Bookshelf: Foreigner

I read a little bit of everything; I always have. My dad loves science fiction, so I read some of that. My mom likes historical fiction, so I read some of that. You already know that romance novels are among my greatest guilty pleasures. I went through a phase in middle school where I read Madeleine L'Engle and any kind of poetry I could get my hands on, almost exclusively. I'm a compulsive shopper in bookstores and libraries: if it looks interesting, I'll take it. Shakespeare? Absolutely. Hosseini? You bet. A random book on the psychology of women? Why not? The latest take on the relationships between the founding fathers? Yes, please!

So when my dad and my brother both suggested a sci-fi series that starts with a book called Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh (one of their favorite authors, whom I had never read before), I shrugged and figured I'd get around to it eventually. When they mentioned the series is about an interpreter, I opened the first book the next day. And, just so you can't say you weren't warned: sci-fi series + interpreter living in a foreign culture + author-invented language = this is going to be a very geeky post.

The basic premise of the series, the first book of which was published in 1994 and the most recent of which - the 12th - came out this year, is that a human spaceship gets lost on its way to a potential colony and, after much struggle (which is greatly abbreviated in the beginning of the first book and fleshed out as it coincides with the present-day storyline throughout the series), finds its way to an inhabited planet in another solar system. Much infighting later, some of the colonists get tired of living on a ship and make their way down to the planet, where, predictably, clashes with the native population (the atevi) ensue. Fast forward 200 years (part of that "greatly abbreviated" portion) and you have a human population that's confined to a specific geographic area where the atevi are not allowed to venture, and one human who serves the aiji (the atevi leader), and by extension the entire atevi population, in the capacity of cultural and linguistic interpreter (known in Ragi, the atevi language, as the paidhi).

When the storyline's present day begins in Foreigner, it's a 20-something man named Bren Cameron who holds the position of paidhi. The plot starts out complicated and becomes more so, but is interesting and fun to follow through the lens of Bren-ji's (a familiar form of address, in Ragi) flexible and seeking mind. I'm in the middle of the third book, Inheritor, and am very glad I won't have to leave Bren and his friends (although that concept does not exist in Ragi, something with which Bren struggles frequently) anytime soon.

I'm not actually sure what the average sci-fi reader would appreciate most about this series. Maybe the fact that the atevi culture is so well-established in the author's mind, and that the focus is much more on them and the paidhi's growing understanding of them than on the human population, which mostly lurks in the background and pops in and out of Bren's thoughts with telegrams and memories. Maybe the fact that the human population in the story originated from a time when humans were space-faring, but have lost their ability to reach space and the entire world, the atevi foremost, is on the brink of achieving that capability together.

I'm not sure how the average sci-fi reader views this series because I'm so captivated by Cherryh's treatment of Bren Cameron's psyche as an interpreter immersed in a foreign language and culture that I can't seem to stop geeking out about the storyline on a linguistic and cultural level long enough to geek out about it on a science fiction level.

As far as I can tell, the Ragi language is Cherryh's invention, of which - at least at the back of the first two books - she explains the pronunciation. You pick up bits and pieces of the structure and cadence of the language throughout the books, both from the scattered phrases Cherryh includes in Ragi, and from Bren's thought processes about the language, its ties to and expressions of the atevi culture and the specific difficulties he experiences when he has to switch back to Mosphei', his native, human language. In the book I'm reading now, pieces of the language are laid out a little more explicitly, since Bren is teaching it to another character.

Equally as interesting as the Ragi language itself is Cherryh's grasp of the psychological impact of acquiring fluency. The frustration Bren struggles with when trying to deal with what should be his native language and culture is exactly what I felt when I came back to the U.S. after a year in France: things that should have been normal annoyed me, I fumbled trying to communicate in my own first language and generally felt like there was a wall of one-way glass between me and what I had once considered the every day. In Inheritor, one passage in particular made me burst out laughing at its accuracy:

There were moments lately when not only the right word wouldn't come, no word would come, in any language... Deep fluency started by spurts and moments.

This feeling of a total inability to communicate, in any language, is something that hit my friends and I somewhere in our second or third month of immersion and cropped up at random times for the next month or two. We called it the "black hole" between French and English and, fortunately, were able to laugh about it, frustrating as it was, because we were all going through it together. Finding the same experience in a sci-fi book was completely unexpected, but gives me even more respect for C.J. Cherryh and her thoroughness.

So if you like sci-fi, or culture, or language, or are just looking for a reading list to keep you busy for a while, I definitely recommend picking up a copy of Foreigner and letting it suck you into the series, and into the complex world of Bren Cameron and the atevi.

(Bonus: Ms. Cherryh, a former Latin teacher, has Latin lessons on her website. Far from traditional, but they're very interestingly and effectively put together!)

Found in Translation

Is it just me or does 2010 seem to be speeding by? I've just gotten my head wrapped around the fact that it's summer, and all of a sudden, August is two days away.

I'm six months out, give or take a week or two, from my departure for Australia, and anticipation is building by the day. I've bought hiking boots (although those are practical for Arizona, too), found a new rolling duffel after bidding a fond farewell to the most beat-up of the two that saw me through four years of college and nearly three years of post-grad life and - after considerable research - have chosen a pack in which to lug more of my stuff to the other side of the world and been fitted for the right size. I filled out my housing application last week and am nervously toying with ideas for scholarship essays. I've loosely planned out my course schedule for the two years of my Masters program. I'm so excited, both to travel in a new part of the world and to study subjects I love, that some days I feel like I'm going to burst.

One thing I realized I haven't done, however, is explain my choice in courses of study. My choice of school was one thing, but I haven't touched much at all on why I want a Masters of Translating and Interpreting with a Masters of International Relations in the first place. (On a side note: every time I babble out that mouthful to someone who asks what I'm going to be studying, there's a moment of stunned silence while they try to digest what I've just said. It makes me feel a little ridiculous.) So, here goes...

My one required course my second semester abroad in college was French to English Translation. Translation was a scary word. And, actually, it sounded kind of boring. Why would I want to take someone else's words and plug them into another language when I could write my own, in either language? I dreaded that class throughout first semester, when two of my friends were taking it, despite their protestations that they liked it. About halfway through my first translation, an excerpt from David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice, a light blinked on in my head. This is translation? This is fun! What was I worried about?

Translation became one of my two favorite classes that semester, not least because of my professor, a professional translator in her own right, and one who understands that languages can - and should be - fun. What I learned from her, and through the practice of translating several pages of varying material each week, was that translation is a far cry from something as simple as transposing a word from one language into the matching word in another.

Like people, language has baggage. Words have a history that's tied to the places they come from, the places they're used and the evolving cultures of the people who use them. And finding the right way to communicate not just the meaning of the word itself but all the nuance of its baggage requires an understanding of cultures on both sides of the translation. (Of course, this doesn't apply quite as often or to the same degree when you're talking about translating instructions for assembling a piece of furniture, but we've all laughed at the stilted language in manuals for things manufactured in another country.)

Part of the translator or interpreter's job, especially when it comes to literary translation (which is feared by translators far and wide as the black hole of the industry, in which you lose yourself and never make any money - so, naturally, it's my favorite type of translation) and diplomatic interpreting, is having a firm grasp of the historical and cultural baggage of both the language he or she is translating from, and the language she's translating into. That knowledge, and the ability to translate nuance and background without interrupting the flow of the text - or the speaker's rhythm, in interpretation - is the mark of a good translator. Which means, when you're dealing with a good one, you won't even be aware that they're there, and you'll be able to read or listen to the thoughts of someone from thousands of miles away, with a background that may be radically different from yours, as though they lived in the house down the street.

And that - that bridging of physical, cultural and linguistic space - is why I want to be a translator and an interpreter. I tend to view the world in terms of relationships, between people, between words, between cultures. What's the same? What's different? How does what's different relate to what I know and understand? Usually, what's different has some point of reference to what I know, that makes what might at first seem alien at least something I can grasp, if not fully comprehend. And it's those points of reference, those connections between languages, that let us bridge the gap between cultures and appreciate the lives and thoughts of men and women to whom we may never have given a passing thought, but whose lives - and livelihoods - are inextricably linked to our own.

Our world is getting smaller, and the need to communicate more effectively, more thoroughly and more often with others is growing. Much of the world is in crisis, whether humanitarian, environmental or economic, and that isn't a reality that's going to change anytime soon, especially if we don't talk to one another across the political and linguistic boundaries in which we've barricaded ourselves. There are great ideas out there, in every corner of the world, and translating them, language by country by continent, can only help our collective future.

I dream about a world where every idea - an environmental solution, a discovery in astronomy, a humanitarian cry for help, a literary daydream - races from person to person around the globe within moments of its inception, sparking interest, aid and inspiration. Largely thanks to the internet and affordable international travel, we're closer to that dream than we were thirty years ago, but we still have a long way to go. In becoming a translator and an interpreter, I hope to bring us just a little closer to making that dream a reality.

A map of memories

Matt Gross, the New York Times' Frugal Traveler for the past four years, posted his last column yesterday. In it, he writes about the things he's glad he did, the things he regrets not doing and the different ways people define "frugal" when it comes to traveling. It's a great piece, and it got me thinking about all of the traveling I hope to do while I'm studying in Australia.

I've taken something of a hiatus from traveling, aside from visiting family and sometimes friends, since graduating college. Spring break my senior year, when I made a solo trip to Copenhagen (with a side trip to Malmö, Sweden) and Prague, is my most recent departure from the U.S. A quick trip to my hometown in Southern California last April was the last time I went somewhere for no reason other than that I wanted to. For most of the three years since graduation, I've been too busy - and too busy saving - to think much about traveling, but in the past six months I've started to actively miss it.

One paragraph in yesterday's Frugal Traveler column especially hit home:

[M]ore important, it’s about realizing that your budget — whether high or low — does not determine the quality of your travel experience. To travel well, you need to pack an open mind, a lot of energy, infinite patience and a willingness to embrace the awkward and unfamiliar. No amount of money in the world can buy those things — because they come free.

Reading that, I felt a pang of desire to hop on a plane or a train and go - anywhere - because it's a statement I recognize, and one that I agree with 100%. My most memorable travel moments have had nothing to do with spending a lot of money. They haven't happened when I've been in posh hotels or paying to visit a local attraction. In fact, most of them have happened with no money changing hands at all.

You see, for me, travel isn't about the destination, although entering a country I've never been to or exploring a city I've read about for years is thrilling. For me, travel is about connecting with the people and the culture of a place; learning just one small piece of what it is that defines that place and the people who call it home. More than museums or monuments, what I remember about the places I've been are the people whose lives I've brushed against in passing and what they've taught me about their views on life.

My clearest memories from my first trip to Europe, which I browbeat my parents into taking when I was 15, are of the people with whom I interacted. The Parisian waiter who smiled when I ordered my first croque-monsieur, the man in the Eiffel Tower information booth who patiently waited for me to fumble my way through what felt like the most complicated three questions I'd ever constructed in French and never asked me to switch to English, the dog that spent all day following us around Pompeii with a big grin on his furry face, the waiter in Sorrento who insisted it was a crime for me to not be joining my parents in drinking his chianti. I loved visiting the places - I could hardly believe I was standing at the top of the Arc de Triomphe, in front of the mosaics I'd studied in Latin class, in a German castle - but it was the people who made me want to go back.

My year abroad was the same. Aix-en-Provence felt like something out of a fairytale until I connected with the people there: the fruit vendor at the outdoor market on my way to school who took my euro, waved off the extra nine cents the scale had registered and handed me my pears with a wink; the pre-kindergarten student at the school where I volunteered who, after weeks of shyly refusing to talk, sat down next to me, lispingly asked me to read to her and leaned her head on my arm while I did; the elderly woman who, when three of my friends and I foolishly started to cross the street as a bus started down the hill toward us, lectured, "Attention, les filles !" in a tone that said, "What on earth do you think you're doing, young ladies?"

One of the best moments of that entire year was in late April, when my school's cleaning woman and I were making small talk in the empty lunchroom where I was studying. As she left the room, she paused, turned and said, "You know, if I didn't know you were American, the thought would never cross my mind that you weren't French." That's perhaps the highest compliment I've ever received, because it meant that not only had I mastered the language, but had also learned and begun to emulate the nuances of the local cultural patterns. Few comments have ever meant as much to me.

There are dozens of other moments like these that epitomize the places they happened in my memory: a British fast-food employee who was as bemused by my American accent as I was baffled by his Indian-British one, an Irish bus driver who made sure I had a seat with a view of the countryside, an elderly Italian man who commented on my being left-handed in a quiet plaza under the Florentine sun. Pieced together, these memories are a map of my travels that mean more to me than any souvenir I've purchased.

I know the scenery and the local customs will be very different as I travel through and from Australia. I plan to visit Southeast Asia, a part of the world for which I have no cultural frame of reference, and where I'll stick out like a sore thumb rather than blending in, as I was able to do in Europe. I fully expect to not understand half or more of what's said to me when I first arrive in Sydney, although the Macquarie Australian Slang Dictionary from my brother and sister-in-law will help. But the one thing I can be certain of, wherever I may be, is that it's in interacting with people - whether in English, French or pidgin Thai - that I'll find the heart of the place and make a memory to treasure it by that will last a lifetime.

How are blogging and social media affecting print journalism?

There's the obvious answer, given the closing of Denver's Rocky Mountain News in February and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's switch to online-only reporting in March, although I'd argue that has more to do with online news outlets than blogs and social media. But as bloggers and social networking sites become more mainstream, how else are they effecting print journalism?

My mom has subscribed to TIME Magazine for as long as I can remember, and recently took them up on an offer to send a gift subscription along with her renewal - so now I can look forward to an issue of TIME in my mailbox every Saturday (woo hoo!). My mom usually left her copy open on the kitchen counter and made her way through it as she cooked dinner in the evenings or ate lunch on the weekends, and I remember reading pieces of it from time to time as I was growing up. I felt so adult, reading an article out of a news magazine, and learning bits and pieces about what was going on in the world.

I've been receiving TIME in my own mailbox for about a month now, and really enjoy reading it - usually on the Metro, where it doubles as a fan on the stifling station platforms - but I've found myself blinking in surprise a few times over the writers' use of casual language. Writing tone and style are very individual, but there are basic standards that exist for most types of writing. I had to adapt the way I wrote for Honors English my junior year in high school because my teacher didn't like my style, I learned to take a journalistic, reporting tone when I wrote for GW's The Hatchet and had to shake myself out of a formal, academic style after I graduated and started writing email copy for the non-profit I work for.

As a blogger, everything about how and what I write is up to me. I can be as casual as I want, and most bloggers are, using interjections between hyphens or parentheses (I never do that!) and often writing their own opinion - blogging isn't about presenting the facts with a subtle slant.

So I was surprised when I started noticing the same techniques in TIME, in articles of varying lengths, from features to quick blurbs. In four issues I've only noticed it three or four times, but it's been enough to get me thinking about it: is this an effect of the more casual reader-writer relationship encouraged by blogs and social networking? Or is it just a natural evolution of journalism in a society where much of our interaction with others comes in the form of words on a page or screen?

I don't know that I have an opinion on whether this kind of change is good or bad. I lean toward the bad side of neutral, not because I think it does any harm as an occasional thing but because I don't particularly want professional journalists sounding like...well, me. At least not in columns that involve serious reporting rather than a point of view. I want the facts, along with whatever (hopefully minimal) bias is implicit in the news sources I choose to use, so I can make up my own mind about the issues. And then, of course, I'll inflict my opinions on you!

What do you think - what's the source of these snippets of casual intimacy in reporting, and are they okay or should they be a journalism no-no?

Why not bilingualism?

This is a bit beyond the current scope of There Is No Spoon, but I'm so excited about it, we're going to pretend that's not an issue: Blogging on Bilingualism is a fantastic resource, and one of my new favorite blogs. A resource for who? Strictly speaking, for anyone raising, trying to raise or thinking about raising a bilingual child...but really, it's an excellent resource for anyone interested in bilingualism - and multilingualism - on any level, at any age.

I would love to raise my future children bilingual, because the array of extra doors a second (or third, or fourth, or...) language can open is both fascinating and useful. But the idea is a little daunting, since although I have some friends who were essentially raised bilingual - and in some cases trilingual - it was more accidental or environmental than intentional, at least as far as I know. Blogging on Bilingualism offers a forum for discussion and the sharing of an infinite variety of practical information for parents of children growing up bilingual - and an additional source of fascination and information for language geeks like me.

In some of the ways the blog's author, Eve Bodeux, describes how she teaches her children or watches them learn, and some of the comments from other readers about their children, I recognize some of the same tricks I used when I was living in France, although I was 20 at the time. I wanted to read more than newspapers in French without having to reach for a dictionary every five seconds, so I picked up the French translation of Harry Potter. I knew the basic idea of the story since I'd seen the films, so I could follow along even if I wasn't catching every word, and knowing the general context helped me learn new vocabulary. (Of course, when I read the seventh book in English, because I couldn't wait until the French translation was released, I was completely confused. What in the world is Disapparating? It's en transplanant that you get from one place to another, not by using this Disapparition nonsense!) Eve talks about having her children watch familiar films, like Disney's, dubbed in the target language - the second language you want them to learn - and it's the same idea: kids know the story and can follow along, but they're learning new vocabulary while they do.

One of the most interesting points made by Eve and some of her readers is that it doesn't really matter if one parent's use of the target language is less than perfect. As long as children hear a variety of native speakers - whether on TV, in films, or in real life - the slight mispronunciations and small grammatical errors a non-native speaker might make won't affect them. It's hearing the target language consistently, its vocabulary, its syntax and some of the cultural background that go with them, that matters. And I think that applies to anyone learning a second language, no matter their age. There were some grammatical errors that made the rounds of my study abroad program, since we were all American students speaking French and tended to parrot each others' phrases - and inevitably, mistakes - but they gradually worked their way out of our collective system as we interacted more and more with native French-speaking professors, merchants and host families.

You probably know that the U.S. system for teaching foreign language is far from ideal. We introduce a foreign language in middle school or high school, while kids in most other countries are introduced to English or another foreign language at about the same time they start formal schooling. The science behind this is that your jaw solidifies when you're fairly young - I've heard anything from six to twelve on that one - and after it does, it's much more difficult to learn the correct pronunciation of languages that use different parts of the face and throat than your own. (French, for example, uses the mouth a lot more than English does - the sounds are fuller - and of course, there's the hacking, gagging 'r' sound. I tell my students to pretend they're gargling with water.)

We also just don't put the same kind of importance on learning a foreign language as other societies do, and I think it's our loss. Young people from other countries often come to study or work in the U.S. for a time and feel comfortable doing so, because they've studied English since elementary school. In comparison, very few Americans venture beyond our borders for any appreciable period of time, I think in large part because it's so completely outside our comfort zone. We're raised with the implicit (and sometimes explicit) idea that American is the best thing in the world to be and America is the best place to be it - everyone and everywhere else are second best. It's great for our collective patriotism, but as a result, our worldview is severely limited and we miss out on some of the best parts of our global society: the people.

It's a fascination with people as much as with the technical aspects of language that keeps me studying and teaching it. After all, the more languages you're able to express yourself in, the more people you can talk to, even if it's only in a rudimentary fashion. Language - and bilingualism (hopefully multilingualism, eventually) - is something of a hobby for me. Other people scrapbook; I speak, read, translate, teach French. Other people talk about taking pottery classes in their spare time; when I have some spare time, I'll take classes in a third language.

The more languages we can understand, the more people and ideas we can access where they live, so to speak. (I'd love to read The Alchemist in the original Portuguese - as incredibly beautiful as it is in English, I can only imagine how gorgeous it is as Paulo Coelho wrote it.) Because it's people and their ideas that make the world go round. They're constantly reaching out to one another, working together to push the world - and us with it - forward, and the more people any of us can connect with, the more of an impact any single idea can have. So why not bilingualism, as a hobby, or a way of life?

What language est-ce que I parle?

If I haven't mentioned it already, translation is one of my passions. It's kind of a geeky thing to get excited about, I know, but I can't help it - it really is an absolutely fascinating process, and one that I love diving into because it gets my brain working. It's both creative and analytical, similar to music (or at least its composition), which is probably a big part of the reason it appeals to me.

In the most literal - and boring - sense, translation is just the substitution of one word for another that means the same thing in a different language. That's what I thought I was getting myself into when I found out I had to take English to French Translation the second semester of my year abroad, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Yes, you're taking words from one language and putting them into another, but finding the right ones and the right way to put them together is about a lot more than just individual words: idiomatic expressions, sector-specific phrases ("valeur" means "value," but in a business sense there are several other possible meanings as well) and most importantly, the author's voice. Someone reading a translation shouldn't know it is one, and often doesn't, if the translator has done a good job, unless they happen to glance at the title page and see that little "Translated By." Just as everyone has their own unique voice when they talk - distinguished by things like phrasing, emphasis and often-used expressions - authors have one when they write, and it's a translator's job to figure out how to bring that voice to life in the target language (that's translator/interpreter-speak for the language they're translating/interpreting into).

But I'm digressing from what I actually wanted to talk about (how unusual!)...

I'm in the middle of my first big freelance translation project, and between reading in French while typing in English and thinking back and forth between the two, my brain keeps slipping up and forgetting there's a difference when I'm not in translation mode. I'll be sitting in a meeting at work, talking about First Amendment rights, and all of a sudden I can't think of any word for "rights" except "droits," which is the French. Of course I know what the word means in both languages, concept-wise, but I just can't find the English word in my head. It's a little disconcerting!

My first experience with this internal mélange of words was during my year abroad, although it started more with an internal vocabulary black hole. About halfway through my first semester in France, my friends and I would be talking (in French - it was an immersive program and we'd all signed a contract agreeing to speak French 100% of our time there), and one of us would come to a stuttering halt mid-sentence. It was what I started calling "l'espace vide" - the empty space, the void - between English and French. And it's frustrating - you know exactly what you mean, and can define the word you're looking for in both languages, but the actual word for it in either one has momentarily vanished from your head.

A couple of weeks after the beginning of second semester, I was walking back to my host family's apartment from the Saturday market, and suddenly realized I had no idea which language I was thinking in. When I focused - cautiously! after all, who knew what was going on in there? - I thought it seemed like a sort of mental double-speak: both languages running through my mind simultaneously, or in very quick echoes of each other, and the conscious part of my brain not entirely sure which was louder. After that is when the mental word substitution started - I'd be talking, thinking or writing as usual, and all of a sudden there'd be a word in my head in the wrong language, acting as a mental roadblock for a minute.

It usually happens when I'm talking about a concept in the language I didn't learn it in. Anything involving wine almost always comes to my head in French first, because the first wine-tasting class I took was in France, so I learned to talk about it in French. Certain words also seem to me to sound more like what they mean, as far as connotations go, in one language or the other. "Awkward," for instance, works so much better in English, because the word itself is awkward, by sound as well as definition. "Maladroit" or "gênant" ...technically they mean the same thing, but they don't feel like the definition the way the English does. "Soulagement" is one I've been having issues finding the English for lately, because to me, the French embodies the full concept - of relief, ease, solace, comfort - better than any one English word does.

It's a peculiar problem to have, but since it makes me think I don't really mind. I do sometimes wish I spoke a third language fluently - the mental gymnastics would probably be exhausting, but I'm curious as to what it sounds like inside a trilingual person's head!

So if you're talking to me and I stop mid-sentence and get a confused and/or frustrated look on my face, bear with me or ask me for the definition so you can tell me what word has escaped me. And if you're curious, ask me what it is in French!