Translation is a tricky business, especially since words in
different languages that denote the same thing have different emotional
flavours. Good examples are the English
words Pork and Hearse – in German the words Schweinefleisch (pig-flesh) and
Leichenwagen (corpse-wagon) refer to the same things, but the connotation of
these words is very different. In
English the words stand on their own, they must be learned in isolation. In German they can be derived – if you know
what a pig is and what flesh is you know what pig-flesh is, and the same goes
for corpse-wagon. But unless you already
know French (where Porc means pig) the word Pork means nothing to you. Arguably the spirit behind these different
choices for words is that one culture is more direct, and more comfortable with
certain aspects of existence. Using the
word Pork makes it easier to think that one isn’t really eating a dead animal
than using the word pig-flesh. Actually,
before the Norman take-over of England
the English used the word pigmeat rather than pork.
Even trickier than translating from one language to another
is translating experiences into words.
How do I translate what my eyes see into words which I can use to share
this experience with some one else? We
do this all the time, of course, but deep down we know very well that our words
are a very poor reflection of reality. No
matter how carefully the words are chosen, reading a menu is only a pale reflection
of eating what is on the menu. Even if
we enlist the aid of pictures, or evocative scents, or appropriate music, we
cannot re-create an experience adequately.
As Wittgenstein said, all we can do is guide someone else along a
certain path, so s/he can have the same experience that we have had.
But even that is unsatisfactory. Even if you see the same sunset that I see,
your sensory experience, and your emotional response to it, might be very
different from mine. I will never forget
the story of the tourist who admired a group of rugged pine trees that stood on
an inaccessible mountain ridge high above the Yellow River, and remarked to an
ancient local man how much he envied him this beautiful view. Beautiful? replied the local man. That isn’t beautiful at all! It is impossible to get at! Beautiful to the local man meant useful, and
since he couldn’t get at the trees and cut them down and use them for firewood
he thought them ugly and useless. The
tourist and the local looked at those picturesque trees from different
perspectives, and even though they saw the same thing they interpreted it
completely differently.
So is it ever possible to truly share an experience with
someone else? Indeed, is it even
possible to share an experience with oneself?
Often when we re-visit a past experience it seems very different to us
than it was the previous time. We see /
eat / smell / touch the same thing but our emotional response is completely
different. Or so it seems to us, because
in fact we don’t really know. We are
comparing a memory with a reality, and never know how accurately the memory
corresponds to the experience which occasioned it. So I don’t think it is possible to compare
experiences in any meaningful way, not with oneself and certainly not with
others. Is my toothache today worse than
my stomachache from last week, or my headache last year? Is my toothache worse than your toothache?
And why try to compare these things anyway, why does it
matter whose toothache is worst, and whether your enjoyment of a sunset is
similar to my enjoyment of a sunset? I
think it matters because it helps to dispel our existential loneliness. As long as we think that other people see /
taste / hear / feel / emotionally respond in the same way to the same experiences,
we can maintain the illusion that we are not alone, not just isolated creatures
haunting the vast memory caverns of our own skulls, surrounded by others who
are ‘we know not what or who’.
