Show Me A Story
Visual Language as Collaborative Storytelling in a Multilingual World
“I can’t language anymore!” said my roommate one night after using several false-friends (when words sound and are written similarly in two languages but the meanings are different) in a row at the end of a whole day studying. She was born in the US to Brazilian parents and moved to Brazil after learning how to write and read in English; I was born in Brazil, studied English from the age of six, and learned French and Spanish in my teen years. In short, our conversations are never in one language.
This is a common behaviour between bilinguals: we scramble between languages because certain words (even if they do exist in Portuguese and English) don’t mean exactly the same thing — they don’t convey the exact feeling you need for that moment. Umberto Eco tackled this idea in his book Translation as Negotiation (2003), where, as a translator, you face diverse obstacles to reach the final text. It is the choice between meaning or literal translation, and sometimes it is the complete lack of a word or sentence that can serve as a proper transcription. Because language is the reflection of a culture’s vision of the world.
Even inside one language you have variants. Easy examples are the difference between Spanish speakers around Latin America; the American versus the British English; or the weird gap between Portuguese spoken in Portugal and Brazil. They are different because of the cultural and historical differences that gave words variable meanings between groups of people. These differences within each language might be a bump in the road between two native speakers, but what happens when it’s between a native and a second speaker? Or even between two second language speakers?
I started my research with these questions as well as with an observation: in our globalized world English is preached as the language of access. Speaking it “means” you can get the best education, life, and opportunities. Even participating in the online world, you tend to follow that pattern as W3Techs shows a statistic that from the whole web 52.2% is content in English. To be part of the “global village” you have to be speaking a common language: English.
But if language is how a society views the world, having everyone using only one language diminishes other cultures and interpretations — intentional or unintentionally. And if translating is a process that includes hurdles and constant negotiation, it complicates even more the act of communication by having more and more people translating their lives constantly, but not being aware of it. My English is then, very different from your English.
How do we diminish the loss of meaning in translation? How can we talk to each other in a way that allows for context and connotation to be maintained? I set out to try to answer these questions, looking to the digital revolution as a means for it. More access to technology means more individuals are connected and interacting using social media. Would it be possible to create a platform where conversation can happen between users that speak different languages?
That’s how Show Me A Story came to be. A platform proposal, in which the user can create a story using pictures, by means of adding and changing their order. While developing it, I found interesting patterns that led me to consider if we, as internet users, already talk in a universal visual language: e.g. Instagram tag system that curates pictures similarly to an exhibit; similarities between YouTube channels aesthetics (even if their audience speaks different languages); or the different life cycles of a meme on Tumblr and Twitter.
However, the main takeaway of my research were the contradictions within the proposal.
Having visuals be the main language of communication for Show Me A Story, equated to choosing between ambiguity, and certainty. Pictures are vague whereas words are precise. Or so we think. Boris Kossoy writes in his book, Realidades e Ficções na Trama Fotográfica (1999), that “Photography connects physically to its reference — an inherent condition to its representation system — however, it does so across a cultural, aesthetic and technical lens, articulated in the imaginary of its creator” (My translation from Portuguese). On one hand, his argument negates the idea that photography is able to give ambiguity and more context than the written word. Yet, interpreting the same statement, we can argue that by giving power to minorities, they can produce their own narratives with their “cultural, aesthetic and technical lens.” The question then becomes: will they be heard in the sea that is the internet?
Darcy Ribeiro’s Civilizational Theory (1968) offers an idea of what might be happening. In it, he presents the notion of historical incorporation and modernization when societies in different stages of their technological advancements interact. He does not believe that every society follows a linear path that will end in the same development.On the contrary: each group adapts to their social and economic surroundings. When a group has to interact with another with a different level of technical advancement, they tend to be incorporated by the stronger social force, or modernize in a fast pace because of the knowledge acquired.
Applying this notion to the digital environment and cultural globalization of today, we could actually be seeing different levels of incorporation and modernization happening simultaneously. I now wonder if collaboration platforms might help us understand the effects the mainstream culture has globally. And if so, can visual language be used as a thermometer to measure levels of incorporation and modernization?
