views from babel

Is the gift of languages a dubious blessing? Can we escape being defined by our dialect? …

To be born to a single language. To speak, work and live within one serviceable tongue. After all, with foreign languages, the differences are of all kinds. Physical differences, as in a certain sound your tongue gets used to or a certain gesture that impels your hands. Mental differences, whether in your proficiency or in your associations: those subtler and more subjective contours of knowledge that come from living every day with another language. When a language becomes an irreplaceable part of our consciousness, we, to certain extent, “know” it.

However, this kind of knowledge falls outside the purview of any self-respecting dictionary definition of bilingual or multilingual. Yet, the human brain, as has been reported by some, is incapable of handling more than two or three languages with any degree of perfection, though there are exceptions to this rule, such as linguists or professional interpreters.  Still, there is a difference between emphasis and efficiency depending on environment and personal predilection and the tendency for one language to gain ascendency and another to correspondingly to lapse.

What about situations like in India, where there is a proverb that “language changes every fifteen miles,” which is a recipe for chaos in a nation with about seventeen major languages, each with a script and substantial literature of its own. Add to that five hundred individual dialects.

Finally, language must inevitably become an inescapable way of seeing your world. Perceptions tend to be refracted through the prism of another language, especially when the change in language also implies a radical change in culture with its diverse forms of contexts and idioms woven into the social fabric of identity. The standard dilemma is finding no collateral concept in one language to explain what is clear to you in another; meaning the attachment of a different significance to the same word in different cultural contexts. Maybe, possibly, how we originally meet up with a language, has a lot to do with how we play its games afterward, and to lose our “linguistic virginity” at a young age and experiment with sleights of tongue, putting hankies into linguistic hats and occasionally pulling out a rabbit.

As every translator knows, may mean the same thing in various languages, but they seldom feel the same. There is a natural and impassable limbo between languages , not only of feeling, but also of fact. The cul-de-sac , dead-end, is hitting an absence of vocabulary and thought alike, when some words don’t exist simply because they have no cultural raison d’etre: no idea or experience to warrant them or justify their use. A typical case is missionaries bursting to convert heathens, and the finding to their stupefaction that the local tribes have no word for “God.”

As long as experience molds the word and both occur in different languages across differing cultures, there can be no hard and fast formulas left. A rule of thumb in one language can easily become a non sequitur in another and metaphors an imprecations can change places.In the end, being caught between words and languages is a very human predicament: like being caught between emotions and principles, and that being conscious of the

l floating around inside our head is another way of saying yes to life.

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…
When Mitsubishi launched it’s Pajero 4WD in Spain they had the shock of a lifetime. As they were promoting Pajero they forgot to take into account the word “Pajero” means “jerk” in Spanish.
The famous fried Chicken hub KFC’s slogan “finger-lickin good” when marketed was translated into China as“eat your fingers off.” Oops!
GEC and Plesssey had a join company in France which was called GPT. When GPT is pronounced in French, it sounds as “Jay-Pay-Tay” which is similar J’ai pete, which means ” I have farted.”
When Puffs tissue started marketing their tissues in Germany it didn’t do so well. The reason – Puff means “brothel” in Germany.
When Italian mineral water company promoted their mineral water Traficante it was a failure because the word “Traficante” means “drug dealer” in Spanish.
When Bacardi launched a fruit drink named Pavian they meant French chick, but when they promoted it in Germany the same word meant “Baboon.”
Electrolux had to take their slogan down which read “Nothing sucks like Electrolux.”
When Ford tried selling it’s car “Pinto” in Brazil it was a huge failure. The reason – the word “Pinto” is a slang for small penis in Brazil.
Parker pens slogan “Avoid Embarassment – use Quink,” when translated into Spanish came out as “Avoid pregnancy – use Quink.”
When Hunt – Wesson introduced their Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos, they forgot to note one thing, Gros Jos is the slang for “big breasts.”

These examples above show that promotional messages in one country might deliver one message where as in another the same message can be conceived as something else.Read More:http://marketinghackz.com/10-product-and-campaign-blunders-to-learn-from/