Translation: Impossible but necessary

Some people argue that nothing is untranslatable. I find that stance to be very optimistic, but I see evidence that refutes it. It’s one thing to argue that concepts can be explained in any language, but it’s another to say that all languages are equipped to naturally express anything that can occur in another language.

The first example against the universal translation theory is technology. Technology has historically advanced geographically, and terms to express new concepts are the most apparent foreign loanwords. It depends on how you define translation, and where you draw the line between translation and explanation, but you can see how a simple sentence like, “We present to you this computer as an introduction to modern technology,” directed at an isolated aboriginal tribe could be “translated” as, “As observed by the gods, we humbly relinquish this object of rapid mathematical ability and organizational utility as an introduction to tools in the current age.” The debate is on whether expressing the concept of a computer as an “object of rapid mathematical ability and organizational utility” is actually a translation or an explanation. I argue that it’s an explanation, but that the concept could be adopted into the aboriginal language and made translatable in the future. It’s evidence of a lexical gap.

However, simply leaving the concept of translation to just its lexical property is to shortchange the entire process. Incidentally, it’s also the best way to do a terrible job.

The above Italian adage is amusingly self-referential. “Translated”, it means, “The translator is a traitor,” but you might be struck by the absence of one very important characteristic of the Italian original – In English, it loses the echoing play on words. While the meaning might be adequately translated, the sense of the phrase as a whole didn’t quite make it to the other side.

There are plenty of examples like this between all languages. Most apparent are puns, which you’ll often hear someone try to translate but end up tacking on, “…because X in Japanese means both Y and Z.” I’ve tried. Too many times. I always think, “Oh, this pun is great, and I want to tell it to this person. Maybe this time it’ll work!” It never does – The “translation” (explanation) chokes all of the humor that existed in the original.

I don’t believe that you can say anything in any language because that would mean that languages would already be as developed as they would ever need to be. But, actually, that’s what I like about learning languages; that’s what makes learning a new language such a great goal. You can’t express everything in every language, but you can at least try to learn more languages to express yourself in and be exposed to new ways of using language.

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