By: Laura Barrera
Visiting Researcher at the Humanities Research Centre
Translating is emotion, humanity and sensitivity. It is the remarkable task of the translator to honour each of the thousands experiences a word contains. The intriguing activity of verbalising what the other person accounts is not an undemanding assignment. On the contrary, it demands to reflect the human vital journey fed by everything that evokes emotions within us. Have you ever thought that our thoughts lack limitations, that emotions cannot host any barriers? How can our own personal experiences and perspectives adapt and shape each one of our thoughts?
As human beings, the thoughts and attitudes instilled in us during early childhood within our native society profoundly influence our decision-making. This is called our cultural baggage. Once you start aging, everything you feed your intellect with will be part of your vital baggage, it is a choice of your own criteria. However, it is inevitably conditioned by our cultural baggage, that which establishes the limits of what is accepted or not. As individuals shaped by our unique perspectives, we harmonise our expressions within the frameworks of our culture.
When it comes to translation, one should not forget that each individual possesses these two baggages. From the tallest skyscrapers to the farthest reaches of the universe, no one is exempt from this division. No vision equals the other. It is our individual effort to lighten the weight of our cultural background or to let its weight condition our actions. Our vital baggage is in charge of alleviating this burden. The latter is nourished by experiences, conversations with others, and situations of learning from what we ignore. It flourishes through reading, through the openness to other realities that compels us to deepen the appreciation of our own reality. By doing so, we will acquire the ability of tolerance, of understanding different realities, since no one is released from such a personal baggage.
Accordingly, translating is one of the most delicate professions in the world, requiring the surgical precision of a surgeon. The translator oversees shedding the inner world of people into a speech, honouring their feelings and emotions that shape their words. Only a translator can pour the passion of your favourite poem, all the insights of the careful writer sweetly expressed into his book.
Our profession might be hampered by our own baggage, but it is our task to step back to allow others' baggages and experiences to be highlighted. Translation and interpreting is a rewarding profession, and it is sometimes that we are the only ones who can give a voice to those whose expression is impeded, those whose speech is meritorious but lacks scope.