When people talk about translation, they are usually thinking about the process of taking a word from one language and pairing it with a corresponding word in another language. In this model, translation becomes an act of substitution, with the goal being an accurate one
When people talk about translation, they are usually thinking about the process of taking a word from one language and pairing it with a corresponding word in another language. In this model, translation becomes an act of substitution, with the goal being an accurate one-to-one replacement of words in the first language with words in the second language.
Most current digital translation tools operate on this translation-as-replacement model. Users type in a word or phrase in one language, select the desired destination language, and click “Translate.” The equivalent word (or a selection of equivalent words) in the destination language then appears on the screen. Users can take these translated words and plug them in as substitutes for the original words entered into the translation tool.
The problem with this model is both a question of politics and practicality. Let’s talk about the issue of practicality first by taking a field trip:
- Go to Google’s online translation tool.
- Type in the word “gigil” and translate it into English.
- Remember the result you get back.
The problem with this digital translation is not only that the results returned are vague, but also that they’re inaccurate. I came across this word during some video interviews I (along with Anne von Petersdorff) conducted with multilingual international students at Michigan State University. Listen to this brief video montage of our interviews; notice how José, a Filipino student, describes “gigil.”
Pretty different, isn’t it?
When we set out to conduct these interviews with students, we wanted to talk with them about words they had in their first languages that they had trouble translating into English. We did this, partially, to show the amazing richness of culture that gets embedded in language and to demonstrate one small example about how language shapes (and is shaped by) cultural worldviews.
Most current digital translation tools have no mechanisms to account for the richness of language. They do not take into account the gestures, motions, sounds, and other strategies multilingual speakers employ when trying to explain untranslatable words. If you have the chance to rewatch the video, take note of all the non-verbal resources multilingual speakers draw upon to explain their concepts and ideas. They’re everywhere. And they teach us a few things about how multilingual speakers move between languages and how, by repositioning untranslatability as an asset, we can disrupt some stereotypes and misconceptions of multilingual speakers.
In the rest of this article, I will point out some of the stereotypes/misconceptions I’ve heard about multilingual speakers and show how our research on untranslatable words challenges and/or contradicts those ideas. In so doing, I also hope to point out how the same misconceptions about multilingualism and translation get embodied in current digital translation tool design. I will then illustrate the ways we can learn from the experiences of multilingual speakers to design better translation tools and experiences.
Stereotype 1: Multilingual speakers just need to know more vocabulary words.
As an instructor for first-year writing at a four-year university, one piece of feedback I have heard often regarding international multilingual students is that they just need to know more English. It’s said that they lack the vocabulary necessary to understand what’s happening in the classroom and that their writing doesn’t reflect a college-level mastery of the English language.
While in some instances this may be true, statements like these presume the same one-to-one correspondence as the digital translation tools mentioned earlier. It assumes that when multilingual speakers encounter words in one language there must be an equivalent word in their native language and vice versa. Therefore, not being able to find the equivalent translation word gets positioned as a deficit of the multilingual student with the statement that, if they had only known more words, they should have been able to find the right alternative.
For example, Kei, right before sitting down to talk with us about komorebi (roughly translated as a type of sunlight that is filtered through leafy trees) expressed a fear that he wouldn’t be able to find the right words to translate komorebi into English. Our team tried to assure him that the goal of the project was to see if there were words that were, by definition, almost impossible to translate into English. We talked with him about how we knew we we