Translation is a simple process, right? Take a word in one language, change it into the other language, repeat for the whole text. A tried and true method, except… obviously not, please don’t translate things like that. Not even a closely related language, like Scots, creates an accurate translation with this method, as evidenced by the recent Scots Wikipedia Scandal. For the unfamiliar, an American teenager wrote a large number of articles on the Scots Language Wikipedia, translating word-for-word from English. They meant no harm, believing they were helping the wiki grow. Instead they implanted unfortunate grammatical errors like using the phrase “an aw” to mean “also” in all circumstances, when perhaps just “an” would suffice.
So, what if you get around the grammatical intricacies? There are, unfortunately, still problems. Semantics get in the way – words in various languages don’t map onto words in other languages exactly. Of course, nothing is “untranslatable,” so you can still describe the concepts concisely in another language, but it can be contentious. An English example is the beginning of the Old English poem Beowulf – “Hwæt.” It doesn’t really have an equivalent in modern english, but it sets the tone for the whole poem, so it’s a bit important. Translations range from “Listen!” to the simple “So,” and, in a recent translation by Maria Dahvana Headley, “Bro.” This must be an active choice on the part of the translator, which will reflect their own ideals and experiences.
The semantics of words and the positionality of the translator come into a lot more contention when said words are being translated are in a legal document. When the words are actionable, mistranslations will lead to different actions. This is why te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi might be considered different documents. The “sovereignty” of the English version was translated into Māori as “kāwanatanga,” a concept first written down in He Whakaputanga/Declaration of Independence. It literally means “governorship,” with “kāwana” being loaned in from English by Henry Williams (who was an English missionary). However, it did not embody “sovereignty” to the Māori signatories of te Tiriti, which has caused a lot of conflict.
The process of translation is something that has fascinated me for a long time! And as someone who tried to learn Cyrillic by transliterating it at one point, I honestly cannot begrudge the Scots Wikipedia author. The need to position oneself within a culture to understand its language – whether textually or orally – reflects the need to understand that culture’s worldview as well. I picked up a book several years ago which documents emotions experienced in different cultures, and it prompted me to consider the contexts in which emotional meaning is made. Incredibly interesting.