I want to expand this into a full essay, but right now I only have time to get the bare idea out; forgive me if you've heard it before.
One of the things that interests me most about Language writ large is the way that it is at once immensely personal -- a tool for self-expression, for creativity, for art, a vehicle for inside jokes and catch phrases and dialect -- and demonstrably external -- mutually intelligible by all other speakers, objectively definable, exchangeable, recognizable, current. Language has the fluidity of other types of currency in that any two speakers can exchange words with one another, but without the faceless chill of actual currency. Perhaps language represents some sort of ultimate or ideal barter system.
This subjective/objective or internal/external dichotomy is, I think, entirely compelling and what makes language such a rich and fascinating object of study.
In my endless search to find different ways of characterizing the process of translation, I have found yet another: translation requires teasing apart the personal language of the author from the language spoken by his or her community. The goal of the translator is to change the bits that belong to the language into the new language but to leave the author's trace intact. So, if you were translating Hamlet into Icelandic, you would want to change all the English into Icelandic but you wouldn't want to change the parts that are Shakespeare.
That paragraph probably makes it sound like I'm on drugs. Really, I think this is a stunning insight. But it is hard to express without an example, which I am not going to provide right now. Feel free to express your befuddlement in the comments.
I will say that the essay I want to write will be about borders, and also about heights. How scary it is to be on the border of something, the dizziness, the trepidation. The difficulty of balancing yourself on that sort of edge. And the exhilaration of keeping your balance from word to word, page to page, day to day.
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