THOUGHTS
Language shapes the way we see the world. The language we speak is like an explorer's toolkit: it gives us little magnifying glasses and brushes, cameras with different zooms and filters.
I studied this in university from different, if less poetic, angles. In cognitive science, we saw studies showing that the way a police officer asks questions in interrogations can condition the response. For example, “at what speed were the cars going when they smashed into each other” will elicit higher speed values than “at what speed were the cars going when they bumped each other.”
In anthropology, we saw cultures that didn’t have numbers. Instead, they spoke of quantities as relative to each other (more/less) and saw how that shaped their interactions and their notion of time. Franz Boas claimed the Innuit had over 50 words for snow.
Lesson learned: language shapes the way we see the world.
“Untranslatable” words
I bought a book recently called “Lost in translation”. It’s an illustrated collection of words from around the world that “can’t be translated.” As a person who lives in constant translation and loves to illustrate, I was hooked. I spend most of my time speaking in Spanglish because, yes, that’s how my brain works, but also… pulling words from both languages allows me to be more precise, to say different things than if I was just limited to one.
The book has 49 words, some in languages I know, some in languages I don’t, that allegedly have no translation. In other words, there’s no direct translation: translating them requires multiple words to describe the feeling, situation, or action that the word represents.
In Portuguese, there is a word, just one word, to describe the act of tenderly running one’s fingers through the hair of a person you love. Cafuné. If you run it by Google Translate it doesn’t translate. A little digging will give you “gentle head rub”, which seems to fall short.
In Swedish, there is a word, just one word, to describe the act of getting together for coffee and something sweet to take a break from routine and chat for hours. If you run it by Google Translate it says: coffee, which again seems to fall short of the concept. Fika.
In Japanese, there is a word, just one word, to describe the light that filters through the tree leaves. Komorebi.
In Dutch, there is a word, just one word, to describe the intimate, cozy, warm feeling you get when spending time with your loved ones. Gezellig.
In Korean, there is a word, just one word, to describe the subtle art of listening and calibrating another person’s mood. One word to describe the ability gained after knowing a person for some time that lets you tell if a certain look reflects anxiety or annoyance. Nunchi.
In Arabic, there is a word, just one word to describe the act of staying up late; having a good time with your friends. Samar.
We don’t know that we don’t know
I’ve flipped through the words and descriptions in the book multiple times. It got me thinking about how language shapes the way we see things and how we write about them. When we read novels and poems by authors from different nationalities, how much of what we chuck up to style has to do with style, and how much of it has to do with the concepts from their native tongue.
When we read a novel and admire how the writer describes the way the moon is reflected on the water on a cold winter’s day, is that something they thought to mention because there’s a word in their language that describes just that? In the first novels I read by Japanese authors, I was surprised by how they included and described some of the “quiet” moments in their characters’ lives. They have these postcards of the characters sitting on a park bench, or looking out the window. I wonder how many of those descriptions were translations from words like boketto: The act of gazing vacantly into the distance without a thought. I don’t mean to take credit from the writer’s pen. I just mean that if they have more words for that form of contemplation, it makes sense that it would be something they notice, right? Whereas I would see it in the translation and think, how original to describe that!
You don’t know what you don’t know, and one could go crazy thinking of the things we don’t “see” because we don’t have the words for it. I’m not trying to go crazy.
In the intro of the book, the author says (and forgive me for I am translating) “For me, making this book has been more than a creative process. It has made me consider human nature in a completely new way, and now I find myself recognizing these nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the people I see on the street. I see boketto in the eyes of an old man sitting by the sea, and I recognize the resfeber** that takes over my friends’ hearts as they get ready to embark on a journey. I hope this book helps you to find parts of yourself you had lost. I hope it brings beautiful memories or lets you turn into words those ideas and feelings that you couldn’t express clearly before.”
I like the idea that the “untranslatable” words let her see new things, different things. In the exercise of translating the untranslatable words, we learn new ways of seeing things.
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