Humans communicate with one another using a dazzling array of languages, each

differing from the next in innumerable ways. Do the languages we speak shape the
way we see the world, the way we think, and the way we live our lives? Do people
who speak different languages think differently simply because they speak different
languages? Does learning new languages change the way you think? Do polyglots
think differently when speaking different languages?

These questions touch on nearly all of the major controversies in the study of mind.
They have engaged scores of philosophers, anthropologists, linguists, and
psychologists, and they have important implications for politics, law, and religion. Yet
despite nearly constant attention and debate, very little empirical work was done on
these questions until recently. For a long time, the idea that language might shape
thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research
in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We
have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia,
and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different
languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can
profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central
to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental
lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.

I often start my undergraduate lectures by asking students the following question:

which cognitive faculty would you most hate to lose? Most of them pick the sense of
sight; a few pick hearing. Once in a while, a wisecracking student might pick her
sense of humor or her fashion sense. Almost never do any of them spontaneously
say that the faculty they'd most hate to lose is language. Yet if you lose (or are born
without) your sight or hearing, you can still have a wonderfully rich social existence.
You can have friends, you can get an education, you can hold a job, you can start a
family. But what would your life be like if you had never learned a language? Could
you still have friends, get an education, hold a job, start a family? Language is so
fundamental to our experience, so deeply a part of being human, that it's hard to
imagine life without it. But are languages merely tools for expressing our thoughts, or
do they actually shape our thoughts?

Most questions of whether and how language shapes thought start with the simple
observation that languages differ from one another. And a lot! Let's take a (very)
hypothetical example. Suppose you want to say, "Bush read Chomsky's latest book."
Let's focus on just the verb, "read." To say this sentence in English, we have to mark
the verb for tense; in this case, we have to pronounce it like "red" and not like "reed."
In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) alter the verb to mark tense. In
Russian you would have to alter the verb to indicate tense and gender. So if it was
Laura Bush who did the reading, you'd use a different form of the verb than if it was
George. In Russian you'd also have to include in the verb information about
completion. If George read only part of the book, you'd use a different form of the
verb than if he'd diligently plowed through the whole thing. In Turkish you'd have to
include in the verb how you acquired this information: if you had witnessed this
unlikely event with your own two eyes, you'd use one verb form, but if you had simply
read or heard about it, or inferred it from something Bush said, you'd use a different
verb form.

Clearly, languages require different things of their speakers. Does this mean that the
speakers think differently about the world? Do English, Indonesian, Russian, and
Turkish speakers end up attending to, partitioning, and remembering their
experiences differently just because they speak different languages? For some
scholars, the answer to these questions has been an obvious yes. Just look at the
way people talk, they might say. Certainly, speakers of different languages must
attend to and encode strikingly different aspects of the world just so they can use
their language properly.

Scholars on the other side of the debate don't find the differences in how people talk
convincing. All our linguistic utterances are sparse, encoding only a small part of the
information we have available. Just because English speakers don't include the
same information in their verbs that Russian and Turkish speakers do doesn't mean
that English speakers aren't paying attention to the same things; all it means is that
they're not talking about them. It's possible that everyone thinks the same way,
notices the same things, but just talks differently.

Believers in cross-linguistic differences counter that everyone does not pay attention
to the same things: if everyone did, one might think it would be easy to learn to
speak other languages. Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one not
closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying attention
to a new set of distinctions. Whether it's distinguishing modes of being in Spanish,
evidentiality in Turkish, or aspect in Russian, learning to speak these languages
requires something more than just learning vocabulary: it requires paying attention to
the right things in the world so that you have the correct information to include in
what you say.
Such a priori arguments about whether or not language shapes thought have gone in
circles for centuries, with some arguing that it's impossible for language to shape
thought and others arguing that it's impossible for language not to shape thought.
Recently my group and others have figured out ways to empirically test some of the
key questions in this ancient debate, with fascinating results. So instead of arguing
about what must be true or what can't be true, let's find out what is true.

Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of

Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the
KuukThaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and
"back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer,
the KuukThaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms
north, south, east, and west to define space.1 This is done at all scales, which
means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move
the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking
such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot
speak properly. The normal greeting in KuukThaayorre is "Where are you going?"
and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance."
If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello."

The result is a profound difference in navigational ability and spatial knowledge

between speakers of languages that rely primarily on absolute reference frames (like
KuukThaayorre) and languages that rely on relative reference frames (like English).2
Simply put, speakers of languages like KuukThaayorre are much better than English
speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar
landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. What enables them in fact, forces them
to do this is their language. Having their attention trained in this way equips them
to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities. Because
space is such a fundamental domain of thought, differences in how people think
about space don't end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build other,
more complex, more abstract representations. Representations of such things as
time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions have been
shown to depend on how we think about space. So if the KuukThaayorrethink
differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time?
This is what my collaborator Alice Gaby and I came to Pormpuraaw to find out.

To test this idea, we gave people sets of pictures that showed some kind of temporal
progression (e.g., pictures of a man aging, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being
eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the
correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time
facing in a different cardinal direction. If you ask English speakers to do this, they'll
arrange the cards so that time proceeds from left to right. Hebrew speakers will tend
to lay out the cards from right to left, showing that writing direction in a language
plays a role.3 So what about folks like the KuukThaayorre, who don't use words like
"left" and "right"? What will they do?

The KuukThaayorre did not arrange the cards more often from left to right than from
right to left, nor more toward or away from the body. But their arrangements were not
random: there was a pattern, just a different one from that of English speakers.
Instead of arranging time from left to right, they arranged it from east to west. That is,
when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced
north, the cards went from right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward
the body and so on. This was true even though we never told any of our subjects
which direction they faced. The KuukThaayorre not only knew that already (usually
much better than I did), but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to
construct their representations of time.

People's ideas of time differ across languages in other ways. For example, English
speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial metaphors (e.g., "The best
is ahead of us," "The worst is behind us"), whereas Mandarin speakers have a
vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the next month is the "down month" and the last
month is the "up month"). Mandarin speakers talk about time vertically more often
than English speakers do, so do Mandarin speakers think about time vertically more
often than English speakers do? Imagine this simple experiment. I stand next to you,
point to a spot in space directly in front of you, and tell you, "This spot, here, is today.
Where would you put yesterday? And where would you put tomorrow?" When
English speakers are asked to do this, they nearly always point horizontally. But
Mandarin speakers often point vertically, about seven or eight times more often than
do English speakers.4

Even basic aspects of time perception can be affected by language. For example,
English speakers prefer to talk about duration in terms of length (e.g., "That was a
short talk," "The meeting didn't take long"), while Spanish and Greek speakers prefer
to talk about time in terms of amount, relying more on words like "much" "big", and
"little" rather than "short" and "long" Our research into such basic cognitive abilities
as estimating duration shows that speakers of different languages differ in ways
predicted by the patterns of metaphors in their language. (For example, when asked
to estimate duration, English speakers are more likely to be confused by distance
information, estimating that a line of greater length remains on the test screen for a
longer period of time, whereas Greek speakers are more likely to be confused by
amount, estimating that a container that is fuller remains longer on the screen.)5

An important question at this point is: Are these differences caused by language per
se or by some other aspect of culture? Of course, the lives of English, Mandarin,
Greek, Spanish, and KuukThaayorre speakers differ in a myriad of ways. How do we
know that it is language itself that creates these differences in thought and not some
other aspect of their respective cultures?

One way to answer this question is to teach people new ways of talking and see if
that changes the way they think. In our lab, we've taught English speakers different
ways of talking about time. In one such study, English speakers were taught to use
size metaphors (as in Greek) to describe duration (e.g., a movie is larger than a
sneeze), or vertical metaphors (as in Mandarin) to describe event order. Once the
English speakers had learned to talk about time in these new ways, their cognitive
performance began to resemble that of Greek or Mandarin speakers. This suggests
that patterns in a language can indeed play a causal role in constructing how we
think.6 In practical terms, it means that when you're learning a new language, you're
not simply learning a new way of talking, you are also inadvertently learning a new
way of thinking. Beyond abstract or complex domains of thought like space and time,
languages also meddle in basic aspects of visual perception our ability to
distinguish colors, for example. Different languages divide up the color continuum
differently: some make many more distinctions between colors than others, and the
boundaries often don't line up across languages.

To test whether differences in color language lead to differences in color perception,

we compared Russian and English speakers' ability to discriminate shades of blue.
In Russian there is no single word that covers all the colors that English speakers
call "blue." Russian makes an obligatory distinction between light blue (goluboy) and
dark blue (siniy). Does this distinction mean that siniy blues look more different from
goluboy blues to Russian speakers? Indeed, the data say yes. Russian speakers are
quicker to distinguish two shades of blue that are called by the different names in
Russian (i.e., one being siniy and the other being goluboy) than if the two fall into the
same category.

For English speakers, all these shades are still designated by the same word, "blue,"
and there are no comparable differences in reaction time.
Further, the Russian advantage disappears when subjects are asked to perform a
verbal interference task (reciting a string of digits) while making color judgments but
not when they're asked to perform an equally difficult spatial interference task
(keeping a novel visual pattern in memory). The disappearance of the advantage
when performing a verbal task shows that language is normally involved in even
surprisingly basic perceptual judgments and that it is language per se that creates
this difference in perception between Russian and English speakers.

When Russian speakers are blocked from their normal access to language by a
verbal interference task, the differences between Russian and English speakers
disappear.

Even what might be deemed frivolous aspects of language can have far-reaching
subconscious effects on how we see the world. Take grammatical gender. In Spanish
and other Romance languages, nouns are either masculine or feminine. In many
other languages, nouns are divided into many more genders ("gender" in this context
meaning class or kind). For example, some Australian Aboriginal languages have up
to sixteen genders, including classes of hunting weapons, canines, things that are
shiny, or, in the phrase made famous by cognitive linguist George Lakoff, "women,
fire, and dangerous things."

What it means for a language to have grammatical gender is that words belonging to
different genders get treated differently grammatically and words belonging to the
same grammatical gender get treated the same grammatically. Languages can
require speakers to change pronouns, adjective and verb endings, possessives,
numerals, and so on, depending on the noun's gender. For example, to say
something like "my chair was old" in Russian (moystulbil' stariy), you'd need to make
every word in the sentence agree in gender with "chair" (stul), which is masculine in
Russian. So you'd use the masculine form of "my," "was," and "old." These are the
same forms you'd use in speaking of a biological male, as in "my grandfather was
old." If, instead of speaking of a chair, you were speaking of a bed (krovat'), which is
feminine in Russian, or about your grandmother, you would use the feminine form of
"my," "was," and "old."

Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make
Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like
women in some way? It turns out that it does. In one study, we asked German and
Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those
two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by
grammatical gender. For example, when asked to describe a "key" a word that is
masculine in German and feminine in Spanish the German speakers were more
likely to use words like "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated," and "useful,"
whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little,"
"lovely," "shiny," and "tiny." To describe a "bridge," which is feminine in German and
masculine in Spanish, the German speakers said "beautiful," "elegant," "fragile,"
"peaceful," "pretty," and "slender," and the Spanish speakers said "big," "dangerous,"
"long," "strong," "sturdy," and "towering." This was true even though all testing was
done in English, a language without grammatical gender. The same pattern of results
also emerged in entirely nonlinguistic tasks (e.g., rating similarity between pictures).
And we can also show that it is aspects of language per se that shape how people
think: teaching English speakers new grammatical gender systems influences mental
representations of objects in the same way it does with German and Spanish
speakers. Apparently even small flukes of grammar, like the seemingly arbitrary
assignment of gender to a noun, can have an effect on people's ideas of concrete
objects in the world.7

In fact, you don't even need to go into the lab to see these effects of language; you
can see them with your own eyes in an art gallery. Look at some famous examples
of personification in art the ways in which abstract entities such as death, sin,
victory, or time are given human form. How does an artist decide whether death, say,
or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of
such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the
grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language. So, for example,
German painters are more likely to paint death as a man, whereas Russian painters
are more likely to paint death as a woman.

The fact that even quirks of grammar, such as grammatical gender, can affect our
thinking is profound. Such quirks are pervasive in language; gender, for example,
applies to all nouns, which means that it is affecting how people think about anything
that can be designated by a noun. That's a lot of stuff!

I have described how languages shape the way we think about space, time, colors,
and objects. Other studies have found effects of language on how people construe
events, reason about causality, keep track of number, understand material
substance, perceive and experience emotion, reason about other people's minds,
choose to take risks, and even in the way they choose professions and spouses.8
Taken together, these results show that linguistic processes are pervasive in most
fundamental domains of thought, unconsciously shaping us from the nuts and bolts
of cognition and perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions.
Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak
profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our
lives.

__

NOTES

1 S. C. Levinson and D. P. Wilkins, eds., Grammars of Space: Explorations in

Cognitive Diversity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

2 Levinson, Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

3 B. Tversky et al., Cross-Cultural and Developmental Trends in Graphic

Productions, Cognitive Psychology 23(1991): 5157; O. Fuhrman and L. Boroditsky,
Mental Time-Lines Follow Writing Direction: Comparing English and Hebrew
Speakers. Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science
Society (2007): 100710.

4 L. Boroditsky, "Do English and Mandarin Speakers Think Differently About Time?"
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (2007): 34.

5 D. Casasanto et al., "How Deep Are Effects of Language on Thought? Time

Estimation in Speakers of English, Indonesian Greek, and Spanish," Proceedings of
the 26th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (2004): 57580.

6 Ibid., "How Deep Are Effects of Language on Thought? Time Estimation in

Speakers of English and Greek" (in review); L. Boroditsky, "Does Language Shape
Thought?English and Mandarin Speakers' Conceptions of Time." Cognitive
Psychology 43, no. 1(2001): 122.

7 L. Boroditsky et al. "Sex, Syntax, and Semantics," in D. Gentner and S. Goldin-

Meadow, eds., Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Cognition
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 6179.

8 L. Boroditsky, "Linguistic Relativity," in L. Nadel ed., Encyclopedia of Cognitive

Science (London: MacMillan, 2003), 91721; B. W. Pelham et al., "Why Susie Sells
Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions." Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 82, no. 4(2002): 46986; A. Tversky& D.
Kahneman, "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice." Science
211(1981): 45358; P. Pica et al., "Exact and Approximate Arithmetic in an
Amazonian Indigene Group." Science 306(2004): 499503; J. G. de Villiers and P. A.
de Villiers, "Linguistic Determinism and False Belief," in P. Mitchell and K. Riggs,
eds., Children's Reasoning and the Mind (Hove, UK: Psychology Press, in press); J.
A. Lucy and S. Gaskins, "Interaction of Language Type and Referent Type in the
Development of Nonverbal Classification Preferences," in Gentner and Goldin-
Meadow, 46592; L. F. Barrett et al., "Language as a Context for Emotion
Perception," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11(2007): 32732.

Translators usually have to deal with six different problematic areas in

their work, whether they are translating technical documents or a
sworn statement. These include: lexical-semantic problems; grammar;
syntax; rhetoric; and pragmatic and cultural problems. Not to mention
administrative issues, computer-related problems and stress

Lexical-semantic problems
Lexical-semantic problems can be resolved by consulting dictionaries,
glossaries, terminology banks and experts. These problems include
terminology alternatives, neologisms, semantic gaps, contextual
synonyms and antonyms (these affect polysemic units: synonyms and
antonyms are only aimed at an acceptance which depends on the context
to determine which meaning is correct), semantic contiguity (a
consistency procedure which works by identifying semantic features
common to two or more terms) and lexical networks.

Grammatical problems
Grammatical problems include, for example, questions of temporality,
aspectuality (the appearance indicates how the process is represented or
the state expressed by the verb from the point of view of its development,
as opposed to time itself), pronouns, and whether to make explicit the
subject pronoun or not.

Syntactical problems
Syntactical problems may originate in syntactic parallels, the direction of
the passive voice, the focus (the point of view from which a story is
organized), or even rhetorical figures of speech, such as a hyperbaton (the
inversion of the natural order of speech) or an anaphora (repetition of a
word or segment at the beginning of a line or a phrase).

Rhetorical problems
Rhetorical problems are related to the identification and recreation of
figures of thought (comparison, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche,
oxymoron, paradox, etc.) and diction.
Pragmatic problems: an example of a
marketing translation
Pragmatic problems arise with the difference in the formal and informal
modes of address using you, as well as idiomatic phrases, sayings,
irony, humor and sarcasm. These difficulties can also include other
challenges; for example, in the translation of a marketing text from
English into French, specifically with the translation of the personal
pronoun you. The translator must decide whether the formal or the
informal you is more appropriate, a decision which is not always clear.

Cultural issues: an example of a financial

translation
Cultural issues may arise from differences between cultural references,
such as names of food, festivals and cultural connotations, in general. The
translator will use language localization to correctly adapt the translation
to the culture targeted. A very simple example is a financial translation
which includes dates. If the text is in English, it is most likely, but not
absolutely certain, that 05/06/2015 will mean June 5. However, as
everyone knows, the same sequence in another language refers to May 6.

On Linguistic Aspects of Translation is an essay written by Russian

linguist Roman Jakobson in 1959.[1]
Jakobson has been closely associated not only with formalism but also
linguistics, anthropology and psychoanalysis. He is known as being one of
the founders of the Prague Linguistic Circle. He is also known to have
coined the term Structural Linguistics.
In his essay, Jakobson states that meaning of a word is a linguistic
phenomenon. Using semiotics, Jakobson believes that meaning lies with
the signifier and not in the signified. Thus it is the linguistic verbal sign
that gives an object its meaning. Interpretation of a verbal sign according
to Roman Jakobson can happen in three ways: intralingual, interlingual
and intersemiotic. In the case of intralingual translation, the changes take
place within the same language. Thus a verbal sign (word) belonging to a
particular language is replaced by another sign (word) belonging to the
same language. Interlingual translation on the other hand can be seen as
replacing a verbal sign with another sign but belonging to a different
language.
The last kind of explanation of verbal sign that he talks about is the
intersemiotic translation. Here more than focusing on the words, emphasis
is on the overall message that needs to be conveyed. Thus the translator,
instead of paying attention to the verbal signs, concentrates more on the
information that is to be delivered. Roman Jakobson uses the term mutual
translatability and states that when any two languages are being
compared, the foremost thing that needs to be taken into consideration is
whether they can be translated into one another or not. Laying emphasis
on the grammar of a particular language, he feels that it should determine
how one language is different from another.
In the essay, Roman Jakobson also deals with the problem of deficiency
in a particular language. Jakobson believes that all cognitive experiences
can be expressed in language and while translating whenever there is a
lack or deficiency of words, loan words, neologisms and
circumlocutions can be used to fill in this lack.
Reinforcing the fact that one of the factors that translation has to take
care of is the grammatical structure of the target language, Jakobson
believes that it becomes tedious to try to maintain fidelity to the source
text when the target language has a rigid grammatical framework which is
missing in the source language. Jakobson, in his essay also brings in the
relationship between gender and the grammar of a particular language.
Language Structure
Every language has a unique structure. The structure of language is
directly related to the level of accuracy and simplicity of the translation.
The simpler the language is, the easier it is to translate that language to
another one.
A simple sentence in English has a subject, verb and object in that order,
as in They eat meat. But in other languages, such as Persian, the order
is different. In Farsi, a simple sentence is composed of a subject, then an
object, and finally, the verb: Anha goosht mikhorand. In some languages
like Arabic, the subject pronoun (they) is part of the verb: Yaikoloon
allahom. There is no independent word they in that sentence; the -
oon at the end of Yaikloon makes it the third person plural masculine
pronoun.
Idioms and expressions
Idiomatic expressions that explain something by using examples or figures
of speech. They are something that Google Translate will never be able to
cope with; they still belong exclusively to human communication. In my
opinion, idioms are the most difficult thing to translate. Some idioms are
misleading, as they may seem transparent because they offer a
reasonable literal interpretation and their idiomatic meanings are not
necessarily signalled in the surrounding text, e.g., to take someone for a
ride. Familiarity with the culture is very helpful for translating idioms.
Compound Words
Compound words are made of two or more words, but the overall meaning
of the compound word may not reflect the meaning of any of those words.
I generally think of compound words as being divided into three groups:
The first group of compound words mean exactly what they say:
afternoon, anytime, seashore, underground and so on.
The second group of compound words mean half of what they say, at least
in a literal sense: bellboy involves a boy but not a bell though perhaps
the boy used to materialize when someone rang a bell? Likewise, a
bookworm is not a worm but a human who likes to read (or burrow into)
books.
The third group of compound words have meanings that have nothing to
do with the meanings of the individual words involved. For instance, the
English deadline refers to the final acceptable time to receive or deliver
something. It has nothing to do with death or a line. And a butterfly is
neither a fly nor butter.
Missing Names
A language may not have a word for a certain action or object that exists
in another language. In America, some houses have a guest room,
which is a room where hosts allow guests to sleep. It is a common room in
a house, but Americans dont have a single word for it, so we use its
description, guest room. Other languages have a very specific name for
that room, e.g. ksnona (Greek), while some languages may require three
words to describe it: camera per gliospiti (Italian).
Two-Word Verbs
It refers to a verb and a preposition that have a specific meaning when
used together. Two-word verbs are common in informal English: look up,
close up, fill out, shut up, bring up, break down and break in
are some examples. In many cases, it is not appropriate or necessary to
translate the preposition separately.
Multiple Meanings
Sometimes words have several meanings depending upon how they are
used in a sentence. I think of words with multiple meanings in two ways:
1. Words that sound alike (also known as homographic homophones or
homonyms), e.g., scale in the following sentence: Scale the fish
completely before weighing it on the scale.
2. Words that sound different (also known as homographic heterophones
or heteronyms), e.g., windy in the following sentence: I drove down the
windy road on a windy day.
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is a sharp, bitter or cutting way of uttering an expression or
remark that usually means the opposite of what people say. Sarcasm
frequently loses its meaning when translated word-for-word into another
language; a literal translation would express the opposite of what the
speaker actually intended to say.
My native language, Farsi (Persian), can be quite complicated to translate,
as it has two faces: formal and informal. I recently got a translation job
that involved translating an app for the World Cup from English to Farsi.
This job was challenging because it featured lot of idioms, slang and
sarcasm that would not make any sense in Farsi. My solution was to
translate the idioms and slang into equivalent Persian slang expressions to
make the app as effective as possible.
 Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong
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April 6, 200912:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

ROBERT KRULWICH

Yes, this is a bridge.

Look at it for a moment and ask yourself, "What three descriptive words come into
my head when I look at a bridge?" This bridge, or any bridge. (You only get three.)

iStockphoto.com

OK, here's the same bridge. Does it by any chance look:

iStockphoto.com

Or, are you more likely to describe it as:

iStockphoto.com

The first batch of words such as beautiful, elegant, slender were those used
most often by a group of German speakers participating in an experiment by
LeraBoroditsky, an assistant psychology professor at Stanford University.

She told the group to describe the image that came to mind when they were shown
the word, "bridge."
iStockphoto.com

The second batch of words such as strong, sturdy, towering were most often
chosen by people whose first language is Spanish.

What explains the difference?

Boroditsky proposes that because the word for "bridge" in German die brucke is
a feminine noun, and the word for "bridge" in Spanish el puente is a masculine
noun, native speakers unconsciously give nouns the characteristics of their
grammatical gender.
"Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make
Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like
women in some way?" she asks in a recent essay. "It turns out that it does. In one
study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite
gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a
way predicted by grammatical gender."

When asked to describe a "key" a word that is masculine in German and feminine
in Spanish German speakers were more likely to use words such as "hard,"
"heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated" and "useful." Spanish speakers were more
likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny" and "tiny."

Boroditsky created a pretend language based on her research called "Gumbuzi"

replete with its own list of male and female nouns. Students drilled in the language
were then shown bridges and tables and chairs to see if they began to characterize
these things with their newly minted genders. And it turns out well, we don't want to
spoil this for you, so if you want to listen to our Morning Edition piece, stop reading
here.
(And click the listen button in the upper left of this page.)

OK. Ready for the answer? They did.

Boroditsky suggests that the grammar we learn from our parents, whether we realize
it or not, affects our sensual experience of the world. Spaniards and Germans can
see the same things, wear the same cloths, eat the same foods and use the same
machines. But deep down, they are having very different feelings about the world
about them.
Kean Collection/Getty Images

William Shakespeare may have said (through Juliet's lips): "a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet," but Boroditsky thinks Shakespeare was wrong. Words, and
classifications of words in different languages, do matter, she thinks.
(In case you don't speak Gumbuzi, "oos huff" means "a rose.")

In our broadcast, Boroditsky does an experiment two bags, both filled with rose
petals, but with different labels that proves the Bard wrong. Or so she says.

Boroditsky's essay on this subject, "How Does Our Language Shape the Way We
Think?" is part of the soon-to-be published anthology What's Next?" (Vintage Books,
June 2009).

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Connection between language and culture - The relationship between language

and culture is deeply rooted. Language is used to maintain and
convey culture and cultural ties. Different ideas stem from
differing language use within ones culture and the whole
intertwining of these relationships start at ones birth.

The relationship between language and culture is deeply rooted.

Language is used to maintain and convey culture and cultural
ties. Different ideas stem from differing language use within ones
culture and the whole intertwining of these relationships start at
ones birth.

When an infant is born, it is not unlike any other infant born, in

fact, quite similar. It is not until the child is exposed to their
surroundings that they become individuals in and of their cultural
group. This idea, which describes all people as similar at birth,
has been around for thousands of years and was discussed by
Confucius as recorded in the book by his followers, Analects (Xu,
1997). From birth, the childs life, opinions, and language
are shaped by what it comes in contact with. Brooks (1968)
argues that physically and mentally everyone is the same, while
the interactions between persons or groups vary widely from
place to place. Patterns which emerge from these group
behaviours and interactions will be approved of, or disapproved
of. Behaviours which are acceptable will vary from location to
location (Brooks, 1968) thus forming the basis of different
cultures. It is from these differences that ones view of the world
is formed. Hantrais (1989) puts forth the idea that culture is the
beliefs and practices governing the life of a society for which a
particular language is the vehicle of expression. Therefore,
everyones views are dependent on the culture which has
influenced them, as well as being described using the language
which has been shaped by that culture. The understanding of a
culture and its people can be enhanced by the knowledge of their
language. This brings us to an interesting point brought up by
Emmitt and Pollock (1997), who argue that even though people
are brought up under similar behavioural backgrounds or cultural
situations but however speak different languages, their world
view may be very different. As Sapir-Whorf argues, different
thoughts are brought about by the use of different forms of
language. One is limited by the language used to express ones
ideas. Different languages will create different limitations,
therefore a people who share a culture but speak different
languages, will have different world views. Still, language is
rooted in culture and culture is reflected and passed on by
language from one generation to the next (Emmitt & Pollock
1997).
From this, one can see that learning a new language involves the
learning of a new culture (Allwright& Bailey 1991). Consequently,
teachers of a language are also teachers of culture (Byram 1989).

The implications of language being completely entwined in

culture, in regards for language teaching and language policy are
far reaching. Language teachers must instruct their students on
the cultural background of language usage, choose culturally
appropriate teaching styles, and explore culturally based linguistic
differences to promote understanding instead of misconceptions
or prejudices. Language policy must be used to create awareness
and understandings of cultural differences, and written to
incorporate the cultural values of those being taught.

Implications for language teaching

Teachers must instruct their students on the cultural background
of language usage. If one teaches language without teaching
about the culture in which it operates, the students are learning
empty or meaningless symbols or they may attach the incorrect
meaning to what is being taught. The students, when using the
learnt language, may use the language inappropriately or within
the wrong cultural context, thus defeating the purpose of learning
a language.

Conflict in teaching styles also stem from the relationship

between language and culture. During the past decade, I have
taught English in Taiwan and have observed a major difficulty in
English instruction brought about by teachers and suffered by
students. Western English teachers who teach in Taiwan bring
along with them any or all of their teaching and learning
experiences. To gain employment in Taiwan as an English teacher
(legally), one must have received a Bachelors degree
(Information for foreigners), thus, all instructors of English in
Taiwan have, to some degree, an experience of learning in a
higher educational setting. From this, they bring with them what
they imagine to be appropriate teaching methodology. What is
not generally understood, even seldom noticed is that while
Taiwanese classes are conducted in a Chinese way, that is in a
teacher centered learning environment, the native English
teachers instruction is focused on student centered learning
(Pennycook 1994). Pennycook (1994) continues by pointing out
that student centered learning is unsuitable for Chinese students.
The students may not know how to react to this different style of
learning. A case in point, when at the beginning of my teaching
career in Taiwan, I found it very easy to teach English, but very
difficult to get the students to interact with me while I was
teaching. Teaching was very easy because the students were well
behaved and very attentive. The difficulties surfaced when trying
to get the students to interact with me, their teacher. At the time,
I did not realize that in Taiwan, it was culturally unacceptable for
students to interact with their teacher. The Taiwanese students
were trained to listen to what the teacher said, memorize it, and
later regurgitate it during an exam. I was forced to change my
method of teaching so that I was recognised as a friend rather
than a teacher. The classroom setting had to be changed to a
much less formal setting to coax out student interaction. As
Murray (1982) pointed out, Chinese students will refuse to accept
this informal discussion style of teaching. However, once the
students were comfortable in their surroundings and didnt
associate it to a typical Chinese style class, they became
uninhibited and freely conversed in English. The language classes
taught using this style proved to be most beneficial to the
students with an overall increase in the grade point average.

Because language is so closely entwined with culture, language

teachers entering a different culture must respect their cultural
values. As Englebert (2004) describes: to teach a foreign
language is also to teach a foreign culture, and it is important to
be sensitive to the fact that our students, our colleges, our
administrators, and, if we live abroad, our neighbours, do not
share all of our cultural paradigms.

I have found teaching in Taiwan, the Chinese culture is not the

one of individualism, as is mine, but focused on the family and its
ties. The backwash from teaching using western culturally
acceptable methods must be examined before proceeding as they
may be inappropriate teaching methods, intentional or not, may
cause the student embarrassment, or worse, to the entire
students family. As Spence (1985) argues, success and failure in
a Chinese cultural framework influences not just oneself but the
whole family or group. Therefore, teachers must remember to
respect the culture in which they are located.

Language teachers must realize that their understanding of

something is prone to interpretation. The meaning is bound in
cultural context. One must not only explain the meaning of the
language used, but the cultural context in which it is placed as
well. Often meanings are lost because of cultural boundaries
which do not allow such ideas to persist. As Porter (1987) argues,
misunderstandings between language educators often evolve
because of such differing cultural roots, ideologies, and cultural
boundaries which limit expression.
Language teachers must remember that people from different
cultures learn things in different ways. For example, in China
memorization is the most pronounced way to study a language
which is very unlike western ideologies where the onus is placed
on free speech as a tool for utilizing and remembering vocabulary
and grammar sequences (Hui 2005). Prodromou (1988) argues
that the way we teach reflects our attitudes to society in general
and the individual`s place in society.
When a teacher introduces language teaching materials, such as
books or handouts, they must understand that these will be
viewed differently by students depending on their cultural views
(Maley 1986). For instance, westerners see books as only pages
which contain facts that are open to interpretation. This view is
very dissimilar to Chinese students who think that books are the
personification of all wisdom, knowledge and truth (Maley 1986).

One should not only compare, but contrast the cultural

differences in language usage. Visualizing and understanding the
differences between the two will enable the student to correctly
judge the appropriate uses and causation of language
idiosyncrasies. For instance, I have found, during my teaching in
Taiwan, that it is necessary to contrast the different language
usages, especially grammatical and idiom use in their cultural
contexts for the students to fully understand why certain things in
English are said. Most Taiwanese students learning English are
first taught to say Hello. How are you? and I am fine. Thank
you, and you? This is believed to be what one must say on the
first and every occasion of meeting a westerner. If I asked a
student Whats new? or How is everything? they would still
answer I am fine, thank you and you? Students often asked me
why westerners greet each other using different forms of speech
which, when translated to Mandarin, didnt make sense. This
question was very difficult to answer, until I used an example
based in Chinese culture to explain it to them. One example of
this usage: In Chinese, one popular way to greet a person is to
say (phonetically using pinyin) chrbao^ le ma? This, loosely
translated to English, would have an outcome similar to Have
you eaten? or Are you full? This greeting was developed in
ancient Chinese culture as there was a long history of famine. It
was culturally (and possibly morally) significant to ask someone if
they had eaten upon meeting. This showed care and
consideration for those around you. Even now, people are more
affluent but this piece of language remains constant and people
still ask on meeting someone, if they have eaten. If someone in a
western society was greeted with this, they would think you are
crazy or that it is none of your business. The usage of cultural
explanations for teaching languages has proved invaluable for my
students understanding of the target language. It has enabled
them to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate
circumstances of which to use English phrases and idioms that
they have learnt. Valdes (1986) argues that not only similarities
and contrasts in the native and target languages have been
useful as teaching tools, but when the teacher understands
cultural similarities and contrasts, and applies that knowledge to
teaching practices, they too become advantageous learning tools.

Implications for language policy

Creators of second language teaching policies must be sensitive
to the local or indigenous languages not to make them seem
inferior to the target language. English language teaching has
become a phenomenon in Southeast Asia, especially in Taiwan.
Most Taiwanese universities require an English placement test as
an entry requirement (Information for Foreigners Retrieved May
24, 2007). Foreigners (non-native Taiwanese) which are native
English speaking students however, do not need to take a similar
Chinese proficiency test, thus forwarding the ideology that the
knowledge of English is superior to the Chinese counterpart and
that to succeed in a globalized economy; one must be able to
speak English (Hu 2005). Such a reality shows that our world has
entered the age of globalisation of the English language, in which
most observers see a tendency toward homogeneity of values
and norms; others see an opportunity to rescue local identities
(Stromquist&Monkman 2000, p 7). The implications for language
policy makers are that policies must be formed which not only
include but celebrate local languages. Policies must not degrade
other languages by placing them on a level of lower importance.
Policies should incorporate the learners first language, the usage,
and complexities as a means to create better linguistic
comprehension as well as cultural understanding.

Policies for language teaching must encompass and include

cultural values from the societies from which the languages are
derived as well as being taught. In other words, when making
policies regarding language teaching, one must consider the
cultural ideologies of all and every student, the teacher, as well as
the culture in which the target language is being taught.
Language teaching policies formed with the cultural
characteristics of both teacher and student in mind will not be
prone to make assumptions about the appropriateness of
students behaviour based on the policy makers own cultural
values (Englebert 2004) but will increase cultural awareness. The
American Council on The Teaching of Foreign Languages has
expounded on the importance of combining the teaching of
culture into the language curriculum to enhance understanding
and acceptance of differences between people, cultures and
ideologies (Standards 1996).
One example where as policy makers did not recognize the
importance of culture is outlined by Kim (2004), in which the
Korean government had consulted American ESL instructional
guidelines which stated that for students to become competent in
English they must speak English outside of the classroom. The
government on reviewing this policy requested that all Korean
English language students use English outside of the classrooms
to further enhance their language competency. What they failed
to consider is that while in America, English is taught as a second
language and speaking English was quite acceptable in all
locations, that in Korea, English is taught as a foreign language
and the vast majority of the Korean population do not converse
with each other in English. Korean students speaking English
outside of the classroom context were seen as show-offs. In a
collectivistic culture, as is Korea, such displays of uniqueness are
seen as a vice to be suppressed, not as a virtue (Kim 2004). Thus
policy makers must not rely on the cultural views and policies of
others, but incorporate the cultural views of the students as well
as considering the culture where the teaching is taking place.
Language teachers need to be informed about various teaching
interaction-based methodologies, manipulate them and develop
their own teaching methods compatible with the educational
context to foster interaction between students (Kim 2004).

When creating policies, one must consider the cultural meanings

of teaching materials used. The materials may have a far broader
meaning or encompass far more (or less) than what one has
considered. An example of this is when the school I worked for
decided that I introduce a discussion topic on holidays with one of
my classes. The school did not enlighten me as to the cultural
significance of holidays or what the Chinese equivalent of the
word entails. This problem, as described by Yule (1996), is that
people have pre-existing schemata or knowledge structure in
their memory of what constitutes certain ideas; e.g. an
apartment, a holiday, what are breakfast items. The culturally
based schemata that the students had for holidays were
considerably different than that of my own. Their ideology of a
holiday was any day that was special, possibly where one did not
have to go to school, a weekend, a birthday, or any other major
happening. When I asked the students what their favourite
holiday was, I received many replies, all of which were not what I
was looking for. I proceeded to tell them that Christmas was a
holiday. This however, was a bad example as Christmas is not a
holiday in Taiwan. In addition, I did not consider that a Chinese
definition of the English word holiday has a very broad meaning,
thus the students were correctly answering my question however
in their own cultural context.

Finally, as this paper has shown, language and culture are

intertwined to such an extent whereas one cannot survive without
the other. It is impossible for one to teach language without
teaching culture. The implications for language teaching and
policy making are therefore vast and far reaching. As a teacher of
language, one must be culturally aware, considerate of the
students` culture, and inform students of cultural differences thus
promoting understanding. Language policy must reflect both the
target language culture as well as the students`, teacher`s, and
administrative persons` culture thus avoiding any cultural
misinterpretations.

It is generally agreed that language and culture are closely related. Language can be
viewed as a verbal expression of culture. It is used to maintain and convey culture and
cultural ties. Language provides us with many of the categories we use for expression of
our thoughts, so it is therefore natural to assume that our thinking is influenced by the
language which we use. The values and customs in the country we grow up in shape the
way in which we think to a certain extent.
Cultures hiding in languages, examines the link between Japanese language and culture.
An Insight into Korean Culture through the Korean Language discusses how Korean
culture influences the language.
Languages spoken in Ireland, focuses on the status of the Irish language nowadays and
how it has changed over time. In our big world every minute is a lesson looks at
intercultural communication and examines how it can affect interactions between people
from countries and backgrounds.
Culture and language are two inseparable entities. You cannot divorce one apart from the other. The
relationship between language and culture is presented in this essay.

Relationship Between Language and Culture Introduction Language is a part of culture, yet it is more
than that. It is central to culture since it is the means through which is most of culture is learned and
communicated. As we shall see below when a group begin to lose its language, its cultural tapestry
starts to unravel. Infants learn the language and simultaneous acquire the culture of the society into
which they are born. Only humans have the biological capacity for language, which allows them to
communicate cultural ideas and symbolic meanings from one generation to the next and to constantly
create new cultural ideas. The capacity for language separates humans from other primates. In any
language, an infinite number of possible sentences can be constructed and used to convey an infinite
number of cultural ideas. Because of this, human language is significantly different from any other
system of animal communication. THE STRUCTURE OF LANGUAGE Like culture, language is patterned.
However, language is primarily arbitrary in nature. As the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Sausurre (1915)
pointed out his study of language, the units that carry meaning are two sided. One side is ...

... express power varies from culture. The holders of greatest power must be the ones who
possess the ability to restrain themselves physically, linguistically and often in the expression of
emotion exactly because it is superior restraint that culturally and ideologically defines their
power, enabling them to properly exercise it. While people in the underclass and in positions of
powerlessness express their opposition and resistance by means of certain linguistic styles.

Language is as important aspect of the construction of cultural identity. Like the cultures of
African-American English, they are seen by some as a symbol of slave mentality in particular by
members of the Nation of Islam and by others as a symbol of resistance to slavery and
oppression.

It is apparent that culture, as the totality of humans way of living and as an imbued set of
behaviors and modes of perception, become highly important in language. A language is part of
a culture and a culture is part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that we can
not separate the two without losing the significance of either the language or the culture.
Types of translation in AV - Subtitle dubbing and adaptation

Eugene nida- dynamic equivalence ( Nidas dynamic equivalence translation philosophy

(also known as functional equivalence) encourages Bible translators to convey the
thoughts and ideas expressed in Bible passages, rather than translating each phrase
word-for-word. The driving goal behind the philosophy is to make the meaning of
each Scripture passage clear and accessible to modern readers, even if it means
sacrificing the exact form of the passages in their original language.

Bibles that are heavily shaped by the dynamic equivalence philosophy include
the Contemporary English Version, New Living Translation, and the New Century
Version. On the other end of the spectrum of Bible translation philosophy are Bibles
that follow the formal equivalence (literal) philosophy, such as the King James
 Version and English Standard Version. Most modern English Bibles sit somewhere
between both ends of the spectrum; many Bibles which dont fully embrace Nidas
approach are nevertheless influenced by it.

Nida was particularly famous for applying the semantic domain concept to Bible
translation. Nida believed that translators could arrive at the most accurate meaning
of a particular Greek word by first examining all other uses of that word in Scripture
and then determining which meaning fits best in a specific verse. His (along with J.P.
Louw) Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic
Domains applies this theory, and is considered a standard lexicon for New Testament
word studies.

His might not be a household name, but Nidas work and ideas had a lasting
influence on many of the Bibles on our bookshelvesand on the way that scholars
today approach the task of translating Scripture.

Dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence are two dissimilar translation techniques used
to achieve differing levels of literalness between the original and target languages of a text. Both
of these techniques are used in biblical translation. The two terms have often been understood
fundamentally as sense-for-sense translation (translating the meanings of phrases or whole
sentences) and word-for-word translation (translating the meanings of words and phrases in a
more literal method).

Contents
[hide]

1Approaches to translation

2Theory and practice

3Bible translation

4See also

5References

Approaches to translation[edit]
Formal equivalence tends to emphasize fidelity to the lexical details and grammatical structure of
the original language, whereas Dynamic equivalence tends to employ a more natural rendering
but with less literal accuracy.
According to Nida, dynamic equivalence is the "quality of a translation in which the message of
the original text has been so transported into the receptor language that the response of
the receptor is essentially like that of the original receptors."[1] The desire is that the reader of
both languages would understand the meanings of the text in a similar fashion.

In later years, Nida distanced himself from the term "dynamic equivalence" and preferred the
term "functional equivalence".[2][3][4] The term "functional equivalence" suggests not just that the
equivalence is between the function of the source text in the source culture and the function of
the target text (translation) in the target culture, but that "function" can be thought of as a
property of the text. It is possible to associate functional equivalence with how people interact in
cultures.

Free translation generally implies that the translator is given greater latitude of
expression when translating from a original source language to a target language and is
more often than not a paraphrase

Semantic translation means that the central concern of the translation is to convey
the meaning of the phrase and sentence (this could be paraphrase or literal depending
on what is the balance that the translator aims for)

Literal translation/ word-for-word translation (or "formal correspondence")

means the translation aims to have as close as possible word-for-word correspondence
between original source language of translation to the target language. This approach
(when pursued in earnest) is often in contrast to semantic or free translation although in
some cases, may produce less natural awkward phrases.

Faithful translation simply means the translator aims to convey the author's
intention of the text (what the author was intending to communicate) as faithfully as
possible into another language

Adaptation translation is about communicating meaning through adapting the

translation for a particular market or style.

Idiomatic translation means that the translation will bring the original source
language into contemporary language expression

Sometimes a faithful translation "requires" an idiomatic translation to maintain

semantic integrity:

Russian axiom : a translation that is beautiful is not faithful and one that is faithful is
not beautiful.

Sec assignment pather panchali.

Forceful filling of gaps with interpretations

Superstitions

Poems compactness form translation