regard as highly conducive to good translation work. Yet today I would redefine this as “the art of credible situational interpretation / literacy”. And, in retrospect, it didn’t do enough to consider the topic of actual social literacy. Needless to say, I’m determined for things to be different with this blog. I’ve already touched on it in one of my latest tweets, the one with a link to Gary Orsum’s video “Bananagate”.

In any case, for better or worse, I’m now going to tell a joke which is likely to raise eyebrows (a joke which is not my own):

“Trump is boasting that the US has the highest rate of black employment since records began. I think he means since they started being paid.”

Now, I don’t think me simply suggesting that people can have good reasons to be unsympathetic toward people of a certain race or religion, makes me a racist; and I say that this joke is not racist. To me, the only reason one might suggest that it is, is because it refers to the time when blacks were slaves in the USA – nothing wrong with that, whether you’re black or not – while specifically lacking any direct mention of sympathy towards black people in connection with the same. That is irrational, and yet we have no reason for not knowing that being called a “racist” is far worse than any banal inconsiderate insult that can be casually dismissed, since it is a shaming, shunning word that can tarnish a person’s reputation whether it is true or not. This joke doesn’t actually condone or glorify the slavery of black people, hence it is not racist.

So why did I bring it up in the first place? To make the point that exactly how this joke will be interpreted – “racist” or not, “unacceptable” or not – depends on culture, or the prevailing attitudes of whatever peer group (whether or not it has any term of designation) it’s told to, depending on how you want to look at it. Remember the carry-on over the blackface incident involving the Canadian Prime Minister? When made to apologise for it, he was judged on his own standards, and that’s fine, but like him or not, he had nothing to apologise for (maybe some petty sheepish embarrassment, but nothing shameful). He’s not a racist. There’s no way he meant to imply that blacks are less worthy of basic consideration and recognition than other races (and why would they be?). Politicians are only racist if they regard those of another race as inferior for no other reason than, essentially, “because it’s OK”, for no reason which can be substantiated by any kind of common sense logic worth the name. In such instances, the ongoing question of whatever they want or don’t want always takes precedence over interest in recognising those of another race for who they really are as opposed to who they think they “should” be and overly solidified “typical” ideas about what can only be expected from them. Normally when people stereotype others, it tends to be only for the sake of the kind of cheap humour that tends to be afforded far more attention than it’s actually worth (such as the popularity of mimicking Chinese speech – poorly – by saying “ching chong”), but even if it really does reflect someone’s undeserved wilful ignorance of other people considering the context, there’s hardly ever any element of some sort of attempt at aggressive imposition, and that’s the difference.

Maybe, just maybe, I lacked empathy while I was growing up, although I was diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was very young. Google defines “empathy” as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” – empathy in itself is not feeling for someone out of emotion such as sympathy. It is possible to be heartless and evil and have empathy, but ultimately the question is how one acts on it. In any case, I used to always think of the opposite of “happy” as sad, but all too often it’s not so much sad as angry. And it may be induced by confusion, frustration or disappointment brought on by a sense of injustice rather than an act that is obviously meant as an affront. When you read that, do you start to consider that maybe it’s possible for someone to be angry without realising it? Because if that is true, it sounds frightening. For the record, I know what Zersetzung (as in the tactic employed by the secret police of former East Germany) is. And I have started considering that indifference, which tends to suggest ignorance as we all know, is one of the easiest things to feign, if not the easiest. It begs the question of one’s personal interpretation of the word “respect”, however important they may claim respect to be. I’m not going to provide examples of what I consider polite or rude (or neither), because a debate about such a topic could last for hours, but I will state this: at the end of the day, how can one expect social cohesion to exist without respect? If we considered a scenario in which disrespect was actually rewarded openly (the reason doesn’t matter): whatever the people in this scenario were like, just how long would the situation last?

But what of the connection between social literacy and translation? Right now you should be wondering how I can relate social literacy to language and linguistics at all. You should be asking the question “Is what I call social literacy actually conducive to good translation work?”, and I say “yes”. Well, a given culture, whatever it may be, can, nay will, be shaped by biased and ignorant use of PBAs out of context. Think about it – don’t you agree? Don’t you agree that this act is capable of leading to embarrassment or offence or division between (even within) communities and allowing the development of a situation which people (including the people who use PBAs in ignorance) don’t even understand? It has the potential to give rise to errors in understanding, and in translation, in all but name.

I’m keen to end this blog with a tale of my realisation of something related to something I read / heard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu88qaHcqSk In this letsplay video (look it up if you have to) of the computer game Watch Dogs, this guy has reached the point where Aiden plans to have himself arrested and he tells Jordi about it (go to 11:00). You can see for yourself that, during this conversation, Jordi tells Aiden about a guy who is “begging to settle his debt” (11:45). We never know anything about this guy (including his name) or the particulars of the debt, but it doesn’t matter. I completed Watch Dogs a long time ago but what I’m about to tell you is something I only concluded shortly before I actually started writing this blog. What I concluded is, if you’ve played the game and you know what kind of character Jordi is, if you think he’s being kind to this unnamed guy with the opportunity he grants him here, he’s mostly likely being sarcastic when he says he’s “begging to settle his debt” – the situation is likely such that he could easily kill this guy who owes this debt if he wanted to and think nothing of it, and he knows this. While the particulars are never known and can only be imagined (and they don’t actually matter in any way at all to the person playing the game) I can believe quite easily that the guy has, in reality, been trying to avoid paying back his debt and Jordi understands this – he may be a sociopath but he’s not stupid. To me this indicates an improvement in my own understanding of someone’s thinking and intentions even if they are never mentioned, and, by extension, my own social literacy.