the rix mix

Here's an interesting predicament because it's about translating language. As a writer/reader, I always want to be aware of when I'm reading a translation because I read them all time, & I know I'm not reading what the original author wrote. So am I really understanding it? What happens to puns & colloquialisms? How does one communicate a philosophical term with no equal in English? Even simple metaphors are difficult - natural images such as specific flowers that function as common metaphors in one culture do not carry the same meaning in another. There is always, always the translator's challenge of a "literal" translation versus attempting to discern the truest sense of the author's tone & intent, which requires creative interpretation. So when newspapers reported that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel should be "wiped off the map," my translation antennae began waving around helplessly. I didn't dwell on it. Now, this man is a dangerous screwball, & I hope the Iranian people get rid of him at first opportunity. They elected him as an anti-corruption candidate, not as a demagogue. But "wiped off the map" is a common English language turn of phrase, a cliche always used in connection with a catastrophic event. Did he really say that? What did he mean? Is there an exact equivilant in modern Persian that Iranians actually speak? Or did Mahmoud say "vanish from the page of time," with its metaphysical overtones? I've been reading histories of the Middle Ages that emphasize upfront the total anonymity of life in those centuries, when Europeans had no surnames & they didn't even name their villages. Many were "wiped off the map" by armies, if the places were even on maps - most weren't; but they all vanished because they were invisible, unrecorded people & places to begin with. Two or three or at best four generations hence, 99% of us will have vanished even from the histories of our families, our names forgotten along with the details of our lives. All our documentation won't preserve us in their memories. We will be lost in a glut of recorded information & it is unlikely anyone will come looking for us. How would a competent translator conclude that "vanish from the page of time" in one language could be written as "wiped off the map" in another?

We depend upon the government to translate most political language for us, & the Bush administration never tells us anything straight. The federal censors even filter the layman's meteorological explanations put out by the National Weather Service lest they somehow endorse global warming. Bill Scher at Huffingtonpost writes about the serious implications of controlling & manipulating language translation in international discourse, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. & as Mr. Holtaway, my high school senior English teacher used to remind us uncomprehending morons over & over: "The word is not the thing." Try Babelfish