TRANSLATIONS ON THE PICKET LINE
Last week we went to a rally to protest working conditions at a laundry facility nearby. Our chants went back and forth between English and Spanish, further testament to how much I need to learn that language. A write-up in the paper described the bilingual chanting like this:
As should be obvious to anyone who's ever witnessed a left-wing rally, the phrase in English would be "The People / United / Will never be defeated." It rhymes--or comes close to rhyming--better that way, though in Spanish the exact linguistic equivalents are going to have to be fudged for the purposes of chantability. Of course, the unwitting writer of the above-quoted article has stumbled onto an interesting question of translation theory: what is the relationship between absolute accuracy and pre-established conventions, in this case the convention of chanting?
As I wrote in a comment to the What in the Hell blog recently, Spanish is a much more chantable language than English. My favorite chant at the rally went like this:
The first three words were pronounced with a Spanish accent, so before I asked my Bolivian-American union organizer friend what we were saying, I had to keep my mouth shut ("estamos en la lucha" I could figure out from what French I know, and eventually I picked up on "escucha," but I couldn't guess at what sounded like nu inlanli nen might mean). Here, of course, we have a different example of translation theory in praxis: how do foreign words get nativized so as to match conventions, in this case the convention of pronunciation?
In fact, "The people united will never be conquered" and "New England Linen" represent opposite ends of the same continuum. The strange is made familiar, while the familiar is made strange. And if the management of New England Linen could listen to the voices of its employees and offer liveable wages and benefits, then perhaps what is strange and what is all too familiar could be left behind.
Last week we went to a rally to protest working conditions at a laundry facility nearby. Our chants went back and forth between English and Spanish, further testament to how much I need to learn that language. A write-up in the paper described the bilingual chanting like this:
Chanting catchphrases like "No contract, no peace" and "The people united will never be conquered" alternately in Spanish and English, 110 protesters - including a trio of New England Linen Supply workers - marched up and down Derby Avenue.
As should be obvious to anyone who's ever witnessed a left-wing rally, the phrase in English would be "The People / United / Will never be defeated." It rhymes--or comes close to rhyming--better that way, though in Spanish the exact linguistic equivalents are going to have to be fudged for the purposes of chantability. Of course, the unwitting writer of the above-quoted article has stumbled onto an interesting question of translation theory: what is the relationship between absolute accuracy and pre-established conventions, in this case the convention of chanting?
As I wrote in a comment to the What in the Hell blog recently, Spanish is a much more chantable language than English. My favorite chant at the rally went like this:
New England Linen / Escucha / Estamos en la lucha
The first three words were pronounced with a Spanish accent, so before I asked my Bolivian-American union organizer friend what we were saying, I had to keep my mouth shut ("estamos en la lucha" I could figure out from what French I know, and eventually I picked up on "escucha," but I couldn't guess at what sounded like nu inlanli nen might mean). Here, of course, we have a different example of translation theory in praxis: how do foreign words get nativized so as to match conventions, in this case the convention of pronunciation?
In fact, "The people united will never be conquered" and "New England Linen" represent opposite ends of the same continuum. The strange is made familiar, while the familiar is made strange. And if the management of New England Linen could listen to the voices of its employees and offer liveable wages and benefits, then perhaps what is strange and what is all too familiar could be left behind.
posted by Lucas at 8:32 PM
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