by Terri Edinburgh

Created on: March 21, 2008   Last Updated: May 20, 2008

Lost In Translation

Life would be easy if we were all alike, and communicated as such! Thank goodness we are not. It is the cultural accents, nuances of the language, and communicative differences that makes our country unique. But it is also those communicative differences from one culture to another that poses a problem when it comes to translating spoken and written communication. In the field of education, it is even more apparent how uniquely challenging the daunting task of education translation is. There are similarities from one language to another; the idea that all language has the ability to label objects, describe actions and events, and that these languages are divided into various subsystems of spoken, written, and social communication. It is these subsystems; spoken - phonology, morphology; written - syntax, semantics; and social - pragmatics, where the challenge lies in translating any type of educational material.

Spoken or verbal communication begins with phonology, which is the study of the sound system of a language, the very foundation upon which a language is built. Here in lies the challenge. Not all languages share the same basic structure of phonemes (sounds) which can be vastly different, or does not exist at all, from one language to another. For instance, the English language, on average, consists of thirty-four to forty-five phonemes; of these, eleven does not exist in the Chinese language and seven in the Japanese language. This makes translating the same message difficult, if not, sometimes, next to impossible. But it is not just the sounds of a language that can pose a problem, it can also be the words.
Morphology is the study of how words are built. If we had ability to translate word-for-word, than educational translation would be a smooth and easy process. Unfortunately we do not. It stands to reason that if every language does not share the same sounds, every language is not going to share the same words; and for those words that can be translated word-for-word, the meaning can lose itself in translation. Remember, it is not just the word that is being translated, but the culture and the historical cultural context behind that word that is being translated. Building upon the foundation of the spoken language is the written language.
Written language encompasses two things; syntax and semantics. Syntax is the study of the structure of sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences. Semantics is the study of the meanings of individual words, phrases and sentences. These basic structures, rules, and meanings change from language to language. What may be grammatically correct, and mean one thing for one will not be grammatically correct and mean the same for another.
Finally, we have the social aspect of translation, which is just as important. Pragmatics is the study of language and communication in context and includes three major communication skills. The area most important in translating educational materials is the ability to appropriately adapt or change, translate language, according to the listener or situation without changing the initial meaning. That is what translation is all about. The ability to communicate the same message in another language.

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