翻訳者 ("Honyakusha") in Japanese means translator, and I had my first experience today in translating Japanese to English. By no means am I completely fluent in the language yet, but I knew enough to understand what a native Japanese speaker was saying, asked them some questions based on the information, and then relayed it to an English speaker. Not to be too dramatic or self-congratulatory, but it was inspiring. I wasn't very good, I wasn't 100 percent sure that what I was saying was correct, but it was nonetheless very empowering and made me appreciate myself, which is always a good thing.
Language is a strange, mysterious thing. When I know a language, I take it for granted: I use it without thinking, I listen in on other people speaking that language, I totally get it, and there's no appreciation that I understand the language. It's when I don't understand a language that I'm inspired to learn the language, to admire people who know the language. It's always been interesting to me how the human race was able to create so many different languages, so many different ways to express the same thing. It's as if different computer geniuses raced to create different codes that normal people have to decipher and crack to gain the language.
Translating a language, therefore, gives me at least the satisfication, more than just helping others, which is a good and noble motivation, of having "cracked the code," of having mastered the language enough to be able to use the language both ways, to translate Chinese to English or English to Chinese, and to have a grasp of the language. It's akin to finally being able to learn how to ride a bike from the first time as a kid, or finishing that last piece of a 5000-piece puzzle. Very few talents in life are there definite indicators that you've mastered something- sure you can know a lot of math or law, but it's hard to understand how much exactly one knows, or to what degree one is good at it to sufficiently discourse on the matter. Language is easy to get a grasp of how one's doing- just have a conversation, and in that sense it gives a sense of accomplishment once one is able to carry on that conversation or know exactly what someone else is saying.
There's a certain element of "Ah, now I'm with the ingroup!" attached to knowing a language, by carrying on a conversation in the presence of others who don't know the language one immediately forms a bond with the ingroup member, as if there is a secret code between the members that one is "in the know," or "is part of the gang," that one can be trusted. It's like being on the same sports team, or working in a group and realizing, "wow, we're in this together, let's do it."
Bill James, a famous fantasy baseball analyst, famously said that once a baseball player develops a tool, he or she has mastered it, and it can't be taken away. Language seems to be like that, that it's a tool that one can work really really hard on for a long time, finally master, and no one can take that skill away, or discredit someone- it does stay with one forever. I'm not there yet for Japanese, but my first translation experience today, however flawed it might have been, inspired to get to that place.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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