I discovered, through the wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable The Writer’s Almanac, that yesterday was the anniversary of the first printing of the King James Bible in 1611. If you consider the Bible to be literature you can not help but marvel at the prose and poetry that the Kings James version offers. It has fallen out of favour in these times, for it’s lack of inclusive language. But its translation has value, for it’s language and it’s lyrical nature. Chaucer isn’t inclusive either but that doesn’t mean it has no value in today’s world.
I live in a part of the world where English is not the lingua franca. The language you hear spoken on the street, in commerce, day to day is Inuktitut. Talking to some people, including my in-laws, requires me to use a translator. I often marvel at people whose grasp of more than one language enables them to understand both languages sufficiently to capture the thought and the feeling of the languages. I speak French, and have a smattering of Spanish, and know enough inuktitut to get my face slapped. But as much as I love languages I find it terribly frustrating to not know them enough to express myself as I can in English.
Which leads to this post by one of the best writers on the web, Larry at Botanizing. I had no idea that May was "World in Translation" month, and only a faint idea of the row over a Spanish version of The Star Spangled Banner" . I can not, for the life of me, understand why anyone, especially the President of a country, would have a problem with their National Anthem being sung in a language other than that which it was written in. It would seem to me that rather than railing against it, you would want as many people to hear it, in the language they best understand.
I consider myself lucky to have heard the Canadian National Anthem sung in several different languages, including French (it was orginally written in French – imagine if the Prime Minister complained that it was being sung in English), English, Inuktitut and Cree. What a celebration of your national identity that people sing the anthem, in what ever language matters to them. It is, after all, supposed to be about passion for one’s country, and you want all people to share in that passion. You would think that the States would be translating the anthem into as many languages as possible (especially some of the arabic languages these days) to share that passion with the world. I don’t know it all seems strangely xenophobic to me.
On a completely different topic, how can this or this be consider civilized behaviour by any country in the world?
Comments
4 responses
Clare–thanks both for the very kind words and your thoughtfulness about the issue. There is so much that we can learn from other cultures and the thinking that occurs in other languages–it seems so clearly appropriate to welcome translations to broaden understanding. It is thoroughly baffling how some people could be so narrow as to not want to hear to national anthems and other songs in various languages. There is also curious oddity that this same group of people (in the U.S.) puts tremendous emphasis on the words of the King James Bible, a work in translation.
The story of the translation to make the King James Bible is a great one and very important for our understanding of English language culture. I am similarly fascinated by Czeslaw Milosz’s work in the late 20th century to translate the Bible into Polish.
I know very well that sense of frustration at not being able to converse in another language, and am in awe of so many of my friends who speak several languages, fluently. Humbling. Agree, too, with what you and Larry say about translating anthems into other languages: I’m mystified by the resistance to it. And last, but by no means least, I agree totally with you about Larry’s writing. Great stuff.
I have spoken english all my life. My problem is that I learned to speak it in the south. Even though I haven’t lived in the south in over 25 years, my accent seems to linger on strong (and even worse if alcohol is involved). So, even though it’s my native tongue that I’ve spoken all my life, I still have trouble getting people to understand.
Isn’t language fascinatingly frustrating? I know I should speak Inuktitut much better than I do, I find it more of a struggle for some reason than the other languages I’ve studied (including Cree, which I’ve almost totaly lost).
And the roots of our language, including our accents are important. It’s sad that in the connected world we live in culture and language, and accents are starting to blend together, converge. Accents are part of who we are, where we come from. I used to think I didn’t have an accent, until I briefly dated a woman from Australia at University. At one point I told her “I love your accent” to which she replied..”I don’t have an accent, you do.”