On the Difference between Meaning and Translation

With all the language studying and teaching I'm doing this year, I noticed that there is one problem that just keeps popping up again and again. That is the misconception among many language learners that the meaning of a sentence is it's translation. People keep asking what something means, when they are really asking for a translation. I tend to get a lot of puzzled looks when I ask them to make the distinction. Because people who are not fluent in a language tend to extract the meaning from the translation rather then the original word or sentence. They take a detour, if you will. And they don't grasp that their native language is a tool in that process, not the objective. I guess it is especially hard when you learn your first foreign language, to wrap your head around the idea that your native language is not the ne plus ultra of communication.

The thing is though, that any given language system encodes meaning independent of another language system, which is why at a certain point in learning you won't need the help of your mother tongue to decode the meaning. And despite the fact, that we tend to equate grammatical phenomena as much as possible across languages, there are in every language certain things that you can't quite imitate in every or most other languages. This is what gets lost in translation.

For example, when I want to greet someone in German by saying “Hello, nice to meet you,” unlike in English, I have to convey meaning about the nature of my relationship to that person. I have to decide whether or not to address them formally or informally. And this can have far reaching consequences. Say, for example, I meet someone in a business setting and he uses the informal pronoun “du” (which is something that happens all the time because I'm female and look a little younger than I am). Well, big deal you might say, it's just a tiny little word. But with that tiny little word he has just put me in somewhat of a loose loose situation. He is basically patronizing me. I can now either say nothing and let him patronize me or call him out, which will probably have a negative impact on my future relations with him and everyone to whom he communicates that I'm kind of 'difficult'. This is even more detrimental when said person is above me in the hierarchy. Because in that case I still have to address him formally regardless of how he addresses me and if my male coworkers - whom he is addressing formally - take note of that, they'll assume superiority regardless of our job descriptions or performance. And there you have your worst case scenario. So tiny word – major implications.

Long story short to really understand a language you have to grasp these nuances and be aware of them regardless of whether or not you can recreate them in translation. Because it's the meaning your after.

On The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Trope and Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've heard quite a few people criticize Paper Towns for being the cliche manic pixie dream girl story. Having read it myself, that kind of makes me wonder … have we read the same book? I mean, of course it is all ABOUT the manic pixie dream girl trope, since the whole thing is an attempt do discredit this trope. And Green could hardly have been more obvious about it. If anything, I would criticize him for this obviousness. That's somewhat of a reoccurring theme of his (among others). And it might stem from crafting a novel around a concept or idea – like fables or fairy tales – rather than letting the story evolve from the characters. But lots of people do this, and you can usually tell. It's a matter of personal preference whether one likes one or the other approach better. I personally enjoy both kinds of stories.

The most interesting thing about his endeavor is the approach Green took to attack the trope. He could have done it in loads of different ways. But he chose to basically build Margo up as a manic pixie dream girl, only to reveal in the end that it's all just been in Q's head. I think that's why a very cursory reader might mistake this for the actual trope. And in fact, one might wonder what the big difference is? Because that sounds like she basically serves the same purpose that every manic pixie dream girl does: helping “broodingly soulful” Q learn a life lesson that is going to be key to finding his own happiness. Now how's that for a conundrum? A manic pixie dream girl dispelling the myth of the manic pixie dream girl. Except, that's not quiet it, because unlike other manic pixie dream girls, Margo also learns a valuable lesson from the whole fiasco.

I think there is a rather strong indication – indication as in Green spells it right out (That's the obviousness I've been talking about.) - that Margo herself is initially somewhat infatuated with the idea of being someone's muse or manic pixie dream girl. And she initially sets herself up as one. She makes an effort to plant the idea in Q's head, and thinks the thing is done. She thinks she did something to effect an important change in someone's life, meaning that by extension she herself was important in this life she left behind – something she's been doubting for obvious (again) reasons.

What she doesn't reckon with, is how this idea evolves inside Q's head, leading him to recreate her into this larger than life “precious thing” that he needs to save, effectively making him her hero. So essentially they both want the same thing. And that's a problem. Because in order for one of them to be the hero and safe the other, one of them will have to be the damsel in distress. Neither of them identifies as such.

So when they finally meet again, they're both confronted with the implications of what they attempted to create. They learn to see each other as real life people rather than mere tropes and means to an end. And they both realize – Margo a little sooner than Q actually – that a muse or manic pixie dream girl is not what an actual person is, but merely the two dimensional unattainable thing another person makes them out to be – unattainable because real people in all their complexity can never achieve the level of simplicity a fantasy needs to be unambiguously positive.



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On the Supposed Demigods in White

It's been way too long since I have written a post – two weeks now, in fact. Two weeks in which I have sadly been way too preoccupied freaking out about the dentist appointment I've just had ... looking up the procedure and all possible complications ... imagining all kinds of horrible scenarios … you get the picture.

The blog wasn't the only thing I neglected for this, but it thankfully didn't affect my studies too much. Yeah, the summer is over and classes have resumed. The good news is that I started off rather well, because when it comes to reigning in obsessive thoughts, it's much better to give my brain something to focus on – like language studies – than to let it roam freely – like I do when I write. And it just so happens that I'm doing a lot of language studies this year.

However, the more interesting question here is, where this panic comes from. Because weirdly enough it doesn't stem from some horrible dentist experiences. I haven't really had those. Thank god! In fact, I haven't experienced much on the doctors front at all – much less than most people I know – as has been repeatedly pointed out to me these past weeks.

I have, however, time and time again seen doctors employ diagnostic processes that looked a lot more like guessing games than educated opinions. Not only that, but when I look at my circle of friends and acquaintances there is hardly anyone who hasn't been subjected to some kind of medical malpractice. But even though they might still suffer the consequences, their trust in doctors seems unshaken - a lot less shaken than mine at least.

To most of them doctors are still demigods in white. I just can't muster this kind of blind faith. What comes to mind when I think about doctors are their failures, both in the here and now and in historical times - because history major, you know. And most infuriating thing is that despite all this evidence they still got this disgustingly condescending air about them. Think 'doctors are gentlemen, and gentlemen's hands are clean.' Also, they may have studied medicine all they want, but what good is that, if they don't even know how to listen to what their patients tell them – if they don't even ask the right questions?

Speaking of studying medicine, seeing medical students in their natural habitat didn't help much to strengthen my trust either. Because at university they look as much as demigods as you and I. And in fact, when it comes to academic bulimia they're among the worst offenders. So long story short, even though I might be kind of a hypochondriac, when it comes to doctors, I'd rather keep my distance and double check everything before I commit to anything.

On Really Bad Advice

When I hear people apologizing for how lame of a phrase “It'll get better” supposedly is, all I can muster is a rueful smile. Because you know what I always got to hear? Something along those lines: “The time will come when you're gonna wish yourself back to this very time of your life.” Well, if that doesn't make you cheer up and appreciate what you have. What it did was make me feel kind of guilty for being unhappy in the first place. And then there is the implication in this statement that it is - apparently - only gonna get worse – much worse. So that should make you wanna get up in the morning or, you know, like just put an end to it right away.

But the thing is, that this is - of course - not quite what the folks were saying. In fact, they weren't talking about me and my problems at all. They were essentially projecting the feelings they had about their own schooldays onto me. Apparently they did fare a lot better than I did. Go figure. And it seems like they couldn't even imagine that it might be different for me. I did realize this back then, but that didn't make the statement any less annoying and hurtful. I mean it would have helped a lot, if someone had just acknowledged my experience for starters.

Now I at least get the triumph of saying that they were wrong. It didn't get worse. It got infinitely better - even though I'm still sort of in limbo at the moment. But I wouldn't wanna go back to this time of my life if you gave me a truckload of cash for it. And I'm damn well never ever gonna be going to any reunion. I just hope there will never come a time when I'd wanna do go back because I'd pretty much have to hit rock bottom to get to that point.

On Language Learning and Self-fulfilling Prophecies

A while back I wrote a post about how it's not your teacher's responsibility for you to learn something, but your own. So for the past few weeks I've been following my own advise and tackled my french, which after four years of language learning in school was rudimentary at best. I'm happy to report that it's going quite well. Much much better than it ever did in school. And along the way I have formed some ideas about why that is.

There are of course some technical drawbacks to the approach we took in school. The focus on grammar at the expense of exposure being a major one of those. I believe we never even got to hear a native speaker until we were already about two or three years into our studies. And it turns out our teacher's pronunciation was anything but decent. Another one would be the lack of context clues when it came to vocabulary learning. Because lists of pretty much random words are an unnecessarily inefficient form of learning material.

These are some of the reasons that usually get cited when we wonder why kids are doing so poorly in their language studies. But I think that's only scratching the surface. I believe these wouldn't actually be that much of a problem – or rather that students could easily remedy those themselves. The thing is, though, that the root of the problem goes much deeper.

I just now discovered what the two biggest obstacles to language learning I faced back in school actually were: the class environment and the low expectations of our teacher and subsequently of ourselves. I think those two were actually reenforcing each other. Let me paint the scene for you.

It was just after our advancement to secondary school. I was one of the few who had actually chosen the science program because it came with the french classes and not the other way around. And some kids, I think, were just there because their parents had forced them into it. So you could say that roughly two thirds of this class had no motivation at all to learn french and our teacher didn't provide any either. On the contrary, she greeted us with an introduction on how difficult this class was going to be and how much hard work we were required to do. Needless to say this speech probably did more harm than good for the few of us who had up to this point actually been somewhat enthusiastic about the endeavor.

Also, since we were all still in the process of finding our place in this thrown together group of kids, you can imagine that there was a lot of disruptive behavior going on. Some kids tried to distinguish themselves by being very loud and wisecracking, others thought it was cool to act up to authority figures. You get the picture.

So this coupled with the very inefficient grammar focused approach to language learning led to very poor results. These in turn frustrated both the students and the teacher, and lead to the latter thinking very poorly of her students' abilities in general, which she didn't attempt to hide. All this served to create the illusion that language learning in general and learning french in particular was much harder than it actually is. In this kind of environment and the mindset it creates it is no wonder that people wouldn't even dream of achieving fluency.

So long story short the problem with school was not so much what I didn't learn than what I did. Namely that language learning is hard and I couldn't expect more of myself than merely scraping by – like most kids were doing. After all this was the general consensus not only in school, but in the whole of society. It essentially became a self-fulfilling prophecy until I – pretty much by accident – became fluent in English. Because if you spend a lot of time on the Internet, you'll have a hard time getting around it. After all more than 50% of online content is in English. And if you're too impatient to wait months longer for the translation of your favorite book series' next installment than the English speaking world does, you might just consider to get the freaking thing and figure out what's in there. But even then the lesson was so internalized that I thought of English as more of an exception – a sort of fluke. After all it didn't feel like I had put all that much effort into English learning. It just sort of happened?!

What this little tale ought to show is that teaching methods aren't the only problem here. There are other things at play that are much much more destructive, because they are so deeply engrained in the system and play on your subconscious to create mental barriers. And language learning isn't the only school subject to suffer this curse. I'd say that almost all of them are afflicted in varying degrees. When have you first heard how hard math is?

It has taken me years to even begin to repair this damage and find my way back to the curious, hungry for knowledge girl that I once was. And although I am well on my way now, I'll probably still have a long long way to go. After all you don't just cast off that kind of conditioning over night.

On the Demystification of the Artist

Most of us, at some point or another, have probably found ourselves truly awestruck regarding a work of art or a piece of writing, thinking “I wish I could write or draw or think like that.” Some pieces are just that remarkable. They lead us to imagine their creators – and by extension all of their peers – as higher beings, more enlightened than us mere mortals, who could never live up to that kind of standard.

Like so many of us I used to live with this kind of mindset. I was so in awe of artists and writers. It was ridiculous. Without ever being conscious of doing this, I made them out to be some kind of demigods. Never in a million years would I have thought that I myself might be able to create something as beautiful and meaningful as they did. There were just worlds and worlds between us. And so I never really let myself try essentially holding myself back.

I don't even remember exactly when that changed, but somewhere along the way I realized that writers and artist weren't that much different from us, and that I didn't have to be Shakespeare or Leonardo freaking Da Vinci to express myself and create something. I think might actually owe a lot of this epiphany to Stephenie Meyer of all people. When I saw her in the DVD extras, she seemed like such an unlikely person to be capable of being an author. And lets face it, her books are not that well written either – but she is an author nonetheless. So I thought, why not just try? So I did, and it was fun. People even liked what I did and some of them even started looking at me like I actually was one of them writers now. Who would have thought? Without even the ambition of ever getting published people thought of me as a writer.

Somewhere along this process I started thinking about us rather than them. It turns out as small as this shift of perspective seems, it was actually a quantum leap. Being able to imagine writers – and consequently artists in general – as complex mortal beings didn't just help me with my writing. I also feel like I understand a lot better what they or their works could be saying.

Because by placing the artist in some kind of divine sphere, I apparently perceived their works as a lot more mysterious than they actually were. I as a mere human being was just not supposed to understand – I was to merely admire and praise. Taking the creators out of this sphere, allowed me to get over this mental block and really think. Before that I would probably not even thought of writing reviews and blog posts.

Since then I also tackled art again – which I had been neglecting for quite some time – and it is actually fun, now that I don't hold myself to such ridiculous standards anymore. Not only that, but it also seems much easier. I still don't think that I or something I create will ever be god's gift to humanity. But that doesn't mean that the things I think or feel are not worthy of being expressed or shared.

On The Fault in Our Stars and False Beliefs About An Author's Authority

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was a bit wary at first, because, you know, cancer book usually equals depressing and/or preaching. But no, this is definitely not your typical cancer book. Thank god for someone who doesn't use a serious illness to show healthy people the worth of their lives and yada yada yada. And though it is sad, it's not as depressing as one might expect from a cancer book. As usual John Green's wit serves to lighten the mood – even if that means that his characters sometimes sound a lot like him. What I love most about his books, though, is that they always give me something to think about. And because of that I will readily forgive him all of his minor short comings.

What kept me thinking long after I read this particular book was the question about whether or not authors are the one and only authority to their books. In the book Van Houten clearly holds the opinion – as does John Green – that the text is the authority and it's readers are free to interpret or build on it. There are, however, authors who would beg to disagree. (I won't name any names, but I hazard the authors who won't have you write any fan fiction of their works are some likely candidates.)

My stance is that fictional stories are ideas, and – even though copyright law might disagree with me there – ideas are not property per se. They didn't use to be thus and neither should they be. Of course you can't copy and paste, but you should be able to think and build on ideas. I admit that it is difficult to draw the line, but the way today's copyright law draws it is just beyond ridiculous. Re-imaginations, recreations and reincarnations are the surest ways for ideas to survive in posterity and that is what we risk losing.

But this wasn't supposed to be about the can of worms that is copyright law. The question is whether or not what the author imagines outside or even inside the text does have any more weight than what you would. And I'm with John and Van Houten on this one. It doesn't. You might read things into the story that the author didn't intend or the ending of a book disappoints you, and you decide to pretend it never happened or come up with a different one instead. By all means, knock yourself out.

You shouldn't view books and stories as holy scripture and the author their prophet, because conversations have much more creative potential than lectures. And though even authors themselves might confuse authorship with dictatorship, that doesn't make it any more right. Thinking for yourself is a skill that needs to be cultivated – as it should be, otherwise you'll be much too susceptible to manipulation. So yeah, you should go ahead and make reading your own experience. Let creativity bloom - even if it is in opposition. Posterity might just thank you for it.



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