Translations

Essentially a language is only a set of sounds to which the speaker of that language applies meaning. Over the course of time how did certain sounds accumulate meaning over others and develop into a language? It is fascinating. How can two sounds that are so different mean the same thing? When translating, what is lost?

I won’t try and pretend that I have the qualifications of a linguist to talk about how at some point in time this happened or that happened that caused some language to be born. What I do think is interesting that I can at least call attention to is that the number of synonyms and idiomatic phrases can be indicative of what the people of a specific language think as important. For example, the Inuit people in Alaska have over thirty different words for snow. That would make sense. They live in a place where they are surrounded by snow all the time. The snow is a part of their life. Also in the United States, I think that it would be fair to say that people are extremely motivated to be successful in their career. That can be reflected in the number of words that exist in English for money (cash, moolah, dough, bucks, buckaroos, ect…).

This is a big reason as to why it is so challenging to translate from one language to another. Sometimes there just isn’t a word to accurately translate. If it occurs only a couple of times then it might not severely impact the meaning, but the more words that don’t have an accurately translation, the more the original meaning becomes convoluted. Often times in order to garner meaning for a foreign work, you don’t need a translation but instead just need to listen to the words and the tone in which they are spoken, but that’s a post for another time. Therefore, in the spirit of the holiday season, I would like to leave two videos for you in hopes that they can say what I was unable to. They are both the song Silent Night, but the first one is in English while the second one is in its original language, German, and known as Stiller Nacht.