All,
I must admit to having "lurked" throughout most the recent
discussion about languages and geographical discourse. And
while I agree that the hegemony of the English language is
an important issue there is another issue that is at least
as intriguing: the problems we encounter when we
actually DO work in other languages.
Over the years I have had opportunities to spend periods of
time working in Bulgarian (which I know pretty well),
French (which I know passably) and Spanish (which is very
much "seat of the pants")and each time I have noted that
there comes a point where structures of thought are
encountered that cannot be translated from one language to
the other. This is not because of lack of vocabulary,
proficiency etc. (though I freely admit my need of more
tuition in all the above languages, but rather because some
structures of thought seem to be fundamentally
untranslatable. Even more intriguingly I have noted the
same sort of problem whilst lecturing in my dulcet western
Canadian tones to rooms full of Kentuckians when I was at
U.Kentucky.
On those occasions I have pondered the politics of
translation and indeed of reading in other languages. One
of the tentative conclusions I have reached is that it is
important to think more critically about what is meant by
the term "language proficiency"; something that is often
used as a bar to participation in academic discourse.
I am not sure about the implications of this line of
thought, though I hope it does not point to a
"babelisation" where we all insist on speaking our own
"native tongues" (whatever THAT term might mean!).
I would be very interested in folk's thoughts on this bit
of rambling.
Vsichko Hobavo!
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Dr. Chad Staddon
School of Geography and Environmental Management
University of the West of England
Coldharbour Lane Bristol
England, BS16 1QY
TEL: (0117) 965-6261, ext.3214
PLEASE NOTE MY NEW EMAIL: [log in to unmask]
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