“Somehow … the language had gotten lost”

Educator Note:

Eric Fishman

Meridian Academy, Boston, MA USA

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” -Robert Frost

In the novel Babel, R.F. Kuang describes an alternate history in which translators are able to work magic. By engraving one side of a bar of silver with a word in one language, and a translation on the other side, what is “lost in translation” manifests in the physical world. For example, engraving 無形 (wúxíng), as well as an approximate English translation of “invisible,” renders those who hold the silver bar formless, shapeless, incorporeal — embodying the nuances of meaning that are present in the Chinese word but absent in the English translation.

I found this feature of Kuang’s world-building, in which the so-called “untranslatable” is the source of power, evocative. This stands in contrast to the mainstream view that translation should, above all, avoid drawing attention to the space between languages. Instead, Kuang’s novel encourages us to look carefully at what is lost when moving between languages, and to consider this loss as generative. The further the distance between the two words engraved on the silver, the greater the magic that the silver can work.

What can students gain by exploring translation’s losses? For several years, this question has guided my thinking about how to teach about translation, but it was particularly on my mind while teaching the project published in this volume.

The loss of languages is not only semantic, but also cultural and political

The humanities course I was teaching this year with my ninth and tenth grade students was entitled “Africa and Europe Through Each Other’s Eyes.” We had just concluded a unit on anti-colonial movements across the African continent. As we moved into the postcolonial era, we explored a variety of African and diasporic activists’, writers’ and scholars’ views on the connections between language, imperialism, and decolonization (see “Resources”). We asked questions such as: “In what ways have African communities advocated for local languages following the end of colonialism? How can translation been used as a tool of colonization? Of decolonization?”

As a conclusion to this part of the unit, students interviewed a family member about their heritage languages. This interview provides an opportunity for students to make connections between the history of “languages as political” and the inherited experiences and stories of their families. Students asked questions such as:

  • What can you tell me about how our heritage language(s) are connected to our culture(s), or were connected to our ancestors’ cultures?

  • Were people who spoke these languages ever told or forced to stop speaking them? How did people resist?

  • Today, how are people using these languages and passing them down to family members?

From these interview transcripts, students did some more research about the history of people speaking their language in the United States. Students made “blackout poems” based on their interview transcript and research that pull out narratives connected to what they learned.

Some of these poems reflect on the students’ connection with their heritage languages. Audrey, for example, observes in her translator’s statement that: “The interview is about heritage languages and their relations with us now, and for me and my family, Japanese is very much part of our culture. It is not something we have to think about from an outside perspective because it is just how our life is.”

Many of the students, however, reflected on their lack of connection with their heritage languages, and on the sense of loss they felt as a result. This was true both for students from multilingual families, as well as monolingual families.

Jameelah reflects that: “When interviewing, I did have one question, which was: ‘Who in our bloodline doesn’t know how to speak Luganda?’ and [my mother] said ‘Everybody in our family speaks Luganda.’ [This made me realize that] everyone but me [speaks Luganda] fluently. In the blackout poem, I wanted to focus on when my mom said Luganda and how it’s connected to our culture and the youth because that’s how the language got passed down generation by generation, but somehow when she had me, the language had gotten lost by me.”

In their translator statement, Ace writes: “While learning about all of this, I was interested but also a bit heartbroken. I understood that we weren’t really connected to our ancestry, but what my dad said about it was so personal it really made me understand why he doesn’t really connect with me or my brother about his – our – culture. At the end of the interview, I think he put it best when he said ‘I wish I could tell you more.’”

What might be gained from these losses? For students like Jameelah, I hope that they might be inspired to cultivate a connection with their heritage languages. For students like Ace, I wonder whether their sense of grief about their ancestor’s assimilation — and in particular, their assimilation into whiteness — would provide an avenue for developing their sense of solidarity with those who are currently having their languages and identities stolen by language hegemonies.

To translate a poem means to lose something—and to gain something else

Having further developed their schema for the connections between translation, identity, and power, students were ready to engage in translation work. We began by evaluating others’ translations, examining multiple translations of the same poem (see “Resources” for example collections). We discussed how all translation involves a form of loss: it’s impossible to recreate everything from the original, and so translators must choose what they believe is most important. But at the same time, translation is an act of creation.

Each studen chose a poem in one of their heritage languages to translate into English. Students met with a “translation mentor” who would guide them through the process of translation. Some of these mentors were family members or community members from our school; others were literary translators that I found by posting on online translator forums. With their translation mentor, students did a first pass “literal” translation. On their own, students then crafted two interpretive translations, focusing on different features of the original — these are the translations published in Young Radish. (For further discussion about ways I’ve approached the translation process with young people, see the “pedagogy” articles below.) As a conclusion, each student wrote a “translator’s statement” explaining their approaches and exploring their experiences with the project.

I believe that engaging with a heritage language through the process of poetry translation supports students who already speak their heritage language(s) to further explore this relationship; for students who don’t, it’s an opportunity to further interrogate the histories of violence and assimilation that caused this disconnection.

Akea, for example, reflects: “Hawaiian was never intended to be a written language and this became crystal clear to me when writing this. It was kind of sad knowing that to translate this language meant sacrificing the integrity of the original structure.”

Eva asserts: “I chose, in my translations, to represent the loss of a language that I had perceived as my own through grasping at straws to remember the country I identify as a part of. This language is Afrikaans … I feel that I have lost this language because it is the only non-English language that the three adults in my house share, but all of them learned it in school during the apartheid regime. This has led to mixed feelings about the language, but it is punctuated by the fact that I am only able to understand and speak snippets of a language that comes from a country I am a citizen of.”

Perhaps naming these loses, and feeling this grief, can lead students to hold their own identities, and those of their ancestors and their communities, with more care— just as they did with the poems they translated. As Sam reflects: “Madhu Kaza said, ‘Translation is an act of hospitality.’  I tried to provide that hospitality and to do justice to that poem during the translation process.”

Resources

Student-Facing:

—What is translation?

  • Article: “Languages as Bridges” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o)

  • Article: “A Manifesto for Ultratranslation” (Antena language justice collective)

  • Podcast: Translation (Radiolab)

—Language, identity, and translation:

  • Podcast: “Losing my language” (The Comb)

  • Article: “Letter of Recommendation: Translation” (Carina del Valle Schorske)

  • Article: “Kitchen Table Translation” (Madhu Kaza)

—Language activism:

  • Article: “Trying to save South Africa’s first language” (BBC)

  • Article: “Of the hashtag #GîkûyûTwitter, or the love for Gîkûyû language” (Rising Voices)

  • Article: “Many hands lighten the load: how the internet supports language activism” (Wikitongues)

  • Video interview: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o on “decolonizing the mind”

  • Activity: Language and power “tea party,” in Teaching for Joy and Justice (book - Linda Christensen)

—To find poems to translate:

  • Asymptote Journal (map)

  • Two Lines Journal (search by language)

  • Poetry International (link)

  • Words Without Borders (link)

  • Links to bilingual dictionaries and other translation tools

For Educators:

—Poetry translation “in action”— multiple translations of the same poem(s):

  • Book: Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (ed. Prufer & Collins)

  • Book: Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (Douglas Hofstader)

  • Book: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (Eliot Weinberger)

—Pedagogy:

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Eric Fishman teaches ninth and tenth grade humanities at Meridian Academy. He has translated poetry and prose by Francophone authors such as Monchoachi, Mireille Jean-Gilles, and André du Bouchet. Eric is a founding editor of Young Radish.

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from Volume 3: Translation