Here goes myself with the English language again. But what if I wrote this sentence in German, would this phrase retain its meaning?
I think most people would answer yes, it is just logical if we think in phrases as a code or mathematical formula ready to be transmitted. And we clearly know our logical analysis is the same in all remote places.
But are we only propagating logical expressions? I think there is more than meet the eyes, much more.
You may be thinking about feelings and all the related expressions of social relationship. Because you probably noticed that people are passing information with a clear social objective. For example, to cause fear or to create compassion.
And this could of course be passed in all languages, although in different ways, right?
Wrong! There are expressions that could not be translated and I dare say, most of them are not. For example, if you say God in a catholic country you have one meaning, but try saying this word in a atheist country or in a country with a different prominent religion. They have very different meanings and feelings related and you will certainly get different results.
There are numerous funny situations related, but what I want to write here is about what we don't usually perceive. For example, you might translate from the German "mir fehlt das DDR" to the English "I miss the DDR".
This is almost the same, but if you take a deep look, we are missing lot of German culture in the English phrase. What is DDR? Ok, lets translate this to: German Democratic Republic. Hmm, but the Germans know how it was there, so we can put... and this goes on and on. Sometimes it just means lot more than what it is written.
You may think it is a classic example of historic culture differences only, so let me get to one more example: German: "Das gibt es gar nicht!" could be translated to English: "I can't believe it". Or in other words, it cannot be translated to English, it is an expression of something surprising or very wrong. I got this example because the idea of right and wrong in German is clear, strong and very natural. But there is not the case in Portuguese, Spanish and English.
The problem is that all words, though similar, have different meanings. Fight in American english is more about violence, and in German "Kampf" is more about perseverance to achieve an objective. I know some of the people understands what I am talking and even know this already. But have they thought the consequences?
One side of the consequences is the conflict. There is a strong conflict from countries trying to understand each other and trying to reach diplomatic positions. People judging other countries on pre assumptions based on their own culture.
Iraq is a good example of sourveignity problem, that is really hard to understand. And yet, we want to solve their problems. Is not it?
Making things simple, there are hundreds of interpretations for each phrase we write, but those hundred interpretations, if this phrase is translated, would differ a lot from language to language probabilistically.
But at the other side, the languages also create islands of culture and permit the survival of plenty of cultures at the same time. Ideologies alive that coevolve together.
And what is really interesting about those cultures is that we can somehow understand the evolution of culture by analysing the expansion and evolution of the languages. The graph of Indo-Europeian languages for example.
This graph teachs alone an intense europe history. The civilizations who died and the ones that survived, along to the ones that let a legacy.
I would say that this graph does a good job in separating the similarity in cultures. And it also goes deep in our day to day life, because who ever thought we were using a legacy of our ancestors, something that tells so much about ourselves as a civilization and country.
Something so precious and delicate that we would hide if we could, but we unconsciously speak.
