Translating Our Thoughts

Language creates a lens through which we see the world.  Each of us perceives the same events differently depending on how our experiences are filtered through our respective linguistic lenses.  I experienced this firsthand on my family vacation to France when, as the sole French speaker in my family, I was charged with translating everything—menus, strangers’ conversations, descriptions of pieces of art—in real time.  Although I speak both languages well and could conceptualize the ideas being communicated in French, I was often unable to find a direct translation that accurately reflected what was being said.  The underlying concepts that go into constructing a phrase in French differ slightly than in English, and I found many subtleties to be difficult to verbalize.  This is the problem of ideas getting “lost in translation”: while most concepts can be expressed by all languages, they cannot be expressed in exactly the same way.

Words for specific and complex ideas are not consistent cross-linguistically, to the point that some nuanced ideas concisely communicated in one language are nearly impossible to articulate in another.  One example that comes to mind is the Portuguese word “saudade.”  The word roughly translates to yearning for, longing for, or missing someone or something, but with a measure of warmth and implicit joy of having had the experience.  English speakers, having no single word for the emotion, cannot quite comprehend it.  Not that English speakers are incapable of feeling “saudade,” they simply cannot distinguish it from ideas like “yearning” and “nostalgia,” much like being unable to distinguish between some phonemes that are not present in the English language but are contrastive in another. An English-speaker would categorize the emotion according to the sum of its recognizable parts, while a Portuguese-speaker would comprehend it as one distinct emotion. 

Another difficulty with translation lies in the availability of particular verb tenses cross-linguistically. In my own experience, the most notable is the lack of the present progressive in French—the “-ing” construction in English.  In French, the present tense can signify “I do this,” “I do do this,” or “I am doing this,” while each have their own distinct construction in English.  Therefore, with my English-centric mind, I naturally include these strict distinctions in the structure of my thoughts due to the accessibility of the verb tenses. Conversely, a native French speaker would not make these distinctions when describing an action because the linguistic tools are not readily at his or her disposal.  On the other hand, English has no subjunctive tense, which is used in French to communicate feelings, opinions, necessities, and desires. Since it does not fit into my native linguistic framework, I often have issues using the subjunctive naturally, although I understand its grammatical purpose intellectually.  Because of these distinctions in tense, I find specifics of actions easier to communicate in English, but nuances of emotions easier to communicate in French. 

This suggests a larger cultural idea: generally English-speaking cultures are more focused on action, specificity, and practicality while French culture is more focused on art, emotion, and intellectualism.  Thus, a propensity for action-based verb tenses in English and emotion-based tenses in French and their effect on the speakers’ frame of mind could be a reflection of basic cultural differences.   Language is more than just a method of communication—it shapes how we perceive the world around us and creates a framework for our thoughts. 

For discussion: How much of our perception of the world is dictated by the language we speak?  How do the structures of languages correlate to the cultures and environments in which they evolved?