Translation - fast and slow

We live in an age of instant information. Has a major event happened somewhere in the world? In the twinkling of an eye it is streamed, tweeted and live-tickered to every corner of the globe. Has a war broken out? A volcano erupted? A plane crashed? A ship stranded in the Suez Canal? We know it within minutes. We call this “real time”.

This strange realm of “real time” is also the land of instant coffee, fast food, real-time stock prices, express deliveries and just-in-time logistics. Its followers sometimes claim that “time is money”. This is the fertile ground in which the dream of instant automatic translation takes root and grows. Services such as Google Translate, DeepL and others are immensely popular, and it is claimed that the vast majority of language translation which is done in the world today is carried out by “machine translation”.

Is there an alternative to this expectation of an instant culture? I am reminded of a character in the epic novel and film trilogy “Lord of the Rings”. Treebeard looks like a tree but can move about, he is a “tree-herder” or “Ent”. In the book and film he explains his idea of communication to the hobbits:
“You must understand that it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say“.
That contrasts sharply with our impatient and short-lived culture. It is worth remembering some pioneer translators who took a long time to complete major translation projects.

Saint Jerome (Hieronymus)

Jerome lived and died over 1600 years ago. He was a priest in the Catholic church, but today he is better known for his translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Latin. This project, the Vulgate, took 17 years from 382 to 405, and during this period he lived in Bethlehem - in the country where the language of the original texts was spoken. He is commemorated in a wood carving in the crypt of the Church of the Nativity and a statue outside the Church of St. Catherine, which I photographed in Bethlehem in 2017.

Jerome died on 30th September 420 in Bethlehem. This day is now celebrated each year as International Translation Day. Many modern translators can relate to Jerome’s international biography. He was born in an area north of the Adriatic Sea (now in Croatia or Slovenia) and later spent time in Rome, Antioch (Syria), Jerusalem and Alexandria (Egypt). He moved to Bethlehem when he started his monumental translation. This helped him to learn the language of the original manuscript better, because he had to use it regularly in everyday life. Many modern translators also live in the country of their acquired language. I am one of them: I come from England but have been settled in Germany for very many years. And Jerome’s perseverance, working on a single translation project for many years, is also something that many translators can sympathise with.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther lived in Germany from 1483 to 1546. He is perhaps best known for his role in the Reformation and for the founding of the Protestant church in Germany. But he is also remembered as a translator. His German translation of the Bible was widely published, and it is still used in a revised form today. Luther’s translation even influenced the development of the modern German language. He did much of the translation work while he was in hiding at Wartburg Castle near Eisenach.

Luther was determined to translate the Bible into the language of the common people. This drew criticism from some conservative scholars of the time, and in 1530 he wrote the “Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen”, a letter in which he justified his work and explained his methods. For example:

“In my translation I have taken great care to write pure and clear German. We often had to spend a fortnight or three to four weeks searching for a single word, and even then we sometimes didn’t find it. We should not use Latin ideas when we speak German, we should ask mothers at home, children on the street, the common man on the market. We need to listen to them and learn how they speak. Then we should translate so that they will understand it.”

As translators today, we have on-line and off-line resources which Jerome and Luther could not imagine even in their wildest dreams. Sometimes our tools can help us to translate texts far more quickly. But sometimes we, too, need to take our time, explore the subject matter of our texts and search for creative ways to convey the content of the original. As Treebeard said in the Lord of the Rings:
“We never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say“.

Dear translation colleagues, is the content of our translation projects really worth taking a long time to say?

Babel in reverse?

In many countries around the world, this Sunday (12th June) is celebrated as Whit Sunday, and in some places Whit Monday is a public holiday - and a day off work for employees in many business companies. So it is an important date in the calendar. But if you ask what is actually being celebrated, most people, even in churches, are lost for words.

The first "Whitsun" was the very opposite. In a spontaneous gathering in first century Jerusalem, which was rather like a "flash mob", the confusion of languages which originated in Babel was overcome, at least for a short time. The story can be found in the New Testament (Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2):

They (the believers) were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak. There were Jews living in Jerusalem, religious men who had come from every country of the world. When they heard this noise, a large crowd gathered. They were all excited, because each one of them heard the believers speaking in his own language. In amazement and wonder they exclaimed: "[...] All of us hear them speaking in our own languages about the great things that God has done!" Amazed and confused, they kept asking each other, "What does this mean?" (Acts 2:4-7, 11-12, Good News Bible)

What happened?

The city was full for a Jewish religious festival. The visitors and residents were ethnic Jews and were there for the festivities, which were conducted in Hebrew. Some of the people in the city actually lived in other countries and spoke other languages. The text gives a list of the languages represented, citing 14 or 15 different languages or language groups. But almost all of the speakers of these languages probably spoke Hebrew too, at least as a second language, because they obviously kept their ties with their ethnic home country, otherwise they would not have come to Jerusalem for the festival. And although they had different primary languages, they were still able to communicate with each other about the surprising events they were witnessing. This discussion, and the public speech by the Apostle Peter which followed, were presumably in Hebrew - and without any miraculous translation.

Was it really necessary?

The New Testament narrative portrays a language miracle, a reversal of the events at Babel which I commented on in an earlier blog post. But what was the point of this miracle?

●   It apparently did not happen during Peter's subsequent speech. The message about Jesus was evidently not conveyed by a language miracle, it was conveyed in Hebrew, and the listeners were able to understand and respond.

●   The people in the crowd were able to discuss the events among themselves without a language miracle.

●    The language miracle came at the start of the flash meeting, when it seems all of the believers were speaking at the same time. They must have been pretty loud, because it was the noise that attracted the crowd. It was only after the crowd had gathered that some of the listeners started saying, "Hey, that's my home language! How come you speak that language?"

 ●   We are not told in detail what was communicated by the miracle. We are told that the believers spoke of "the great things that God has done", but the detailed explanation was then given by Peter in a separate speech, presumably in Hebrew.

So although this event was a language miracle and had an influence on the way the message was received by the crowd, its real significance seems to lie elsewhere - not just in getting the message across.

And this brings me to another observation on the way language works.

The credibility gap

This blog post is difficult for some to believe. When I speak about a language miracle, I am convinced that it is possible. To me, this is a logical consequence of my faith in God. Perhaps some of my readers do not agree. In itself, that is not a problem. I am sure that we are mature enough to differ without any hard feelings. But our differences also have a linguistic element.

When I speak about my faith, listeners who do not believe in God can understand the words, but they may find it difficult to grasp what I am talking about. Sometimes it even seems as if we can't communicate at all.

Similarly, if you tell me about the joys of deep sea diving, some listeners may feel the exciting ripple of water on the skin and the joy of seeing the many life forms that live under water. But the only message I receive is the claustrophobia of the diving mask and the fear of getting water in my nose.

Our experience of the world influences the way we "understand" language, and differences in our subjective make-up can interfere with our objective ability to comprehend what another person is saying. So when I talk about my belief in God, more than just linguistic ability is necessary to "receive" the message.

The view from the inside

As a linguist, I am curious about the phenomenon of "speaking in tongues" (which is the jargon term for speaking in unknown languages). This phenomenon still happens today, and sometimes I hear such unknown languages used by others, sometimes I use this phenomenon myself as a style of prayer. I do not know whether my own prayers in "tongues" are ever in an identifiable language. I have heard reports of such prayers being identified as specific languages (including a report from someone close to me), but usually I simply do not know. And if I try to analyse the sounds made, this somehow detaches me from the prayer. I can pray in "tongues" or I can analyse - but not both at once. And it is always my choice - this form of prayer is not compulsive or involuntary.

Language as a mystery

I regard language itself as a mystery and a miracle. This post simply explores one facet of this mystery. There is much more that could be said - so feel free to add other aspects in the comments

Still building Babel?

Image courtesy of FreeBibleIllustrations.com

Licensed under Creative Commons

It is rather ironic. The word “Babel” and the closely related place name Babylon are used again and again in the translation world as a watchword for projects to help communication between different languages. In his novel “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, Douglas Adams invented the “Babelfish”, a little creature that is placed inside the ear and enables the wearer to understand every language, even from remote planets in other parts of the Galaxy. The Babylon software is less ambitious - it claims to translate between 75 languages, offering both full text translation and a wide range of bilingual dictionaries. Even more modest is Yahoo's translation engine “Babel Fish”. It supports a mere 13 languages.

The original Babel narrative, on the other hand, was a story of communication failure. It was also a story of an era of upheaval and change, with exciting technological innovations and great social and political ambition. Rather like our contemporary age. But first it is worth referring to the original.

Genesis 11:1-9 (New International Version)

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastwards, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel - because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there, the Lord scattered them over the earth.

Technological innovation

The new city was to be built with new materials. Brick and asphalt instead of stone and mortar. This was a new technological development which apparently offered greater flexibility and stability for the built environment. The people of Babel were excited about technical progress. They seem to have thought: “Our technology is so advanced compared with previous generations. We can do whatever we want to because of the inventions that we can draw on. We can build a whole city, and the central landmark in the city will be a tower that reaches to the heavens, a skyscraper which will give us a global reputation and make us the central unifying metropolis in the whole world.”

Technological advance is, of course, a wonderful thing. I am thankful that I can write part of this article away from my office desk on a netbook with enough battery power to last for a few hours if necessary. I am grateful for road, rail and air travel, for Internet communication, for electricity, central heating and a whole host of other things. I am glad that I can use a computer and a range of digital tools in my work as a translator. But a one-sided focus on technological progress as the solution to the world's problems will often miss the point. Technology will not solve all our problems in the world. Sometimes it may even lead to unintended consequences which are worse than the original problem that technology was used to solve.

Social and political ambition

The people of Babel wanted to prevent political disintegration. They did not want to be “scattered over the face of the whole earth”. Why were they worried about this? My guess is that they had seen signs of disintegration, either in their own social grouping or in other groups that they had heard of. They thought that building a new city and a high tower would provide a quick fix to complex problems.

We are not told about their social dynamics, but I believe that the group which set about the Babel project had a centralistic structure. The vision of social unity was almost certainly drawn up by a small group of leaders. The enormous construction project required a division of labour. Who should decide the shape and structure? Who should organise the workforce? Who would bake the bricks? Who would transport them to the building site? Who would carry the materials to the top of the structure? Who would lay the bricks? Who would prepare, transport and apply the asphalt?

In view of these conflicting interests, it is not surprising that communication failed. Such a large project must have taken a long time - probably more than a generation. It almost certainly required a rigid hierarchical structure and a whole range of social classes and organisational units. These different groupings would have lived separately. After all, the masters would not have wanted to live among the slave labourers, and the slaves would not have welcomed them either. I assume that the language of these isolated groups gradually changed, partly by normal language evolution and partly by deliberately distinctive language forms. In more recent history there are many examples of social groups distinguishing themselves by their language and saying things in a way that would confuse outsiders, for example in Cockney rhyming slang in proletariat East London and in the ghetto English spoken in a number of urban centres in the USA.

How does language change?

Language change is observed all over the world, and languages are constantly changing, although this is usually so slow that we do not notice. An interesting book on this subject is “The Power of Babel” by John McWhorter, an associate professor of Linguistics in Berkeley, California. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book over the last few weeks. McWhorter presents fascinating facts and opinions on the relative merits of language and dialect, on pidgin languages and creoles, on the rather fluid correlation between language boundaries and political boundaries, on research into historical language forms and much more.

I don't know what McWhorter would think of my application of the language change principle to the original Babel narrative, but his book has given me much food for thought, and an appetite to find out more of what other linguists say about language change and historical linguistics. And he gave me an explanation for my very own language confusion. I have a fairly good understanding of written French, but a very poor comprehension of spoken French. McWhorter comforted me by his explanation that written French (as codified by the Académie Francaise) is a preserved historical form, and that spoken French in just about all parts of France has changed and developed, and in some parts of France it never conformed to the centralised ideal anyway. Thank you, Professor McWhorter, for putting my mind at rest. (A question for any French linguists reading this blog: does this summary do justice to the state of the language?)

Judgement by God?

Another interesting perspective on the Babel narrative is offered by “Transubstatiation”, another translation blogger, under the title “The Babel Fallout”. He suggests that the Bible narrative, and the Jewish and Christian traditions which draw on this narrative, have a negative view of the proliferation of languages and believe that language change itself is a judgement on human arrogance. This is an interesting explanation, although I notice that in other places the Bible itself speaks positively about the existence of different languages.

Much more can be said about language change, languages in the Bible and in cultural history. And there is much to learn about the mechanics of language change and the role of language and language change in human communication. In all of these areas I am still learning, and I hope to add more to the picture of the mystery of human language in future posts on this blog.

So are we still building Babel, or is that just history?

In some ways, however, the human race is still building Babel. There is often a gap between technological, social and political goals on the one hand and the way they are presented and communicated on the other hand. The person with a vision may have excellent rhetorical skills, but these skills are no guarantee that the message will really “catch on” with his listeners. Communication breakdown is seen at a much more personal level, too. Just listen in on any argument between husband and wife, and you will probably find many examples of communication failure. Perhaps the words themselves are clear enough, but the message is not received or understood.

Have you seen or heard examples of Babel in action recently? Perhaps in newspapers, in political programmes, in advertising, in things you hear on the street? I would love to read any examples in the comments.