[governance] MSism and democracy

Thu Jun 9 10:24:27 EDT 2011

And where language is elusive, pictures are clear. The use of graphics and
illustration to hone in a point can be effective, except that we are not all
artistic.

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 2:08 AM, Deirdre Williams <
williams.deirdre at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Sala

"Stillness in the midst of the noise".
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