The Language of Women As A Secret Language The language we speak shapes our thoughts about gender and our perception of reality. Many linguistic studies say that there are several types of languages in the world, including the language of women. There are natural languages (or human languages), formal languages, and artificial languages. The latter are often used and created either for amusement or for practical purposes, e.g. Esperanto. Among these are the languages created by women and for women. Mothers are key figures in children’s language development, so much so that we speak about a “mother tongue” to identify a native speaker of a particular language. However, from a linguistic point of view, there is no “female language”, “language of women” or “natural female language”. The Language of Women and Prejudices We also have to consider that our language reflects our social prejudices. What happens if none of the existing languages enable women to express the feelings and emotions inherent to them? What happens if women can’t express the way they feel and think because their language doesn’t contain the right words to convey their thoughts? Or because their language describes and reflects a patriarchal society? Think about how you use your language and whether it’s more geared towards how men or how women express themselves. Native Tongue As A Language of Women, By Suzette Haden Elgin The American linguist and writer Suzette Haden Elgin addressed this topic in the 80’s. She theorized that if women had their own language to express their opinions, they might represent reality in a very different way than when men talk. To...
How is food related to translation? The New Year has just begun and one of the first points of a New Year’s resolution is often to eat healthily and to keep fit. For this reason, in this blog post, we talk about food and how its cultural nature can sometimes be challenging in translation. Food has always been a vital part of life. We all need food, it is fuel for our body, it gives us energy and powers our runs. But food is also part of our language, our culture, and our identity. Food represents what we are if it is true that we are what we eat. Hence the relation between food and translation. As we all know, language and culture are intrinsically related. Since food is part of our culture, it is unavoidable that translating food will represent a hurdle for translators. Food in our lives and translation in idioms If we think of fairy tales, which are timeless, we can see how deeply rooted food is in every tradition. For example, take Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, from which the concept of the poisoned apple has spread around the world, and has also been used in famous films. In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, there is a scene in which Princess Elizabeth, who has been kidnapped by Captain Barbossa, is eating with him. He offers her an apple and, looking at his gaze, she exclaims: “It’s poisoned!”. The cross-reference to the fairy tale is obvious. Food is also present in some idiomatic expressions, which sometimes are difficult to translate...
It’s October, Halloween’s month. You can’t say October without thinking of pumpkins, witches, ghosts, and all the other words connected to Halloween. In this blog post, we’d like to explore the relationship between Halloween and religion around the world. So, where does Halloween come from? About 2,000 years ago, the Celts who lived in England and Ireland introduced this festivity. They celebrated it on October 31st. This day marked the end of the summer and the beginning of the cold winter. Halloween was associated with their religion. Indeed, the Celts believed that, on this day, the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Their return made it easier for the Druids, the Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. However, at that time, this day was known as “Samhain” (a Gaelic word pronounced sow-win). The word “Halloween”, instead, has Christian origins. In fact, it comes from the Scottish word “Hallowe’en” which means “All Hallows’ Eve”, and in Western Churches, on November 1st, it is All Hallows Day. In the 1800s, thanks to Scottish and Irish migrants, this celebration spread to America, where it is still hugely celebrated today. Halloween in Europe As much as Halloween seems to be an international festivity, people around the world have different ways to commemorate their beloved dead. Starting in Ireland and England, Halloween is especially celebrated by kids. They love dressing up in Halloween outfits and knocking on doors asking for “trick- or-treat”. In England, on November 5th, there’s another celebration: Guy Fawkes Day. This day commemorates the execution of an English traitor, Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the Houses...
Invitation to Classical Chinese Poetry has been one of the most ancient and significant genres of literature all over the world. One of the reasons is its ability to express millions of delicate feelings. Chinese poetry is written in a way that enables readers to enjoy the beauty of the language. There have been many attempts to translate poems from Classical Chinese to English. As a result, these poems have become more popular around the world. In this blog post, we focus on Chinese poetry and try to explore its depth through a poem from a prominent Chinese poet so read on! What is Chinese poetry and why is it so attractive? With its long history, China has one of the richest cultural backgrounds in the world. Some of the very first elements of their cultural heritage appeared in the form of poems. Those poems used Classical Chinese (also known as Literary Chinese). They are far different from any modern form of the Chinese language we know today. So why haven’t they all been forgotten by now? In fact, many people still love and study these poems today. It is due to the sophisticated and beautiful way in which they express ideas and provide profound insights into life and beauty. Classical Chinese to English Although translating Chinese ancient poetry is an extremely challenging task, there have been many attempts to translate poems from Classical Chinese to English. Thanks to those contributions, we now have access to the world of old Chinese poetry. We’ve picked one of the highly appreciated poems translated from Classical Chinese to English so that you...
Some data about the Bengali language The Bengali language, also called Bangla, is the official and national language of Bangladesh, but not the only one. “Bangla” is written বাংলা in the Bengali script. This writing system (brahmic script) is the 6th most widely used one in the world. The original inhabitants of the Bengal region of Southwest Asia are the Bengalis. 98 % of Bangladeshi people speak Bengali as their first language. It is also one of the official languages of India. Indeed, 7.1 % of Indians speak it. It is the most widely spoken of the 22 languages of India, after Hindi. Other communities speak it, for example in Pakistan, in the UK or in the USA. In a nutshell, it is the 5th most spoken language by native speakers in the world. It is also the 7th most spoken language by the total number of speakers. There are around 267 million speakers, of which 230 million are native. The evolution of the Bengali language The Bengali language can be traced back to 3500 B.C. to the Indo-European language family. Many assume that it was born from Sanskrit. But scholars and linguists believe that it derives from Indo-Aryan languages like Magadhi Prakrit and Pali. Modern Bengali uses words taken from Turkish, Portuguese, Persian or English, for example. We can divide the evolution of the Bengali language into three stages: Old Bengali, Middle Bengali and Modern Bengali. Old Bengali dates back to around 650 A.D. when priests and scholars widely used Sanskrit in literary works in Bengal. However, this is a bit of a dark area in the history...
English is the product of many cultures and despite being of Germanic origin, an important part of English language etymology finds its source in the French language. In Twenty Years After – the sequel to The Three Musketeers by French novelist Alexandre Dumas – D’Artagnan said “English is little more than badly pronounced French”. Several years later, George Clémenceau (early 20th century French PM) said the same. Is there any truth in their claim? To find out, we need to go back in time and look at English language etymology in its historical context. But first, here are a few useful definitions. English Language Etymology: Definitions Cognates Cognates are words that share a common ancestry. True cognates might not be instantly recognizable; they only share the same etymology. But they can also have the same spelling and meaning, or they can be loanwords or calques. They can be close cognates (same meaning but slight variation in spelling) and even false cognates (or “false friends” – same spelling but different meaning). For example: True cognates: to attest < attester, from Latin ad-testari, curfew < couvre-feu, from the Old French cuevrefeu (used in the Middle Ages when fires had to be covered and people had to be home and off the streets by a certain time), coward < couard, Old French.Close cognates: analytique > analytical, créatif > creative, banque > bank.False friends: magasin (FR) = shop (EN) not magazine (publication), douche (FR) = shower (EN) not douche (EN) (medical term or type of person), bras (FR) = arm (EN) not bra (EN) (undergarment). Read more about the etymology of words between...
