Lost in Translation

Dealing with a lousy translation of Pontiff's letter

In my series on my philosophy, I allude to the problem that the person at this web site discusses.

I am not going to go into whether Pope Francis’ latest official papal letter (not an encyclical which would imply that it was infallibly true) is the last word for everyone to believe. I ain’t that stupid (I don’t want to start a violent argument), besides I am not a Catholic.

No, what struck me was the explanation of why the author found many problems with the official Vatican English language translation of a document that was written in Spanish (and not Latin, which used to be the common language for official papal documents, but the Pope is Argentinian and that is the Spanish he learned). It was that the the words used in the English translation did not mean the same in English as the Spanish words meant in Spanish. In fact, entire clauses and phrases were either left out or substituted with something meaning something else.

You see when you write in any language, you are hoping that the words you used mean the same thing to your reader. You really assume that they do, while in reality that may not be the case.

All words come with a context, a set of connotations, that are flavored by the both the writer’s/speaker’s experiences and the reader’s/listener’s experiences. If the writer and the reader do not share the same frames of reference, then things tend to get lost in transmission or if you shifting from one language to another, lost in translation.

For example, I may use a phrase that is familiar to me, but is entirely unknown to you. The phrase has meaning to me, but it has no meaning to you. Our terms of reference are different and so the message so clear to me now becomes muddled.

In the news coverage that we watch in the United States, we often see the same thing, but take away different meanings. And then often, we hear a person say one thing, and then the next person tells us what the first person really meant when he or she said whatever we heard. In the news business this is known as the “spin”.

For example, HealthCare.Gov website is supposed to be up and functioning this weekend. It is, I suspect, after a fashion. Because it is, after two months of being repaired, it will be deemed a “success” by those who support President Obama’s health services payment initiative (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare) and a vindication of the legislation. However, every tiny glitch, problem, malfunction, freeze-up, etc., will be seized upon by those opposed to Obamacare as yet another example of the president and his allies’ ineptitude and failure. (More spin)

I honestly don’t know whether it has turned a corner or not … not that it matters whether I think it has or not anyway.

However, the words used in the debate over its fate will be fraught with meanings – multitudes of meanings – which will mean as Pappy used to tell me:

“What I thought I said was not what I thought you heard and what you heard was not what I thought I said and what you thought I said something entirely different;” or a shorter version “What you thought you heard was not what I thought I said.”

Now, what is the problem with all this? Well, to begin with it leads to misunderstandings, and misunderstandings lead to conflict and unfortunately, conflict often escalates into violence … and we don’t want to go there.

The problem with the mistranslations is that apparently some of it was written with a certain political agenda in mind; an agenda that people who believe in a capitalistic economic model see as wrong.

Unfortunately, what was translated may not really have been exactly what the Pope wrote and that would put his words in a different light. I still am in the process of working my own way through the various translations – which I may not even finish, so I really have no opinion yet as to what the pontiff may or may not have urged his Catholic followers to do.

Bottom line: Be very skeptical about what you read and hear. Realize that either will be open to interpretation and how people think things are becomes their reality. We as individuals act on our perception of reality and tragedy most likely will ensue if we interpret our perceptions wrongly.

The problem in politics, both domestic and international, is that both sides are trying to sell us their vision of the world … and probably both sides are really just selling  us a bill of goods with nothing really there.