Language Differences

You've probably compared your own pronunciation of words such as "coffee" and "tomato" with that of friends or relatives who live in other parts of the country. You may also have compared the different words you may use for the same things. A "gum band" in some places is a "rubber band" in others; a "regular coffee" may refer to black coffee, coffee with cream and sugar, or coffee with cream and no sugar, depending on the part of the country where you order it. You may be surprised by such differences, and you may occasionally have to ask someone to explain an unfamiliar word to you, but most of these variations in the language probably won't cause you serious problems in communication. To someone who speaks very little English, however, these differences may be very perplexing.

Language differences can go much deeper than simple translation ambiguities, however. Have you ever asked someone to translate a word from another language to you, only to have him say "Well, it doesn't translate into English exactly, but it means something like ..."? As we saw in our discussion of the Whorf hypothesis in Chapter 4, languages differ more than strict word-for-word translations often indicate, because the people who speak the languages have different needs.

Even when we can manage to translate from one language to another with literal accuracy, the deeper meanings are often lost because they are rooted in the culture of the language. Colin Cherry provides the following description of how the failure to understand the deeper meanings of words may interfere with communication between people who do not share a culture.

There may be no better example to illustrate cultural mistranslation than the word Red. To Westerners "the Reds" conjures up images of blood, fire, fierceness, e.g., red with anger, ... seeing red, but the Russian translation krasnyi has a different aura. For example, to a Russian

krasnyi = beautiful

pryekrasnyi = exquisite

krasnaya ryiba = fine fish (e.g., salmon)

krasnoye zoloto = pure gold ("red" gold) krasna devitza = beautiful girl

Rather than Red, a far, far better symbolic translation of this word into English is Golden, as in a Golden opportunity, ... The Golden Age, etc. No doubt a Russian might translate this word back into Russian to mean "the color of money!" ...

I was once highly embarrassed when using our common term Red Indian (American Indian, in British usage) to an American audience, some of whom took it to refer to an Indian communist. Colors are no more translatable than words. (Cherry, 1971, pp. 16-17)

Literal translations from one language to another often create a misunderstanding because they do not account for culture-based matters of style. An article in Time magazine described the problem this way:

Saudi Arabia's late King Saud once told a visiting group of Palestinian jour­nalists that "the Arabs must be ready to sacrifice a million lives to regain the sacred soil of Palestine." It was rhetoric, a flourish; Arabs hearing it would no more take it literally than would an American football crowd hearing, "Rip 'em up, tear 'em up." But the words made headlines all over the world as a statement of bloody Saudi intent. (Morrow, 1981, p. 102)

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 691