Speaking & thinking in another language
Up until first grade I spoke and wrote in Punjabi when my parents decided to move back home and put me in an “English speaking” school. Teachers threatened to deny admission if I didn’t learn to speak in English in the first year of being there. Ever since then, my parents spoke to me in English at home and I began to write, speak and think in English. While I learnt to read and write Hindi as my second language in school, I never really attempted to improve my fluency in this alternative and poetic language.
So in a recent forum when Indian Usability & Information Architecture professionals began discussing Hindi translations for “interaction design” and emerging practices in their field, I was suddenly reminded of my lack of proficiency to think in Hindi. What would Usability or Information Architecture mean in Hindi? They can’t be literal translations as they would fail in meaning. But finding the right word is a challenge and the slew of posts have been discussing just that. I am curious to learn about the outcome if any. My sense is that this is going to be an ongoing discussion.
In the meantime, I’ll stick to English and hope that in some way I can practice my Hindi and begin to think in a language that offers a limitless ocean of creativity which when explored can create poetic intonations that English as a language fails to offer.
There are 1 Comments to "Speaking & thinking in another language"
This is one of the big debates in linguistics – are some languages better than others at describing the world? Linguists are split about 50/50 on this. Of course, it’s obvious that some languages are better suited for certain tasks than others.
If I wanted to write a technical manual for building an engine I would use English. English is a very terse and technical language. However, English is a difficult language for poetry compared to a language like Italian. The most transcendental languages like Arabic and Sanskrit are perfect for describing religion because of the esoteric nature inherit in many of the words. Even a word like dharma is almost impossible to translate into English because there is so much packed into this single word.
I’m guessing that as time goes by more of the web will move toward localization rather than global English as most of the web is today. Many thought that the web would allow English to take a firm hold as the global language. I’m glad that this trend seems to be declining. Like you, I believe that language is a reflection of culture and history. As more web sites more towards localization, a whole new world of challenges will await those of you in the usability field – with a whole new set of rules and best practices. You’ve got a long road ahead of you but perhaps this road will lead to a better understanding of your own language and culture.