When implicit relational maps come to clash

When I published my half-serious issue about the implicit relational map for Piedmontese native speakers I did not really plan to open a Pandora's box. I was simply amused by the number of usual misunderstandings that happen when concepts get broadcast through a network of speakers belonging into different native languages.

Yet, as a matter of fact, this lead a number of people to think of what a language really is. One possible definition of language is: a set of definitions that assign labels bearing a local validity to a universally valid content. This is true, to a certain extent, and it is exactly what makes translations possible. By defining a conversion table (a dictionary) we can easily use any other set of labels to express the same concept. Can we? Can we really say that translations are possible?

When we say that cultural imprinting is defining a conception of the world whose fractal presence sits at word level (and even more atomically, since basic phonemes are often roots with an associated archaic meaning) we imply that no real translation is possible. We may say the same thing but it will never have the same implied meaning.

We can translate Horse into Лошадь, Caval or Pard, but we cannot bring along the implications of Horse when using labels developed by a culture whose horses looked differently and has a totally different social value for people. Mongolians used to spend their lives on the back of their horses, Englishmen never had such a massive nomadic behaviour. The affective network that relates Mongolians and Englishmen to their respective Horses must have developed a quite different set of implied meanings and relations, accordingly.

Since this network of relations and social experiences is what finally crystallizes into a language, one can hardly expect translations to be possible at all. And it's not just about labels. As anyone who has studied a foreign language knows, simply substituting the original labels with those belonging into another set won't help much. If I translate the Russian sentence У меня дочь into the English sequence At me daughter I can hardly expect anyone to guess that the Russian speaker was actually saying that he/she is the parent of a girl.

We cannot simply overwrite labels. We also need to know how this labels are to be used. We need a syntax telling us that Russian has cases, and that the preposition У needs to be followed by a Genitive case. But we also need to know (and this is the most difficult step in learning a foreign language) that Russians and Slavic languages in general express ownership as a location. The owner is/behaves as a place, in which possessed things are located.

This leads to sentences like У меня дочь Ивана (At me daughter Ivan's). It is constructed exactly in the same way, and it may mean that this girl has come to visit, it can be used by a kidnapper to say he's got hold of a child or by an entrepreneur boasting he has business contacts with the daughter of a third person. Position is also possession. Yet, no matter how you twist it, the Slavic concept of place/possession will never mean sex, while possession in English will, when applied to people.

At yet another level, although syntactically correct, only a limited number of expressions will sound right to a native speaker. This is an interesting field, but it has had quite a lot of research already, and it is not what I want to write about. What I really mean is that the semantic cloud associated with an expression in a language can only partially coincide with the semantic cloud associated with another expression in another language, although at surface level they do mean the same thing.

So what happens when we move from one language to another is that, no matter how correctly we place our translated expressions according to the new syntax, we loose the part of the semantic cloud that is associated with the original expression but is not not associated with the translated expression. Moreover, we add an entire new galaxy of implied associations that never were present in the original text.

So, are we exchanging plain (although not deliberate) lies when we make translations for each other? The answer is largely depending on how far from each other are the two cultures involved in the translation process. Two neighbouring languages usually do not suffer of this semantic drift up to the point in which the resulting translation becomes largely unrelated to the original. But what happens when we translate, say, a Chinese classic dating back to 2 millennia ago into modern English?

The answer is in the amount of translator's notes needed to make possible at least a basic understanding of the original meaning (or better, of the translator's idea of the original meaning). One thing that really struck me, many decades ago, was reading Mr. Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching. I considered it one of the masterpiece of Human Thought, until some 20 years later I finally got hold of a translation made by a Chinese from Hong Kong, and... what I read was an entirely different thing.

The text it contains is actually even more interesting than Mr. Wilhelm's version, but it has none of the Wagnerian semantic cloud that the German translator had put in it. The result was a quick handbook about decision making, and it did make look Mr. Wilhelm's version closer to the Sæmundar Edda than to Chinese society of the Autumns and Springs age. The German book has not remained in my library, while I still use the Hong Kong version. I like things practical. Yet, is this version any closer to the original than Mr. Wilhelm's ever was? Can the semantic cloud of a late 20^th century Cantonese speaker be similar to that of a Chinese who lived some 2 millennia before him? Probably not, if we are to judge by the distance between us and Homer.

This leads to a number of considerations about revived languages. It would be a fairly long subject, so I will simply point out that when people from another place and another time pick up (say) Classical Latin and start to use it to produce a wikipedia, they DO alter the original semantic cloud of the language by including concepts and representations that are foreign to the original semantic cloud of the language.

There is nothing morally wrong in doing so, but it would be much better if they called their language with another name. Say Contemporary Latin, or Contemporary Anglo-Saxon. Because otherwise people learning the language by reading their wiki will be mislead into growing non existing semantic clouds for their Latin, something that will result in trouble when reading the original Classic texts. So no, I'm not advocating the closure of such wikipedias, but I do wish they got renamed.

Now finally to the subject that opened this blog... people did write me their ideas about languages and the impact of semantic clouds on real life. A number of personal communications are related to the impact of semantic space on cultural adaptations when relocating to other countries/cultures. And a high number of such communications is about how two diverging semantic clouds can fight within the very same person.

I can hear many of you asking themselves questions like what the hell does he mean? I mean children being born in mixed couples. People who are exposed to two or more semantic spaces but are never told about what semantics is. People who eventually may end up in interpreting this clash in the usual way a kid would: as an answer to one parent's question do you like ME better? any time mom's cloud says one thing about an issue, and dad's cloud says another. Not to speak about the fact that society and school may well say a third thing.

So in the end I am starting to realize a few things:

1. Semantics are far from being a linguist's tool, they actually are a field for

   • Mental Heath Care

   • Integration policies

   • Self-awareness

2. None of the politicians who pretend to rule the planet is going to realize this. Whatever we will do to generate a better grasp of Semantics and their impact on real lives, we will do alone.

I will come back on this, sometimes in the future. I am the father of a daughter who is half-Russian/Ukrainian and half Piedmontese myself. Since this is a responsibility I have towards my own child, I think I will share the results of whatever I can do for her.

Maybe it will also help other parents and young people who have a lot of questions in mind. I remain firmly convinced that nothing is positive or negative in itself. I myself lived through a number of problems deriving from semantic divergences in my own family, the result is that I got quite skilled in analysing what language is. So my road will be towards giving the people a better understanding of what lies under the words we use to think.