Languages of ours; hers and his.
My father once told me that he regretted not learning English when he was younger.
He said that he’s glad I did.
He said that a language is the door to another side of the world.
And he was right. Learning English led me into another world of perspective, of culture, love, violence and habits that seem so engrained in me, it shaped me to who I am today; someone opinionated, always trying to see the two sides of the same coin.
Learning English opened a door to an expanse filled with foreign speakers.
A world standing right beside the home of my Bahasa speaking friends.
So many doors presented to these bubbles of realms.
But I didn’t know, as I stand on the precipices of the two worlds that I walked in and out so easily;
Between these worlds; there are no bridges.
◆
So many languages, the world a floating island in the sky.
Only we can cross it, as human beings, sometimes individually, perhaps in a pair of two; perhaps in a group, four or more.
But these islands stay apart while floating in the winds, looking across each other, some so far away and foreign, they’re just a mere idea of an exotic land.
We expect these worlds to be interconnected, just like how we all bond with one another through comedy shows and countless repeated love songs. And yet, the voices of these worlds themselves are separated by a cloud of misunderstanding and guessed hand gestures, fogged by mistranslation so windy and cold that they won’t even try to understand what’s under all the of context and intonations.
We are supposed to be their bridges, weaving threads and ropes to one another, some doing it with ease, some stuttering as we forget how to dismantle the ABCs and morph the sticks and curves to Katakana, how to stack words over sentences and turn them into a paragraphs, an easy enough mountain for others to climb.
Us individuals standing at the precipices of Bahasa and English, of French, Koreans, and of Mandarin Chinese, so many other that I can’t count. Be warned that if we’re not careful, not patient enough, we will cut down frail bridges made by others before us, and ruined what could be the interconnectedness of those that will come later.
Choose your words wisely; bilinguals, multilinguals and all the hyperpolyglots out there. One cut missed from the point, and all of our bridges will come crumbling down.
Thank you, translators, for doing this every single day, explaining what land and sea sounds in their language. Without you, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate his words like I do.
Drawing by Prints daz — Dazpeet (pinterest.)
