“As I see it, no translation “produces sameness”; instead it creates texts for different purposes, different situations, different audiences. Translation is not a carryover of a text A into a text B, but an interpretation of, in and for different situations, which means that translators never translate texts (in words) alone. […] The translator as a human being, with her/his background, culture, language, and gender, is an important factor in the process of translation. […] As readers we are directed toward new texts, new situations - thus we, as readers, always play a renewing role in the interpretation of texts.”

— Riitta Oittinen (2000). Translating for children. New York, London: Garland Publishing, Inc. (via translatingforchildrenandya)

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hmhlit:

For poetry and fiction, go check ‘em out. 

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Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?

Why Bilinguals Are Smarter By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

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“Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.”

— Oliver Sacks

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(via mentalflossr)

Michael Erard, in his fascinating book Babel No More, travels around the world in search of hyperpolyglots, people who study and learn large numbers of languages. Is there a limit on knowing?

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“You can’t get it right, so the only thing you can do is make it better.”

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Knowing how to speak two languages is not the same thing as knowing how to translate.

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“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”

— Salman Rushdie  (via creativecloud)

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storyboard:

Language Is a Virus: How Loanwords Move the World’s Tongues

There are an estimated 6,700 to 6,900 languages in the world today, and they drift through the air like a meteorological echo — Hello! Hallo! Allô! — a roll of thunder or a set of bird calls off in the corner of the ear and the eye. And accompanying every tongue are loanwords, or, rather, lehnwerts, the tin-eared telephone line tossed from house to house, the improvised bridge of a tree knocked across a river’s expanse, or, more prosaically, words one “borrows” from one language into another. Loanwords explain how and why English speakers can say things like Frankfurter, pretzel, hinterland, dreck, or kaput without their conversational co-conspirator batting an eye.

Read More

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“I really love language. I love it for what it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and the delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.”

— Maya Angelou (via theparisreview)

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