By Ben M-B'
Translation can affect meaning significantly. A basic example would be in French, with two versions of saying you. Translating “tu” and “vous” both as “you” would lose the critical difference of their meanings in French. “Tu” would be used to talk to a friend, a long-term relationship or someone you know well, while “vous” would be used to address many people or someone like a teacher. “Tu” can even be used intentionally to induce a sense of impoliteness or anger in the said phrase. Therefore, translation can change the expressed meaning of a word or phrase, reducing or enhancing its effect, making it critical in communicating effectively.
Throughout history, errors or exaggerated misinterpretations of language have changed events. Jerome, when translating the Hebrew Bible into Latin in the 4th century, translated the word “almah” (young woman) into “virgo” (virgin). This fundamentally has changed the perception of the virgin birth of Jesus, altered the sanctity of the Virgin Mary in the catholic church and changed Christian beliefs forever. Another example would be in 1945, the Japanese responded to the Potsdam declaration with the word “mokusatsu”, which can mean either “to ignore” or “to withhold comment”. This represented a moment of escalating tension due to the limitations of translations, with the intended effect of the word being lost through the translation process. Another poignant example in today's political space is in the UN resolution 242, post the 6-day war in 1967. Israel was ordered to carry out a “withdrawal from territories occupied”, in English, but in French it was “retrait… des territoires occupés”, meaning withdraw from all occupied territories. This change in meaning sparked anger and debate, with Israel adopting the more vague British translation and the Arab world adopting the French one. Therefore, translation errors can have serious ramifications on a global scale.
Translation also plays a large role in the consumption of media and global culture in general. For example, in Netflix shows, subtitles have to be compressed to fit on the screen, therefore potentially missing out on the colloquial meaning of the things being said. Many shows can lose their sense of humour and realism due to the inability to express the true meaning and nuance of phrases effectively through subtitles. Another good example would be in the world-renowned realm of Pokémon. The main character, Ash, is actually called Satoshi in Japanese, anglicising Japanese culture and reducing its prominence in the Japanese TV show. Therefore, translation doesn’t preserve the image of the original culture in another; it fundamentally reconstructs it, with global consumption of this filtered and standardised culture losing the key nuances that differentiate each culture from another and producing multiple fragments of one culture due to the inability to express its identity in a foreign language.
Poor translation can lead to standardisation of culture and a loss of individuality. In the book Babel by R.F. Kuang, it highlights the importance of translation. The main characters are, in fact, part of the translation institute of Oxford University, and it is they who shape the powerful properties of silver. The message taken from this is that translation is much more important than some believe and has and will continue to shape the world due to the alternative meanings it can create. A key indicator of this change in possible meanings is the plethora of translations of key foreign works of literature by a plethora of linguists, showing that the meaning of a text isn’t just derived from its words, but also the ideas that it evokes in the reader and the way they believe those are best presented in one's own native language.
Therefore, the annoyance of A-level English to French translation may seem useless and unnecessarily painful, but translation can open the doors to the keys of the language, the nuance on which it runs and the grammatical qualities that differentiate each one.
Bibliography-
https://www.britannica.com/topic/translation-language
https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War
https://www.britannica.com/topic/mokusatsu
https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/resolutions-0
Susan Napier — Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle
R.F. Kuang - Babel
