Most of my research involves the communications of corporations and government institutions. Very little involves consumer communications i.e advertising. It is all so-called B2B = business to business, and as such is informational rather than emotional. Google translate does a very good job of translating Finnish and Swedish in these areas. In fact, if anything comes up rather oddly in translation, it is almost always because the original was badly written (a common problem ;-))
So for me, google translate is not simply a way of quickly comparing communications in different languages (I continue, after all these years, to 'think' in English), but also a guide to better communication. You can't be me, I'm taken
I've used it to do some Chinese --> English translations (including a couple of diaries on ET), and while sometimes it gives you funny stuff, not infrequently it provides an interpretation that makes better sense than my own first effort. It's astonishing, and humbling. I'm starting to believe that a Turing test-passing automatic translator, like a black U.S. president, will happen not just within my lifetime, but in the unexpectedly near future.
Sven Triloqvist: I continue, after all these years, to 'think' in English
slightly off topic, but i wonder how many polyglots out there feel that they (1) "think in a language", and (2) if so, are they able to think in a non-native language, and (3) how is it for those who grew up speaking two languages from birth and throughout childhood? for myself, i used to think i didn't think "in a language", but simply translated (or converted) metalinguistic thoughts into language for the purposes of communication. but recently i've started to feel that actually i do "think in English", or if not, my way of perceiving/interpreting/experiencing reality, and thinking through problems, is heavily heavily structured, enriched and limited by the English language -- maybe "mediated in English" is the right way to put it. i find it very hard to pin down, so i was wondering what others' take on this is.
also, for those who are visual artists, or whose work involves intense or primarily non-linguistic cognition, do you find that you "switch" into a non-linguistic mode when doing that work? my brother is a painter, and he has no problem listening to Podcasts and radio talk shows while he paints. but i find it impossible to write or even do software programming while listening to talk radio/podcasts -- in English. but the worse i am in a language, then the easier it is for me to concentrate on my work while listening to talk in that language. The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.
Swedish is my native tongue, the rest I learned in school. (English is mandatory, a third language is a commonly used option and a fourth is a possibility.) A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
slightly off topic, but i wonder how many polyglots out there feel that they (1) "think in a language", and (2) if so, are they able to think in a non-native language, and (3) how is it for those who grew up speaking two languages from birth and throughout childhood?
great question.
my native tongue is english, and i definitely feel my thinking is 'mediated' by that, in ways i find hard to language!
i do find myself counting in italian sometimes though, and very oddly i find myself typing an 'a' before or after a word, fr'example: 'you like-a pasta?', giving a sopranos effect to the text, lol.
being half and half, it's difficult to discern what comes through culture, dna, or language, in fact i wonder if one can separate them analytically...
as for going into states of conscious highly resistant to verbalisation, if that's what you mean, yes, sometimes trying to language something too fast devalues experience.
it's like one is narrative, -the experience- and the description is commentary.
some situations demand an artistic response (whatever that is, easy on the PNs), and that is always more interesting, nuanced and complex than a mere observation or witnessing.
sort of like the difference between text and html. the former is more linear and less expressive, but short and sweet. a non-mediated response might be a movement, or a spontaneous clap of the hands, or a desire to rechannel that inspiration into something original.
i can't blog and listen to a talk podcast at the sametime, but i can blog and semi-watch TV talk in the background, although at the beginning it was really brainstretching, especially while reading dkos with fox on in the background, multitasking media studies, or political schiziphrenia, hard to tell lol!
then there's another strange quirk too, that is if i have to listen critically to a piece of recorded music i'm working on, out-takes of a song, i hear mistakes and places for improvement, energy imbalances, and other 'burrs' much better if i'm using the front of my mind for reading, it can be about something totally different.
there is also the forest for the trees syndrome when one listens to a piece over and over, after a while i need to change vibes, either by working on a different song, (preferably with a different 'feel'), or by going and doing something totally different, going for a walk perhaps.
same while cooking and listening to out-takes, often i hear it more detachedly when concentrating on something else, and experiencing the art peripherally.
maybe it's similar to the peculiar relaxing of the vision one has to do to see certain patterns, or 'where's waldo?' type of phenomena.
i noticed it first while staring at whole walls of islamic tilework, on the sides of moroccan mosques.
mind-altering art, it's the most!
opens up the chinks and lets new energy in.
then we play with descriptions, the ephemeral to art's eternality.
i think you might like the work of ellen langor, an eminent psychologist i heard interviewed on the last electric politics podcast. i loved it so much i listened to it three times, and went explored her web presence a bit. one page mentioned, maybe it was FB, that her favourite thing was wry wit, and the podcast was a treasure trove of it. it was called 'empirical monism' and here's the link, if you have time http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2010/02/empirical_monism.html
once you leave monolingualism behind, and especially if you do translation work, i think one of the drollest things is how there are 'cracks' between languages, and some are better for languaging some states of mind. i have a german friend studying medicine in italian, and it drives her crazy,lol!!!
very fertile territory, these 'cracks' whither and whence much meaning can disappear, hide, peek out in, morph or emerge.
there, that should be vague enough! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I first got the sense that I speak German well when I realised that I use it alongside Hungarian when thinking. A decade later, I realised the same regarding English, which is funny: it came all from reading and USENET posting, while for lack of practice, my spoken English was and is awful (and even my written one ridden with grammatical errors). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
