Language Learning (and how it relates to Translation)

We have all heard something along the lines of, “you should learn a language; it increases the grey matter in your brain.” Right? Well, maybe not, but still, it probably does (research forthcoming). In all seriousness, though, language learning has the potential to benefit us in ways we hadn’t probably thought of before.

The first occurrence to me of why I ought to learn a language came in about high school, when I was listening to a favorite artist of mine, actually, his name is Conor Oberst, and he played (still plays) for a group called Bright Eyes. Now, he had a band called “Desaparecidos.” And in some sort of declaration of that band (I can’t remember if it was an album title – you see, it was some time ago), there was the resolution to “Learn Spanish.” Now if this sounds like a trite reason to learn Spanish, read on.

I didn’t make much of it at the time I realized that I too wanted to learn Spanish. I took it from a role model of mine (obviously, band leaders are role models to a lot of teenagers and people beyond their teenage years as well).

The funny thing was that I stuck with that resolution. And I stuck with it and kept sticking with it until now I am a translator.

The reason I’m sharing this is because when I thought about what I wanted to do in university, even, I kept coming back to that resolution to study Spanish. And I’d come back to it again in graduate school when studying translation in Spanish.

I’m not trying to engrain it in your brain that “dedication is key” or some slogan like that, which I’m sure you’ve heard before many other times.

I am saying, however, that language learning has shaped my life in interesting ways.

And now, how does this relate to translation?

I think it relates to translation because language learning follows a similar path to translation.

That is, translation follows specific patterns of language in the source language so that they may be “decoded” if you will, into the target language.

I don’t think that’s all that is going on in translation but we’ll leave that to another theorist to discover.

The whole point of this is to say that translation is an endeavor which utilizes language as its instrument, commencing with the printed words on a page or those scribbled down in a notebook. It doesn’t matter really, but I think translation is an art. It doesn’t matter really, but I think language learning is an art, too. Or maybe both things do matter, really.

I read a piece in a magazine yesterday about how the arts can help us.

I say that this is sage advice. I am not denigrating STEM in any way, but I think the arts have gotten the short shrift.

But arts don’t function in the same way as STEM does. They are distinct for a reason. There doesn’t even need to be balance between the two in educational funding. I just make this point because the arts, as they maybe do not produce as much industry and products as the STEM fields, which are necessary, by the way; but the arts are something that encompasses human life and that has been something necessary to our lives as human beings for time immemorial. I am arguing that translation is such an art as well.