So enchanted by how clever we are

I've just finished Guy Deutscher's brilliant book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages. The book was meticulously researched and well argued, and it fired my imagination in so many ways. Deutscher examined whether language affects thought. On this evidence, the answer is complex. He looked at the relationship between language, colour and culture; words used to describe spatial relationships (right, left, behind, in front of vs. the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west in other languages and cultures); gendered languages and how generalising the perceptions of a given mother tongue as universals for all languages has been a major flaw in enthusiastic yet erroneous research in the past. Hence this book charts the haphazard progression of research per se, which in turn reminded me of these song lyrics:

We light the deepest ocean
Send photographs of Mars
We're so enchanted by how clever we are

Julian Lennon – 'Saltwater' (1991)

Our knowledge of language and science barely scratches the surface of what lies undiscovered and what remains for us to get wrong. Occasionally even Deutscher's own examples to illustrate his points seemed questionable. Recalling his daughter's ability to recognise that the sky is blue, at the ripe old age of four, she declared that the black night sky was 'blue' (Deutscher, 2011:72). The lack of even a name for the colour blue in some languages led the author to ask his daughter to describe the appearance of an object/concept (the sky) that is not always the same colour. In my view, we see the sky as 'blue' because most of the time, we want it to be so. Grey skies, white snowy skies, red or orange sunsets or black nights cannot compete with a bright blue sky on a sunny day. Yet towards the end of the book we find this (ibid:249):

"It has been shown, for example, that long-term memory and object recognition play an important role in the perception of colour."

So depending on one's individual experiences, is it possible that a child's inability to correctly identify the colour of an object or concept merely demonstrates their underdeveloped long-term memory? Is it conceivable that by the age of four, the images and descriptions of the different skies I mentioned above have not yet been committed to memory for future recall at specific times or during certain seasons? If so, the relative rarity of a blue sky might account for a child's alternative description, drawing on a different memory of the sky.

My second query concerns Deutscher's investigation into the extent to which different languages' descriptions of an event provoke different perceptions of that event (ibid:140). Taking the example of 'It rains', he tells us how the action of falling and the object (droplets) are wrapped up in one verbal concept. In his mother tongue (Hebrew), these two concepts are kept apart. Despite different renderings in different languages, one's perception of the actual event is unchanged. And to confirm his central thesis that languages only differ in what they habitually compel their speakers to say, 'It rains', to my English eyes and ears, requires additional information in a way that other languages do not. This is because the grammar of English, unlike many other languages, compels speakers to use one of two ways to express an action in the present tense:

1.It rains.
(Simple present, used to describe a habitual action in the present)
e.g. It rains somewhere and at some time – and we need to know – every day.)

2. It is raining.
(Present continuous form, used to describe the action occurring at the time the statement is made)
e.g. At the time of writing, droplets are falling from the sky. If no further information concerning the location of the action is provided, we logically assume that it is occurring in the immediate vicinity of the person making the statement.)

'It rains.' on its own withholds the identity or location of the unfortunate souls subjected to a daily soaking! Deutscher keeps grammar and perception separate. Our understanding of the actual precipitation itself is not altered in either example, though I would argue that the events and our perception of them are significantly different, coloured by differing degrees of immediacy – and the resultant temporal or geographical data required in English.

So after all that, I would highly recommend this book. It will leave you asking questions and will change the way you think about languages in general, the empirical veracity of research, as well as the capacity of your own language to adequately reflect thought.

Source: Deutscher, Guy, (2011) 'Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages', Arrow, ISBN: 978-0-09-950557-0 

Say what you see

One of the first songs I learnt to play by ear on the piano was Stevie Wonder's 1984 hit I Just Called To Say I Love You. I'd always admired his lyrics to describe things that he himself cannot see. On closer inspection it could be argued that with the exception of references to the sun and the moon, everything mentioned in the song can actually be perceived without the gift of sight. This got me thinking about the relationship between language and perception – and its implications for translation. But first here's some theory.

It was the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) who first theorised about the signifier (the word used to denote a given object or concept) and the signified (the actual object or concept itself). It's easy to believe that the relationship between the two is arbitrary and universally intelligible – it is not. After all, if you and I both imagine a table, in the absence of any other specific details, only coincidence would cause us to imagine the exact same object. This is surely because we will each draw on the totality of our respective life experiences to imagine the object. And since we both experience the world differently; so our representation of it will also be different.

This difference in perception and representation (combined with the different levels of specificity discussed in an earlier post on this blog) can give translators major headaches. Up to now we have looked at two variables: the signifier and the signified. Translators have three: the signifier in the source language, its equivalent signifier in the target language and a signified which most accurately represents both signifiers. I've recently begun to think of this as the linguistic equivalent of the fire triangle – such that if any one of these components is unsatisfactory, effective translation is difficult.

I have been translating descriptions for a new clothing range. However, the fact that the items are new means that often no photos exist of the clothes being described. Secondly, no definitive terms exist in the client files or online yet – so the translator only has one side of the 'triangle' to work with. Google Images 'helps' by proposing thousands of signifieds when you only need one! Even with other descriptive elements, if Farbe is the German word for colour, and we encounter the words Farbgebung and Farbbrillanz; without photos or further details it is not always clear how many colours are involved. So either colour or colours could be correct.

I've also been wondering about the precise time in English when a body warmer became a gilet. And if German speakers could tell me why they decided to call the humble English tank top a pullunder, I'd be very grateful. I'd also love to know how someone actually puts this garment on. With a pullover it's clear. But a pullunder? The mind boggles!