Translations and Thinking

Originally written in Jun 2000 in personal diaries

Let me begin by narrating a story to you. I am a native of Bihar, but I have stayed in Delhi since early childhood. Now this put me into a peculiar position as regards languages, especially during childhood, juggling between three languages - Maithili (my mother-tongue), Hindi and English. Now at that time, the penetration of English was very low, even in the educated people in Bihar. So I would be an object of teasing whenever I would go to my native place (as "English babu"). The biggest tool was translation. I would be asked to translate, "Ghoda sadak par adak kar bhadak gaya". The nearest translation that I could find was, "The horse stopped on the road and panicked". Now, though this is a good enough translation of the sentence as a whole, please note that not all of the words have been literally translated. "Stop" is not the correct translation of "adak"; neither is "panic" a translation of "bhadak", at least not in the exact sense.

Now when this was pointed out, this used to put me in a spot. As a solution, I came up with the statement, "If you want to speak in a language, think in that language. Don't think in one language and try to translate". This wisecrack, arrived in childhood to get out of an inconvenient situation, comes back to me often, especially when people ask for translations of a word. From Hindi to English, English to Hindi, Sanskrit to English, Sanskrit to Hindi, whatever.

The point, dear friends, is just that. Just like two synonyms never mean exactly the same thing, there is seldom an exact translation of words between languages. Each language was developed in a different context, a different society and culture. Language, in the final analysis, is the verbal representation of thought processes. And since thought processes are not independent but interdependent on the context and the culture, language cannot escape being the same.

This leads to a tussle. What is the Sanskrit word for "Perfect"? "Upyukt"? No, that means "appropriate", or rather, "useful for this situation". "Sahi"? No, that means "correct". "Doshahin"? No, that’s "errorless". "Trutihin"? No, that’s "flawless". "Nipun"? No, that’s an "expert". "Sampoorn"? No, that’s "complete". "Uchit"? No, that’s "right for this situation". I could go on and on.

The statement which directly follows out of this is "I guess you can't just find a Hindi substitute for "perfect" without knowing the context. What I want to ask is, "Is this a problem with the word 'perfect' "? No, any word you choose, it is quite likely that this issue will arise. Then I thought of my childhood story and thought, "Why should there be a word in Hindi or Sanskrit for 'perfect' "? Its not that once upon a time, there was a sage who picked up a dictionary of Sanskrit and created the English language. If that were the case, translation would have been perfectly fine, because the two languages would have been product on the same civilization or in other words, the same set of thoughts and ideas. But that is not the case. The fact is that English and Sanskrit (or for that matter, any language) have been developed independently, in two different civilizations, in two different contexts.

Each civilization, when faced with a situation or an idea or a thought, coined a word for it and the language was formed. The situation was made further complex by the fact that each civilizations was interacting with other civilizations, and that led to a lot of interchange of ideas, thoughts and images. It also led to the two languages getting a bit close to each other.

The next question is, so why have not the languages grown closer, why is this article being written to defend non-translatability, in this era of globalisation and intermixing of cultures? Well, two points. The first is of course that the cultures are still not completely mixed, each retains within itself certain thought processes which are very unique to itself. The second, and in my opinion more important, is that even the ideas or thoughts which a civilization takes from others are warped according to the existing framework of the receiving civilization.

I’ll take an example. Suppose I have a thought in my mind and I want to convey it to you. Also assume that we both know a common language. This is what will typically happen:

Lets label the thought as [T]. I’ll convert that thought to speech. What will come out is [T minus T1], because of the limitations of the language I am using, my understanding of the nuances of the language and my capability of thought processing itself. This is called selective transmission. Now this [T minus T1] reaches your ears (assuming no transmission loss). Based on how much attention you are paying to me (and how good your hearing is), you will receive [T minus T1 minus T2]. This is called selective reception. Now based on how important you think my inputs are to you, and on what your mind is preoccupied with, your mind will retain only a part of this to process, let us say [T minus T1 minus T2 minus T3]. This is called selective retention. Then your mind will process this input based on its own understanding of the language and its own capability of thought processing. So what you will finally get the thought as is [T minus T1 minus T2 minus T3 minus T4]. This is called selective cognition. Now this process is continuously happening as we converse or even as you read this article. And there are several other parameters than what I have mentioned above. To simplify, lets say that what you get is not my thought but your perception of my thought.

Now imagine the same thing happening when the transmitters and receivers and interpreters are whole civilizations. And the language of communication is alien at least to one of the two parties. The whole thing becomes a chaos. How do you expect, then, that any two languages can be translated into each other? Whatever words you are able to translate, consider them to be exceptions. All that you can do, is transliteration, which essentially means, understand the whole thought behind a sentence, then try to express that whole thought in the other language. The words, expressions used, may be way different, but the point will be conveyed.