[governance] MSism and democracy

Thu Jun 9 10:08:33 EDT 2011

Snap!
Which in the language of a children's card game means recognition that we
both produced the same card :-)
We could use our collective will to create the lever which would win us the
game - if we wanted to strongly enough??
My apologies for the very mixed metaphors

Deirdre

On 9 June 2011 09:47, Roxana Goldstein <goldstein.roxana at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks TApani for your effort in telling everybody your thoughts.
>
> What I want everyone in this list to understand, is that this -translation-
> is not a problem of a sole person (a "one" or a "you"), but a problem of the
> whole society, if you want.
>
> I mean, it is an institutional problem how to allow everybody to be heard
> in a governance process, with equal opportunities to influence policies that
> are significant for their  own lives.
>
> In the way you think, is that huge groups of people are underrepresented in
> the IG processes, an this is not an individual problem, but a political
> problem -the whole global, national, local societies are involved-.
>
> Meaning this that is not a problem that each person must solve alone, but a
> problem that institutions must take into account and then put in place
> solutions.
>
> If society decides to implement the solution to translation by automatic
> translators, it means that the problem is not being faced in an adecuate
> way, as facts show that they have not been enough to allow every group in
> the global society to have equal opportunities to participate and influence
> in the IG processes.
>
> It is not only that each of us must decide alone if she/he will run the
> risk of being understood or not in her/his first language, on the contrary,
> it is a problem of all of us to allow every group in this wonderful world to
> be heard and to be understood and to have equal rights to influence policy.
>
> Best regards,
> Roxana
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 2011/6/9 Tapani Tarvainen <tapani.tarvainen at effi.org>
>
>> On Wed, Jun 08, 2011 at 12:43:28PM -0400, Deirdre Williams (
>> williams.deirdre at gmail.com) wrote:
>>
>> > I think each person should have the right, recognised and
>> > automatically accepted by others, to express him or her self in the
>> > language in which he or she feels most comfortable.
>>
>> That is a beautiful ideal.
>>
>> I'm afraid, however, that it isn't all that useful in practice.
>> It works well in a true bilingual setting, but not so well in
>> larger, really multilingual environments.
>>
>> For what is the meaning of a right to use a language that won't be
>> understood?
>>
>> If you want to be understood, you must use a language that your
>> audience will understand, one way or another.
>>
>> You can use your own language, or one you're otherwise fluent with,
>> and take the risk it will be misunderstood due to audience's
>> poor skill at it and/or poor translation services,
>> or use a language they understand, and take the risk that
>> your poor command of it may cause misunderstandings.
>>
>> Which is better, depends on the respective language
>> skills of you and your audience (and translators).
>>
>> In general, however, at least in a context of technical,
>> political or such discussion, I find it is usually better
>> for the speaker to make an effort to make understanding
>> easier for the audience - speak their language if possible.
>>
>> Moreover, counterintuitive though it may be, using a language you are
>> not too fluent with is frequently better, even (or perhaps especially)
>> when the listeners aren't all that fluent with it either
>> For the better your command of the language, the more you will use and
>> depend on nuances and subtleties that are likely to be missed by your
>> audience and machine translators alike.
>> Trying to phrase your thoughts in a foreign language may also clarify
>> them to yourself, force the meaning of the words to the surface so to
>> speak.
>>
>> (It might be fun and perhaps constructive to decide that
>> everybody may use any language *except* their own.
>> Any takers?)
>>
>> > There is also a danger in assuming English to be a lingua franca.
>> > This is because of the diversity of cultural baggage that the
>> > language has acquired during its global spread.
>>
>> True, but that really applies to all languages, and if I may be forgiven
>> for saying so, Spanish and English share most of the same baggage.
>>
>> As a simple example, I still find the gender-specific pronouns
>> and grammar constructs difficult - Finnish has no grammatical
>> gender nor different pronouns for sexes.
>> That alone causes a surprising number of translation problems,
>> and indeed it forces me to *think* differently in English,
>> keeping people's gender in mind all the time (I still occasionally
>> fail at that, causing confusion by using wrong pronouns).
>>
>> There are other similar things, words and grammatical
>> constructs which simply don't exist in other languages
>> and which cannot be easily translated without losing at least
>> some of the meaning, let alone the elegance of the expression.
>>
>> Yet I prefer to use English myself, rather than use Finnish with its
>> gender-ambiguous and other powerful and finely nuanced expressions
>> that translators (even human ones) tend do strange things with.
>>
>> Of course, I already speak English fairly well. When I have to
>> speak to an audience whose language I don't know at all, I have to
>> rely on translators - but then I make a deliberate effort to use
>> simple language, avoid elegant expressions I know are likely
>> to get watered down or become incomprehensible in translation.
>>
>> But the level of language skill needed before using a foreign language
>> is more effective than sticking to your own and relying on translation
>> is not all that high. (Somewhere above my Spanish at present, though...)
>>
>> > At a practical level this must mean that the recipient of the
>> > communication has the obligation to translate, and we all have to
>> > hope that the meaning arrives safely. Automatic translation is a lot
>> > better than it used to be. Most importantly the recipient must be
>> > willing to try to understand, and willing to ask for clarification
>> > as necessary.
>>
>> You are absolutely right in that that's the way it should be, we
>> should always strive to do that, to make a determined effort to
>> understand.
>>
>> Unfortunately it does not work so well in real life, indeed it only works
>> very rarely. After all, the recipient has no obligation even to listen
>> the message, let alone to make an extra effort to translate it first -
>> and the simple fact that time is limited inevitably means people will
>> ignore most messages that are difficult for them to understand.
>> (I confess to having skipped most of the Spanish messagesin this
>> thread, for example.)
>>
>> So in practice it tends to fall more on the speaker to make sure he or
>> she gets understood. That is especially so in political and other
>> comparable debates, where people really don't *want* to understand
>> anything that might contradict or shake their old opinions, sometimes
>> to the extent that they appear to make a determined effort to
>> misunderstand, even though it really is unconscious.
>>
>> So, yes, by all means let's strive to make our best to understand
>> what others are saying, in whatever language.
>>
>> But also, let's make an effort to express ourselves so as to be easily
>> understood, and not pretend we can really use our own language at all
>> times without increased danger of being misunderstood or not listened
>> to at all.
>>
>> --
>> Tapani Tarvainen
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>
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-- 
“The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
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