Lost in translation.
Language is a great unifier. It can blur or totally break down barriers, making it easy for ideas to flow and people to understand each other and connect authentically. Even when one or more people taking part in a dialogue don’t speak the language perfectly, there’s a good chance they will still find a way to get their message across.
This much is true.
What happens, though, when the person you’re talking to speaks the same language as you (natively), yet most of what you tell them gets lost in translation? What translation, you might ask, if you’re both speaking the same language? Good question.
Here’s my answer.
No two people will ever look at something the exact same way. Even those who we consider to be our soulmates, our kin in thought and feeling, those we believe see the world through the same lens as we do.
Once we become aware of that, we learn to speak our thoughts, our truth, using other people’s language. It sounds like a huge compromise - and it is - but the end goal is to be heard and understood, so we do whatever it takes to get there.
As you might expect, this is all the more relevant and challenging when it comes to expressing our feelings, describing what we’re going through, or reaching out to ask for help.
But before we get there, let’s look at a more practical example.
Say you have an idea for a great project at work and you want to share it with your co-workers or your boss. Their area of expertise might be different from yours, so it makes sense to explain your idea in terms they understand. All of this to avoid anything getting lost in translation.
When it comes to matters of the heart, the stakes are higher, so things get more complicated.
We all share a very basic need to make ourselves heard and understood. Even when we think we don’t. It’s human nature. If people can’t understand you, they can’t really see you for who you are, and if they don’t really see you… then, what’s the point?
As a sidenote, I believe this is where my fondness of metaphors, analogies and writing in general comes from. All my life, I looked for ways to make people understand what I feel, how I think… and most of the time, I failed miserably.
The misery is real.
And it’s not because my thoughts or feelings are unique or superior in any way. On the contrary, they’re quite universal. It’s because each of us has their own inner language that almost never translates well.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like using foreign vocabulary to express my innermost thoughts. It feels wrong.
Much as I hate it, my empathy helps ease this burden sometimes. I’m good at figuring out what matters to people close to me, at learning the basic words of their inner language and speaking it back to them. So I use that as a bridge to translate my own feelings into terms they might understand.
Will some things always be lost in translation? Yes.
But I think it’s worth trying to open our hearts and make our voices heard, regardless of the language we’re using.