The topic I’ve chosen isn’t one that can be fully explored within the brief span of this essay alone, but I will endeavour to broach it anyhow, because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The idea of language itself is something I’m always trying to tackle as a writer, but I’m still having difficulties grappling with it when it comes to publishing and writing fiction, both how it has the power to alienate us and also bring us together.
You can say I immigrated to Canada, but I think in the context of this essay, it might be more accurate to say I translated myself in Canada. Now I’m trying to translate myself back to reclaim the me who has been stalled in time and reconcile her with the me who has kept moving on foreign land. Sometimes I imagine immigration, translation, as the migration of realms, where the self I left behind in China remains, 4 years old, stalled in time, tugging on the back of the hoodie of the me now, 25 years old, still aging, still walking among people and in places that have become home—yet home has two definitions for me, where I’m desperately clutching onto a fading memory.
Over time, my fluency in Mandarin has been decreasing, and I find myself translating words from English to Mandarin exactly as they are and sometimes with English grammar, but that means what I’m trying to express becomes something very different or does not offer the correct context I intended. I used to think in Mandarin when I was a child, but now I have to translate my English thoughts to Mandarin, and then sometimes back to English to see if they make sense, before translating them back once more into Mandarin before speaking. An uprooting, I suppose, is what it feels like.
I’ve always envied those who can speak multiple languages, and more importantly, those who can think in multiple languages. Sometimes I find my mind resistant to my mother tongue, choosing to speak in English as a first choice, and something I’ve been thinking about is how the comforting lull of “knowing” or “being fluent” in a language might make us inflexible.
On the Consumption of Language and Culture
Growing up, I always viewed language as a form of communication, an act of exchanging thoughts and emotions. But over time, what I discovered is that language is deeply connected to culture, its values, and its beliefs. Language and its cultural touchstones and implications change how we experience stories, how we understand them, how they are told, how they are created. It is important to note, though, the difference between learning a language to understand its people and learning a language to take advantage of them—a topic for another time.
I think changing language comes with a change in culture, values, beliefs, or at least it influences these factors. To understand something culturally specific in a language outside of our mother tongue can drastically change the meaning or tone of a word or phrase, shift its importance, or perhaps diminish the weight of the words and their value. I find we tend to make associations and assumptions between what is unfamiliar and what we find familiar, even when there is no connection.
For example, referencing grandparents in Chinese, for me, would be nǎinai and yéye (paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather), and wàipó and wàigōng (maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather). The differentiation is an important factor, but it also holds respect and intimacy. But to call our grandparents in English, in Canadian culture, “paternal so and so or maternal so and so,” feels distant and overly categorical.
Further on the translation of words from one language to another: that there are certain words in one language that are omitted in another says volumes about the origin of the language, along with how they are used in a specific language, and I think these subtleties are lost when translated or forced into English, because we then think about them in the context of English and its history and culture. That’s not to say that writing, among other mediums, should not be translated, but more so that there is merit in introducing words in their native language when writing about culture in English; sometimes it can serve as a mental reset, a reminder that we are not in a culture that is Anglophone, or even western, within a story world, or to better help us understand terms, names, and such for which English may not have a fitting enough word.
I think it’s similar for the significance of names, and how translated names might not hold the same tone, meaning, implications when translated. I contemplate the way people shun names that aren’t easy enough for them to pronounce and might be reluctant to learn their pronunciations given this.
I suppose these are just a few reasons why I occasionally struggle when deciding what I want to keep in Chinese in my writing and what I want to translate, and with what I keep, whether I should keep the accents on the letters or not, because they make a difference in what the pinyin refers to in relation to its connected Chinese character.
On Accents and Tones
On a different definition of accent . . .
Something I’ve been discussing with my spouse recently is the way accents vary, and why the natural tones of some languages seem to conflict with the natural tones of another—about how someone who is a native Mandarin speaker might sound gentle in their mother tongue but harsh when trying to speak in English. And it reminds me of the dying dialect of Fúzhōuhuà—what my parents and grandparents speak, along with older relatives but also the younger ones who had been taught. To many, conversing in the dialect sounds like fighting, but in our cultural context, it is as passionate as it is aggressive, and as gentle as it is harsh, as pained and sorrowful as it is joyous and rambunctious. But when its tones are translated into an English cultural context, it might be misunderstood as only aggressive.
Which brings me to how some movies, rather than casting actors and actresses from the culture and place the movie is set in—and sometimes even when they cast those who are from the movie setting—might bring in famous American faces. And rather than having them speak in the setting’s native language, they might use accented English to correspond to the culture instead. Yet, just as the tones of different languages might clash, I think this holds true for accented English in films, where the vibrancy and beauty of a culture’s native language is lost because it is forced to conform to the shape of English words, along with its tones and restrictions.
There is also pushback on the use of subtitles. We saw this with the first Avatar movie, with the native tongue of the Na’vi, so it was altered in the second movie where accented English was used instead. But we have also seen successes in including constructed languages with subtitles in the form of Game of Thrones. for example High Valyrian and the language of the White Walkers, Skroth, both of which would sound very different if presented as accented English, and our experience of the languages would not be the same.
And perhaps that is why some shy away from high fantasy with constructed languages, just as people might shy away from actual languages and cultures outside their own. There is a certain, and persistent, resistance; a fear. Willing or unwilling, the reality of being flexible with a culture outside of our own is one that many of us, particularly those marginalized, have experienced throughout history. Perhaps all we want is for those on the other side to extend a hand, to join us, even for a moment, so we can understand each other, and the way we might mourn and grieve what we have lost in trade for the comfort they held onto so tightly.
To have accented English as a replacement for different languages may increase accessibility to a wider audience, but it also makes the original language additionally foreign and intensifies the feeling of “otherness.”
Growing up, I watched a lot of shows from various cultures, but all of them were dubbed in English, and it made me think that was just how things were, that everything was supposed to be in English while I was in Canada. But when I discovered the same versions of those shows in their original language with subtitles, though the subtitles might not always be great, the experience seemed far more authentic, the tones more dynamic, natural, unstilted; rather than an act that draws too much attention to its unnaturalness.
A lot of film adaptions, particularly those most popular in the realm of fantasy, include English as the dominant common tongue. But in secondary-world fantasy, this need not be the case. Yet there is a default of using English in fantasy because it’s much easier than creating a new language. Of course, creating a language, just as learning a language, is hard.
But reading and thinking in English has very different cultural and societal implications, expectations, and attachments that might not be true for everyone. Presenting fantasy worlds in English can further alienate other cultures, particularly when there are opportunities to include original languages, or to develop new secondary-world cultures detached from the history of the western world. Though not secondary world fantasy, an example would be The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang, where the Heptapods experience the past, present, and future through their language.
And I suppose a lot of it does come down to capitalism, profit, convenience, and accessibility as well; but it is also fueled by what is perceived to be desired by the masses.
Art is adjusted to serve the audience.
But I believe that trends and what audiences seek to consume are things we have power and influence over, no matter how impossible or fantastical it might seem. Perhaps we can see these changes reflected in which media, authors, and artists receive more support.
Anime, Korean Dramas, International Films, Subtitles, and Global Appeal
On the past, and current, pushback of subtitles: though it persists, I think there is a market for and growth in the acceptance of subtitles, and a greater global desire to embrace diversity and experience cultures in their natural context. Examples might be anime and Korean dramas, as well as films from around the world, presented in their native language and released on big screens around North America.
Accented English seems less common in terms of sci-fi movies where technology solves language barriers. An example is the headsets that translate foreign languages into one’s mother tongue in The Wandering Earth 2.
More on the aversion of subtitles: I think many of those around me are used to growing up with subtitles, particularly individuals like my parents, with their translators in hand. Everywhere they go in Canada, what floats in front of their eyes becomes subtitles. And perhaps if we saw subtitles as a method of understanding, rather than an obstacle to avoid or overcome, they might not seem like an inconvenience.
Fantasy and Foreignness
For some, the idea of fantasy might be connected to the idea of foreignness, to “otherness,” and it makes me wonder if some of those who shy away from fantasy are also those who might shy away from engaging with cultures outside their own.
Particularly in terms of fantasy languages, given the differences in grammar constructions, the weight and order of sentences and presentation of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and such, along with local dialect and idioms, I think the idea of being lost in translation holds true for created fantasy beings and species as well. What does it mean to think in a language? To pick up what is unique to that language? How much effort are we willing to put into understanding what is difficult for us to wrap our heads around?
Growing up, for the years I was an ESL learner, like my parents, I had to use dictionaries to search up words while learning to read and write in English. But there seems to be a refusal to do this when it comes to fantasy glossaries or searching up cultural references and words. One way of thinking about this is that we are choosing to enter another’s world, not bringing their world into our own. It is difficult, but I think understanding one another is difficult. The effort we put into understanding rather than forcing others to understand us makes all the difference.
For most, the language of magic is something wondrous, curious, one that people are willing to explore. I hope that someday everyone might have a greater desire and willingness to learn other languages, and to learn about other cultures, with the same curiosity they have for magic—even if it is difficult. I believe it will help to connect us, and perhaps we will come to better understand one another along the way.
The Act of Translating Fantasy
Just as languages are lost in translation, I feel like much of the magic and wonder of fantasy and the world that lives within our minds also become somewhat lost in translation, in the act of bringing it into reality. To take the vibrancy of the worlds, the intricacies and novelties of the beings that live within, their society, culture, language, and force it all into our own language, the confines of our own world, much of it becomes lost. And the uniqueness of each culture, what makes it so different from the others, is sometimes lost in translation.
Yet in the act of translation, those things become human, become connection, similarities, feelings of empathy and relatability. And I hope, as with fantastical worlds, we can also come to connect with each other, as humans, without losing what also makes us different—where we don’t forget where we came from, and we better understand who we have become; and hopefully it all translates into the future we are striving for, no matter how fantastical it might seem.