I hope this message finds you well. Today, I’d like to share my perspective on the value of learning a language.
Something you might not know about me is that I work at a university. A few years back, while having a drink in one of the bars near campus, I overheard a conversation between a few higher-ups within the academic organization who were sitting at the table next to ours: “It’s impressive how some of these academics are able to speak and read Japanese so well, but surely it isn’t necessary to waste years on learning such a difficult language when there are plenty of sources available in English.”
As someone who spent the better part of their adult life learning Japanese, needless to say this infuriated me, but I managed to keep my cool. In those days, there was a broader debate on whether language training was sufficiently academic to warrant a large allocation of university funds. These university managers clearly thought that it wasn’t and didn’t.
But it got me thinking: what is the value of spending so much time and energy on learning a language?
For people who haven’t spent much time learning a complex language (beyond what they were forced to learn in school) it is sometimes difficult to understand the point of putting in the effort, or to see any added value in a person who has mastered this type of skill. To them, such a person is no more than a walking Google Translate: someone who is able to accurately convert language A into language B.
But for me, both translating well and immersing myself in a language are about so much more than simply converting one language into another. Walter Benjamin wrote that
… any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information - hence, something in-essential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.
When you spend a lot of time learning a language, you soon find that the A=B mentality doesn’t get you very far. Learning a language isn’t about learning all the words in a vocabulary list. It’s about grasping the entirety of its linguistic boundaries and cultural significance. It is an enriching experience: as you progress in your immersion, you start to see the world differently. The encounter with words and phrases whose meaning cannot be contained within the confines of another language opens up a world of perception that was previously unavailable to you.
Learning Japanese has allowed me to make friends, travel the world, absorb ideas, read books, and build communities such as this newsletter that would have otherwise remained forever out of reach. I often feel that, in a world whose borders we often believe are increasingly dissolving due to global markets, we actually understand each other less and less, at least on a human level. People who have invested energy into learning about other cultures and languages hold the potential to add value to such a world.
When I translate, I do so from the entire frame of reference of my experience. To be clear, my translations aren’t scripture; they are completely up for discussion. But they come from a place that is very different from ‘A=B’. By immersing yourself in a language and culture different from your own you are accepting an invitation to see the world from someone else’s perspective. It makes you a more interesting person that is of value to the world, even though there will always be people who just don’t get it.
What are some of the things you were able to do or experience because of your study of other languages and cultures? What are some of your dreams and goals for the future in this context? Please comment below!
This was a really interesting read, I enjoy your writing style. And, I'm of course biased, but I wholeheartedly agree with you that there is a need to learn other languages, and plenty of great reasons to do so. For me, something I've been able to experience is being able to help my friends with their studies of foreign languages because of my own knowledge and experience, which is great, but something even better (to me) has been gaining the ability to talk about pop culture with Japanese friends. I've been getting back into anime lately, and obsessively watching and reading Jujutsu Kaisen and Attack on Titan, but almost nobody I know in the US is as invested in the series as I am. However, some of my Japanese friends are just as invested, so we meet up every week and get to talk about the shows together, and it's a great time.
As for dreams and goals, I actually want to be a translator, but I also just want to be able to communicate more than anything. Like you said, learning a new language opens a whole other world of possibilities and perspectives that you otherwise would have no idea of, and I just want to keep understanding and learning more.
Hi Mary, thank you so much for your kind words. I'm really happy to read that you're enjoying the newsletter. It's so great that you've found friends with similar interests through studying Japanese. Do you guys discuss the shows in Japanese as well?
I also think it's wonderful that you want to be a translator. What kind of things are you thinking of translating? Are you mostly interested in literary translations, or do you prefer other types of texts?
Investing your time and energy so that you can communicate is a long and tough journey but really worth it. That moment you notice that you can say anything you want and aren't limited by grammar or vocabulary is the best experience there is.
Thank you so much for your support. I'd love to hear more about your plans to become a translator!
Yes, we discuss them in Japanese usually! It's most exciting to me to be able to use the vocabulary I've learned in the show, which usually wouldn't apply elsewhere, in real life.
I'm mostly interested in literary translations, although the impetus behind me wanting to become a translator in the first place was reading manga translations, so I feel like I would enjoy that field as well.
Hi Bunsuke. Thanks for your work as always, and specially for tackling this topic. I think it's really interesting, and reading the comments of people from all over the world it's really amazing. It got me thinking, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts with the community.
I work as a videogame developer, and our main project is deeply connected to the place where I grew up and live, the southern part of Spain (Andalucía). Because the theme and language used in the game is based in such an specific place, it was really important for us to actually transmit this through our game. A direct, A=B translation doesn't cut it, and even a professional localization felt imperfect. I'm not the person in charge of the localization (i'm a game designer), and neither I'm fluent in languages other than spanish and english, so the english localization was the only version of the game (apart from the original one) that I was able to check.
And I found so many things that were lost in translation. Nuances about the characters, about the world they live in, about their lifes and how they see the world. There were so many things that felt impossible to replicate in english, even if the localizators did an outstanding work.
Here's an actual, real example of a problem we had: It's "shakespearian english" a good alternative to replicate old castillian spanish? One it's really ornamented, and the other is blunt and to the point. Both feel archaic, but the reality of spanish and english literature were so different, I couldn't help but feel helpless thinking english-speakers were missing out on many things.
And that got me thinking, about how privileged I am to understand that nuance. Diving into english gave me the ability to better understand that culture, and the works that great authors created. That privilege is something I want to earn, I want to better understand other cultures, and to enjoy the subtleties of their language. It's not about the transmission of cold data, or simple ideas. There's so much more than that.
The awareness to this problem will also make me a better professional, as I will be able to find better ways for our games to reach people across the globe in the closest way possible, and to detect which things could be improved. So even without working as a translator, I believe any creative work can benefit from the boon that is learning new languages.
Hi Maikel, thank you for this thoughtful comment! It sounds like they should have put you in charge of the localization team. It's true that some things are simply impossible to translate, especially if so much of the original is rooted so firmly in one specific local identity. How could you, for example, ever capture a local dialect in a translation. This is virtually impossible.
Based on your reflections here, I think you have a lot to contribute to your field. It might just be my biased idea of the gaming industry, but I imagine that most people are in it either for the business or for love of games themselves, leaving translation or cultural sensitivities somewhat neglected. If more people like you raise the issue, I'm certain it will gain more awareness. As you said, it's much more than the simple transmission of data or two-dimensional ideas.
Thanks again for commenting and contributing to the community!
For me, I started learning English at a very young age, though I'm not really fluent it's still really amazing how I can easily communicate with people from all around the world, I live in country side so people don't really speak English here on a day to day basis, some of them don't even try to learn it but you know being exposed to all these cultures and getting to know more and more about different people and their countries really makes me happy and because of that I decide to start learning Japanese and so far my journey has been really amazing. I get to meet really good people like you, talk to them, learn from them, have fun with them. This journey has been so good and is going to get even better haha
Hi Kazue, thank you for always participating so actively! I'm really glad to see that you're enjoying the newsletter. It's so great that you were able to master English to this degree and at such a young age. I'm also really glad that I got to know you and that you joined this community. As you say, things will only get better from here!
Growing up, my worldview was expanded by the fact that there were many Filipino and Korean families with kids that I went to school with, and I got to experience bits of their culture just while hanging out and playing at their houses, for instance. It wasn't until mid-college that I really started seriously learning another (living) language (I studied ancient Greek for 3 years in high school, not much use for communicating nowadays), and that was Japanese. I think, more than anything, simply the experience of learning about the language and culture is its own reward along with all the world-opening possibities that it creates. Of course, I do very much hope to spend time in Japan and possibly even live there. But, in the nearest term I have recently thought that I will register for my local JLPT N3 exam in December and use that as motivation to really work on my Tobira materials.
Hi Severin! Being exposed to so many different cultures since childhood can really broaden your horizon. It's great that you had that experience. I also think your short term goal is very feasible. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you in December. Hopefully the newsletter will help your preparations along a little.
I feel like in each language there are things that can be expressed only in that particular language. You can try to approximate the meaning in translation, but that is simply an adaptation that loses some deeper meaning/feeling. I come from a bilingual background (Ukrainian and Russian languages) and English being my third language, I constantly find myself in a position when a certain thought is better expressed in one of those languages, but I have to translate them into a different one so people I'm speaking with would understand, thus losing something in the process. I've come to realize that just "knowing" several languages doesn't make you a good translator, that is a skill in and of itself.
Also, learning a new language made me a more understanding person. You realize that there are different "modes" of thinking and that the human mind is a very flexible thing that is shaped by language and culture, thus imprinting specific peculiarities on it. When you switch between different languages you start to act differently, your mannerisms and tone of voice could change drastically.
Considering my interest in Japanese culture and literature, I think it would be a waste not to learn the language, even if it's really hard. Probably, at this point, my primary goal is to be able to read Japanese literature, and the secondary goal is to be able to communicate in written from. Speaking is a good skill, but for me, it's not going to be useful any time soon.
Hi Anatolii! I recognize a lot of myself in your story. For better or for worse, I live in a situation where people understand English, Japanese, and Dutch, so depending on the situation we will switch between those three, even mid-sentence if the moment calls for it. The bad thing is that you start to make less and less sense to people who do not understand all of these languages...
And I also definitely feel that my personality and mannerisms change when I switch between languages. I become a completely different person.
I think you have an advantage when it comes to learning Japanese, because you are already used to juggling multiple languages in your head. Which books would you like to read in Japanese?
"The bad thing is that you start to make less and less sense to people who do not understand all of these languages..", - yeah, I can relate to that. The more I use different languages the harder it gets to stick to a single one.
I would like to familiarize myself with the works of Osamu Dazai, Natsume Soseki, and Yukio Mishima in no particular order. But if I had to pick a specific book it would be 死の島 by Takehiko Fukunaga. Back in 1983 while Ukraine was still a part of the USSR my late grandmother was able to get a copy translated into Ukrainian. A book with such an ominous title caught my attention when I was a kid and it was my first exposition to Japan as a country, its history, and culture, outside of typical popular stuff like Pokemon and Dragon Ball cartoons. Reding it at such a young age (probably 10 years old at the time) left a great impression, so experiencing it in the original language is something I would definitely like to do at some point.
This is great! I hadn't heard of this book before. It seems to be out of print now, only available through second hand bookstores. I would have liked to include this in the newsletter...as soon as I can go to Japan, I'll buy it and choose an excerpt. Maybe I can get a friend or family member to send it over...thanks for sharing this!
Hi Bunsuke! English is my second language and even though I haven't mastered it, I've met and talked with wonderful people thanks to my job. One of my mistakes is that I never took proper classes to learn the language but have been a fun ride. With japanese I'm taking a more traditional route and I'm taking classes and I want to think that I decided to properly learn it because I fell in love with the county when I visited it on 2019 but even though english came to the rescue I felt I was missing something between the communication with japanese people so I decided to learn it so the next time I will be able to express everything I want to say without relaying entirely in a third language.
Hi Gera! It's so great that you got to visit Japan in 2019. I also fell in love with the country when I visited the second time (not the first time, I was 8 and I didn't see the point of all the temples haha). Wanting to communicate with people is a powerful motivating force! Do you mostly focus on speaking, reading, or both?
Hi Bunsuke!
This was a really interesting read, I enjoy your writing style. And, I'm of course biased, but I wholeheartedly agree with you that there is a need to learn other languages, and plenty of great reasons to do so. For me, something I've been able to experience is being able to help my friends with their studies of foreign languages because of my own knowledge and experience, which is great, but something even better (to me) has been gaining the ability to talk about pop culture with Japanese friends. I've been getting back into anime lately, and obsessively watching and reading Jujutsu Kaisen and Attack on Titan, but almost nobody I know in the US is as invested in the series as I am. However, some of my Japanese friends are just as invested, so we meet up every week and get to talk about the shows together, and it's a great time.
As for dreams and goals, I actually want to be a translator, but I also just want to be able to communicate more than anything. Like you said, learning a new language opens a whole other world of possibilities and perspectives that you otherwise would have no idea of, and I just want to keep understanding and learning more.
Thank you for this newsletter! I enjoy it a lot.
Hi Mary, thank you so much for your kind words. I'm really happy to read that you're enjoying the newsletter. It's so great that you've found friends with similar interests through studying Japanese. Do you guys discuss the shows in Japanese as well?
I also think it's wonderful that you want to be a translator. What kind of things are you thinking of translating? Are you mostly interested in literary translations, or do you prefer other types of texts?
Investing your time and energy so that you can communicate is a long and tough journey but really worth it. That moment you notice that you can say anything you want and aren't limited by grammar or vocabulary is the best experience there is.
Thank you so much for your support. I'd love to hear more about your plans to become a translator!
Yes, we discuss them in Japanese usually! It's most exciting to me to be able to use the vocabulary I've learned in the show, which usually wouldn't apply elsewhere, in real life.
I'm mostly interested in literary translations, although the impetus behind me wanting to become a translator in the first place was reading manga translations, so I feel like I would enjoy that field as well.
Hi Bunsuke. Thanks for your work as always, and specially for tackling this topic. I think it's really interesting, and reading the comments of people from all over the world it's really amazing. It got me thinking, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts with the community.
I work as a videogame developer, and our main project is deeply connected to the place where I grew up and live, the southern part of Spain (Andalucía). Because the theme and language used in the game is based in such an specific place, it was really important for us to actually transmit this through our game. A direct, A=B translation doesn't cut it, and even a professional localization felt imperfect. I'm not the person in charge of the localization (i'm a game designer), and neither I'm fluent in languages other than spanish and english, so the english localization was the only version of the game (apart from the original one) that I was able to check.
And I found so many things that were lost in translation. Nuances about the characters, about the world they live in, about their lifes and how they see the world. There were so many things that felt impossible to replicate in english, even if the localizators did an outstanding work.
Here's an actual, real example of a problem we had: It's "shakespearian english" a good alternative to replicate old castillian spanish? One it's really ornamented, and the other is blunt and to the point. Both feel archaic, but the reality of spanish and english literature were so different, I couldn't help but feel helpless thinking english-speakers were missing out on many things.
And that got me thinking, about how privileged I am to understand that nuance. Diving into english gave me the ability to better understand that culture, and the works that great authors created. That privilege is something I want to earn, I want to better understand other cultures, and to enjoy the subtleties of their language. It's not about the transmission of cold data, or simple ideas. There's so much more than that.
The awareness to this problem will also make me a better professional, as I will be able to find better ways for our games to reach people across the globe in the closest way possible, and to detect which things could be improved. So even without working as a translator, I believe any creative work can benefit from the boon that is learning new languages.
Hi Maikel, thank you for this thoughtful comment! It sounds like they should have put you in charge of the localization team. It's true that some things are simply impossible to translate, especially if so much of the original is rooted so firmly in one specific local identity. How could you, for example, ever capture a local dialect in a translation. This is virtually impossible.
Based on your reflections here, I think you have a lot to contribute to your field. It might just be my biased idea of the gaming industry, but I imagine that most people are in it either for the business or for love of games themselves, leaving translation or cultural sensitivities somewhat neglected. If more people like you raise the issue, I'm certain it will gain more awareness. As you said, it's much more than the simple transmission of data or two-dimensional ideas.
Thanks again for commenting and contributing to the community!
For me, I started learning English at a very young age, though I'm not really fluent it's still really amazing how I can easily communicate with people from all around the world, I live in country side so people don't really speak English here on a day to day basis, some of them don't even try to learn it but you know being exposed to all these cultures and getting to know more and more about different people and their countries really makes me happy and because of that I decide to start learning Japanese and so far my journey has been really amazing. I get to meet really good people like you, talk to them, learn from them, have fun with them. This journey has been so good and is going to get even better haha
Hi Kazue, thank you for always participating so actively! I'm really glad to see that you're enjoying the newsletter. It's so great that you were able to master English to this degree and at such a young age. I'm also really glad that I got to know you and that you joined this community. As you say, things will only get better from here!
Growing up, my worldview was expanded by the fact that there were many Filipino and Korean families with kids that I went to school with, and I got to experience bits of their culture just while hanging out and playing at their houses, for instance. It wasn't until mid-college that I really started seriously learning another (living) language (I studied ancient Greek for 3 years in high school, not much use for communicating nowadays), and that was Japanese. I think, more than anything, simply the experience of learning about the language and culture is its own reward along with all the world-opening possibities that it creates. Of course, I do very much hope to spend time in Japan and possibly even live there. But, in the nearest term I have recently thought that I will register for my local JLPT N3 exam in December and use that as motivation to really work on my Tobira materials.
Hi Severin! Being exposed to so many different cultures since childhood can really broaden your horizon. It's great that you had that experience. I also think your short term goal is very feasible. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you in December. Hopefully the newsletter will help your preparations along a little.
I feel like in each language there are things that can be expressed only in that particular language. You can try to approximate the meaning in translation, but that is simply an adaptation that loses some deeper meaning/feeling. I come from a bilingual background (Ukrainian and Russian languages) and English being my third language, I constantly find myself in a position when a certain thought is better expressed in one of those languages, but I have to translate them into a different one so people I'm speaking with would understand, thus losing something in the process. I've come to realize that just "knowing" several languages doesn't make you a good translator, that is a skill in and of itself.
Also, learning a new language made me a more understanding person. You realize that there are different "modes" of thinking and that the human mind is a very flexible thing that is shaped by language and culture, thus imprinting specific peculiarities on it. When you switch between different languages you start to act differently, your mannerisms and tone of voice could change drastically.
Considering my interest in Japanese culture and literature, I think it would be a waste not to learn the language, even if it's really hard. Probably, at this point, my primary goal is to be able to read Japanese literature, and the secondary goal is to be able to communicate in written from. Speaking is a good skill, but for me, it's not going to be useful any time soon.
Hi Anatolii! I recognize a lot of myself in your story. For better or for worse, I live in a situation where people understand English, Japanese, and Dutch, so depending on the situation we will switch between those three, even mid-sentence if the moment calls for it. The bad thing is that you start to make less and less sense to people who do not understand all of these languages...
And I also definitely feel that my personality and mannerisms change when I switch between languages. I become a completely different person.
I think you have an advantage when it comes to learning Japanese, because you are already used to juggling multiple languages in your head. Which books would you like to read in Japanese?
"The bad thing is that you start to make less and less sense to people who do not understand all of these languages..", - yeah, I can relate to that. The more I use different languages the harder it gets to stick to a single one.
I would like to familiarize myself with the works of Osamu Dazai, Natsume Soseki, and Yukio Mishima in no particular order. But if I had to pick a specific book it would be 死の島 by Takehiko Fukunaga. Back in 1983 while Ukraine was still a part of the USSR my late grandmother was able to get a copy translated into Ukrainian. A book with such an ominous title caught my attention when I was a kid and it was my first exposition to Japan as a country, its history, and culture, outside of typical popular stuff like Pokemon and Dragon Ball cartoons. Reding it at such a young age (probably 10 years old at the time) left a great impression, so experiencing it in the original language is something I would definitely like to do at some point.
This is great! I hadn't heard of this book before. It seems to be out of print now, only available through second hand bookstores. I would have liked to include this in the newsletter...as soon as I can go to Japan, I'll buy it and choose an excerpt. Maybe I can get a friend or family member to send it over...thanks for sharing this!
Hi Bunsuke! English is my second language and even though I haven't mastered it, I've met and talked with wonderful people thanks to my job. One of my mistakes is that I never took proper classes to learn the language but have been a fun ride. With japanese I'm taking a more traditional route and I'm taking classes and I want to think that I decided to properly learn it because I fell in love with the county when I visited it on 2019 but even though english came to the rescue I felt I was missing something between the communication with japanese people so I decided to learn it so the next time I will be able to express everything I want to say without relaying entirely in a third language.
Hi Gera! It's so great that you got to visit Japan in 2019. I also fell in love with the country when I visited the second time (not the first time, I was 8 and I didn't see the point of all the temples haha). Wanting to communicate with people is a powerful motivating force! Do you mostly focus on speaking, reading, or both?