As anyone who has spent time living among people who speak a language other than her/his own knows: All communication is translation. And in translation, misunderstandings and mishaps are commonplace. Intentions, message, and emotions get lost in the gaps between what we feel, what we think, what we say, what is heard by the other, what is thought by the other, what is felt by the other and what is remembered and re-communicated by the other.
In many ways, it seems like language is synonymous with loss. And yet, things get done. People communicate their thoughts, ideas, and feelings effectively and often to innovative, benevolent and beautiful affects. Worldchanging itself is testimony to that; we—bloggers and readers alike—are all pivot points in the communication of tools and ideas from one place to another. Not a bad thing to be.
I thought it fitting, then, to acknowledge here a little exhibition with big ideas that opened at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts on January 27th.
Found in Translation: Art and Language in Global Culture, a project of the Brooklyn Artists Alliance, is an international traveling exhibition of books, prints, digital and video documents that use both text and image in an attempt to explore the relationship between what we express and what we understand. Reads the catalogue: “In times characterized simultaneously by globalization and intolerance, the need for effective communication, empathetic comprehension and thoughtful translation is even more acute.�
While the exhibit itself is not a tool for change, it is an opportunity for worldchangers to contemplate the challenges inherent in all communication/translation, and to consider some of the innovative ways we might transcend those challenges. I’ve highlighted three contributors to the exhibition who I think inspire such contemplations.
Talking Books—Nathaniel Bletter
Bletter, an enthnobiologist who has studied in Peru and Mali, invented “talking books.� in an effort to return the tools and information to the communities whose plants he studies, where many of the people are nonliterate. These solar-powered and water-resistant albums contain photos of the plants Bletter studies; and at the press of a button, viewers can also listen to a voice explaining each plant’s uses in English and language used that community. As long as the sun still shines, the local knowledge of plant species will be available to future generations.
The Asian Classics Input Project
Since 1989, ACIP has been scouring the globe for ancient Sanskrit and Tibetan texts in an effort to preserve the spiritual and philosophical ideas of those cultures. Once they locate the books (or printing blocks), the information is copied and sent to data-entry centers, where translators can make the information available to speakers of contemporary languages. Found in Translation contains a 19th century meditation text printed from a hand-carved woodblock, as well as an informational DVD about the Project.
New English (Square Word) Calligraphy— Xu Bing’s
Bing is a Chinese-born artist living in Brooklyn who has developed a system of “square words�—characters which, at first look like traditional Chinese characters, but, upon closer inspection, are really English words with the letters arranged within a square. Seeing familiar words in such a stylistically foreign context is, at first, incomprehensible. Once you’ve discovered the secret though, it becomes a game to “translate� the characters into the simple messages they spell out. Bing’s work forces viewers to contemplate just how steeped in those twenty-six letters our understanding of the world is.
Found in Translations will be at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts through April 28th.
