I'm a poet and therapist. My husband is an inventor and patent attorney. Our marriage requires constant translation/interpretation. I operate in feeling words and colorful visuals. He operates in algorithms and spreadsheets. I'm gut-spills and gestures. He's flat affect and mystery. We've found a few ways to move through these barriers, humor being the most effective! I write poems for him and he creates Excel documents for me with the important parts highlighted (he knows I can't resist a pop of yellow!). These document exchanges are openings for us. They make us laugh (the universal language) and carry us into the conversations we've been trying to have all along. We celebrate 16 years of marriage on St. Patrick's Day, so I think we're onto something;)...
I have a nephew who is very conservative politically. He lives in the middle of the US and services large pieces of agricultural equipment. I'm much more liberal, live in the suburbs and have retired from a university.
Some years ago, he asked if I would explain to him why I held my political views on a rather long list of topics. He cautioned that he was not intending to change his views, but he wondered why I held mine.
Through some unexpected divine nudge, I had the forethought to take each topic and say, "Here is how liberal people think about that topic and why, and here is how conservative people think about that and why. Finally, here is how I think about that."
You see, we both speak American English, but we have arisen and have been shaped by different experiences - different cultures and narratives. I didn't change his mind that night - and it stretched me to carefully value both perspectives while refining my own position. However, it did create a meaningful bridge of communication that has continued and grown into a more honest conversation about our two lives and the family systems and experiences that have shaped them.
We see each other about once a year. We recently had a civil three-hour discussion over breakfast, and I feel that doors which had been nailed tightly shut are now ajar.
I think of my job, writing on Substack,as a “second translator”. The great scientists and environmentalists have written volumes about this essential time on the planet. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Hope Jahren, and so many more. My love of reading their work allows me to translate, in smaller essays,for people who don’t have the time or inclination to read the books.
What is achieved? Sometimes people are enough intrigued to make the time to read a referenced book. Sometimes people will push the work deeper. And sometimes they form community by engaging in the comments on Matters of Kinship.
Translating is the work of my lifetime in hopes that we humans will make the changes so necessary for future generations of humans and more than humans to experience the miracle of living on a habitable planet.
Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote, “The very facts of the word is a poem.” Thank you Padraig for the leadership you exemplify with Poetry Unbound.🌱
For many years, I worked as an Arabic-to-English translator. Because I mainly translated news stories and conflict/human rights reports, there was a flatness to it. Just the facts, numbers, formality, and such.
But I also lived in Egypt and travelled through Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Israel. Speaking Arabic (both the formal "fusha" الفصحى and Egyptian colloquial) is a whole other thing. A entirely different language, really. There, new parts of me would emerge—selves that didn't find expression in English. These selves were softer, more friendly, more excited to engage in spoken conversation and make in-person, heart-to-heart connections.
I’m a therapist (mental health/soul care) and I often work with couples following the EFT model. One thing I help to translate for couples is how early attachment injuries and ruptures and ways they learned as children to manage/cope with their pain is now showing up in their relationship. I basically translate how the behavior that’s causing pain in the current relationship was birthed in childhood/attachment pain. Many times, not always, it creates a dynamic shift toward compassion, empathy, and a desire to be a source of soothing; where previously there had been hurt, self-protection, and confusion.
I have written verse in English and in Spanish, and I say verse as I feel that it is presumptuous to claim to write poetry — you must be convicted of being a poetry writer.
The idea or inspiration to be recorded originates in one or the other language — or is it in "language-less" thought?
When I write in one language and translate the work into another I find that often a literal translation falls short of expressing the feeling or idea that is longing to be expressed. Then a conversation or discussion begins between the English and the Spanish versions, and the version in the originating language is morphed through this interaction, leading to refinements in what I wished to express. This is a repetitive process and sometimes the versions begin to diverge due to the inadequacy of one language to clearly express what another language is attempting to say. Grammar and idioms at times block a clear transmission of thought. The introduction of rhyme, alliteration, etc., further compromises communication.
Maybe writing in Spanglish would better suit a situation when one lives in a bilingual and/or bicultural space.
Maybe in communication we should not be constrained by the formal conventions of a given language. After all, what we are seeking is transmission and understanding of often ineffable sentiment.
Once, in central Italy, I saw a hoopoe. Lovely bird with, to my ear, a lovely name. I wrote a little poem about the encounter and, just messing around, attempted a translation into Italian where the bird is called “upupa.” Also lovely. What I couldn’t translated was the flash of wings in flight and then, once perched, the flash of crest. I keep listening to the wild world and stumbling through translations.
Thank you for this invitation - that prompted me to also reflect on how I’ve had things translated to me that have shaken my ground, disoriented me (in good and needed ways!). One instance of me translating that comes to mind this morning, is thanks to the translations I’ve received over the years... and perhaps one I am needing to be reminded of right now.
I was teaching meditation to a new student, and she was complaining how her mind could never be still, how was so easily distracted. She was clearly very irritated and frustrated with herself. “I am not good at this. I don’t think I can meditate!” I then began the “translation,” explaining to her how part of what we are cultivating, when we meditate, is a safe, secure, warmly curious, loving, accepting holding environment, for whatever arises during meditation. I explained that when we sit to meditate, it’s like sitting before the most loving, accepting, wise parent, or mentor, and simply being beheld, being held, just as we are. I explained that we aren’t trying to get or achieve or improve or perfect anything. We are actually finally, finally getting a break from all the constant cutting remarks and judgments and shoulds, we get to put all that heavy baggage and weaponry down, and allow things the space to be, just as they are. I offered her an instruction I had received from one of my teachers, which is to say, to any and everything that arises in the mind, “this belongs.” I explained sometimes the mind “acts out” as it needs and wants loving, non judgmental acceptance - and also perhaps some more secure holding, maybe some containing, maybe some nurturing ... just like a child.... how when we sit to meditate, we get to offer this kind of holding environment for our minds, for our experience, whatever that may be. On this occasion I could sense a look of relief on her face... I think the idea that meditation was a way to “become better” and that she was already so “bad at it” got dismantled, disoriented... and the idea that she could actually relate to her mind with love... this I think offered a place to land, or at least orient towards. It was a very transformative for her - as she shared with me she never thought of mediation that way before - and for me too, as I could relate so much to her sense that she was uniquely bad at meditation (perhaps a universal or at least extremely common experience), to understanding it in a wholly, holy, different way. What if everything belongs?
Thank you, as always, Pádraig for this invitation to reflect on a Sunday morning, and for being such a translator of poetry - and life - in ways that have engendered deeper understandings, and therefore love, of myself and of others.
Mar 5, 2023·edited Mar 5, 2023Liked by Pádraig Ó Tuama
I am constantly translating myself to myself. My brain seems to have been set up in a way where thoughts and words come in slower and more fragmented than my mouth wants to speak. In my enthusiasm to respond or feel the timeliness to participate, or if I feel any pressure to speak, words often jam up, spill out or need constant rephrasing. I have so often felt misunderstood like a stutterer if not given the time for my mind to catch up with my mouth. That has been terribly frustrating. Maybe that's why I've always felt in natural company around people with all kinds of expressive language challenges, and even relish the beauty of "broken" English. I have often marveled at those who can speak in ordered paragraphs. But I know I am not alone in these feelings. I have learned to translate some of my feelings of inadequacy into advocating to myself for myself to take my time. Over the years this has become more of a tender practice.
Writing helped and became a trusty translator at an early age.
My teenage daughter is studying American Sign Language and loves that interpretation is a mash of language, meaning, and art. If only all languages were so embodied!
I’m also pondering nonviolent communication and conflict resolution in terms of interpreting stated wants/needs vs perhaps buried or guarded needs and desires.
Thank you for this soul-tending invitation. As a longtime spiritual care provider and educator in healthcare, I thought I had a good grasp on the world of healthcare until my own disorienting cancer diagnosis last year. Even though I have accompanied many on this path, including loved ones, I felt like I was a stranger in a strange land. Even the language of health care, which is a native one for me, was foreign and terrifying when I became the subject of that language. And, I learned that my human, emotional language seemed foreign and difficult to understand for my doctors. This experience has been a terrible and beautiful reminder of the uniqueness of each human journey, the vital role of gentle curiosity and the sacredness of deep listening. Even when we speak the same language understanding requires the humility of an open mind and heart. Prior to my diagnosis, I think I’d become a little too comfortable with my own sense of knowing.
Regarding the question of translation: any immigrant (even those who move between countries that share a language) translates daily.
My first language is English, and I moved many years ago to the Netherlands. I speak and write Dutch fluently, and I find myself often speaking English but thinking first in Dutch or vice versa. Sometimes a word in a particular language escapes me, or I swim back and forth between languages in conversation.
Even within Dutch, there are dialects and regionalisms that require the speaker and listener to engage in a bit of translation to make themselves understood.
Before I lived in the Netherlands, I moved from the US to Australia, and that was also a daily struggle to understand the subtext of what was going on.
Recently I was sitting with a friend in the ER when a nurse rolled a large computer monitor toward the patient's bed nearby. On the monitor was the face of a translator who began to translate the nurse's questions into the patient's language and then the patient's responses. It was obvious that the medical emergency was serious and I was struck by the importance of the translator's responsibility.
He needed not only to be accurate in the words he was translating, but also mindful of the impact they were having on the person whose very physical health was in question. It seemed so critical that the patient could see the translators face as he revealed the meaning of the words he couldn't understand. How helpful technology can be for such a situation and how frightening it would be to be without that assistance in such a circumstance. It is so important to remember that when we are afraid, we need more than just words to help us understand what is happpening.
My mother lives with Dementia which involves a constant process of translation and interpretation. We have the most amazing conversations that to anyone observing may appear nonsensical. It is a lesson on being fully present and listening deeply, to be able to catch the nuances of her beautiful created language and determine her meaning, needs and wants. She makes up the most incredible words and sometimes looks bewildered when they come out in conversation; I assure her it is a magnificent word and she beams. She has maintained her ability to read so far and does so well, it is delicious to see her read poetry, as she reads with feeling and intonation, still able to translate the feeling of the poem for her. I visit her daily and it is a privilege each day to be so immersed in her ever diminishing sea of words and language. Knowing her history is a tremendous help, yet being able to just be present enough to actually feel her words, is what gets us both through as we laugh and love our way through it all
The new translation, hearing. My husband and I experienced a time of irritation and impatience noted by our adult children. I agreed, it was a new phase in our normally fun banter. I realized the words that were dropping off due to each of us losing our hearing was causing a loss in “translation”. He not hearing an important closing word or my not hearing an important tone was causing a breach between us.
We both wear hearing aids and that is a wondrous thing but a new intentionality, facing each other, speaking louder or better yet enunciating is the new intimacy. We laugh as we touch each other’s forearms to make sure the other heard the complete sentence. My best friend is Swedish. She speaks four languages and in her brilliance has kept us close, she in Stockholm me in America. I know when she doesn’t understand a word because she loves me she will pause and say “what is that word, “rumination” ? I will explain and she will say the word back to me and we’ll grapple with the cultural and emotional feeling of what I am expressing. It is love, caring enough to hear, to understand and to know.
I'm a poet and therapist. My husband is an inventor and patent attorney. Our marriage requires constant translation/interpretation. I operate in feeling words and colorful visuals. He operates in algorithms and spreadsheets. I'm gut-spills and gestures. He's flat affect and mystery. We've found a few ways to move through these barriers, humor being the most effective! I write poems for him and he creates Excel documents for me with the important parts highlighted (he knows I can't resist a pop of yellow!). These document exchanges are openings for us. They make us laugh (the universal language) and carry us into the conversations we've been trying to have all along. We celebrate 16 years of marriage on St. Patrick's Day, so I think we're onto something;)...
I have a nephew who is very conservative politically. He lives in the middle of the US and services large pieces of agricultural equipment. I'm much more liberal, live in the suburbs and have retired from a university.
Some years ago, he asked if I would explain to him why I held my political views on a rather long list of topics. He cautioned that he was not intending to change his views, but he wondered why I held mine.
Through some unexpected divine nudge, I had the forethought to take each topic and say, "Here is how liberal people think about that topic and why, and here is how conservative people think about that and why. Finally, here is how I think about that."
You see, we both speak American English, but we have arisen and have been shaped by different experiences - different cultures and narratives. I didn't change his mind that night - and it stretched me to carefully value both perspectives while refining my own position. However, it did create a meaningful bridge of communication that has continued and grown into a more honest conversation about our two lives and the family systems and experiences that have shaped them.
We see each other about once a year. We recently had a civil three-hour discussion over breakfast, and I feel that doors which had been nailed tightly shut are now ajar.
I think of my job, writing on Substack,as a “second translator”. The great scientists and environmentalists have written volumes about this essential time on the planet. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Hope Jahren, and so many more. My love of reading their work allows me to translate, in smaller essays,for people who don’t have the time or inclination to read the books.
What is achieved? Sometimes people are enough intrigued to make the time to read a referenced book. Sometimes people will push the work deeper. And sometimes they form community by engaging in the comments on Matters of Kinship.
Translating is the work of my lifetime in hopes that we humans will make the changes so necessary for future generations of humans and more than humans to experience the miracle of living on a habitable planet.
Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote, “The very facts of the word is a poem.” Thank you Padraig for the leadership you exemplify with Poetry Unbound.🌱
For many years, I worked as an Arabic-to-English translator. Because I mainly translated news stories and conflict/human rights reports, there was a flatness to it. Just the facts, numbers, formality, and such.
But I also lived in Egypt and travelled through Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Israel. Speaking Arabic (both the formal "fusha" الفصحى and Egyptian colloquial) is a whole other thing. A entirely different language, really. There, new parts of me would emerge—selves that didn't find expression in English. These selves were softer, more friendly, more excited to engage in spoken conversation and make in-person, heart-to-heart connections.
I’m a therapist (mental health/soul care) and I often work with couples following the EFT model. One thing I help to translate for couples is how early attachment injuries and ruptures and ways they learned as children to manage/cope with their pain is now showing up in their relationship. I basically translate how the behavior that’s causing pain in the current relationship was birthed in childhood/attachment pain. Many times, not always, it creates a dynamic shift toward compassion, empathy, and a desire to be a source of soothing; where previously there had been hurt, self-protection, and confusion.
Hello Pádraig and fellow sojourners.
I have written verse in English and in Spanish, and I say verse as I feel that it is presumptuous to claim to write poetry — you must be convicted of being a poetry writer.
The idea or inspiration to be recorded originates in one or the other language — or is it in "language-less" thought?
When I write in one language and translate the work into another I find that often a literal translation falls short of expressing the feeling or idea that is longing to be expressed. Then a conversation or discussion begins between the English and the Spanish versions, and the version in the originating language is morphed through this interaction, leading to refinements in what I wished to express. This is a repetitive process and sometimes the versions begin to diverge due to the inadequacy of one language to clearly express what another language is attempting to say. Grammar and idioms at times block a clear transmission of thought. The introduction of rhyme, alliteration, etc., further compromises communication.
Maybe writing in Spanglish would better suit a situation when one lives in a bilingual and/or bicultural space.
Maybe in communication we should not be constrained by the formal conventions of a given language. After all, what we are seeking is transmission and understanding of often ineffable sentiment.
Happy Sunday! ¡Feliz domingo! Happy domingo! ¡Feliz Sunday!
Once, in central Italy, I saw a hoopoe. Lovely bird with, to my ear, a lovely name. I wrote a little poem about the encounter and, just messing around, attempted a translation into Italian where the bird is called “upupa.” Also lovely. What I couldn’t translated was the flash of wings in flight and then, once perched, the flash of crest. I keep listening to the wild world and stumbling through translations.
Thank you for this invitation - that prompted me to also reflect on how I’ve had things translated to me that have shaken my ground, disoriented me (in good and needed ways!). One instance of me translating that comes to mind this morning, is thanks to the translations I’ve received over the years... and perhaps one I am needing to be reminded of right now.
I was teaching meditation to a new student, and she was complaining how her mind could never be still, how was so easily distracted. She was clearly very irritated and frustrated with herself. “I am not good at this. I don’t think I can meditate!” I then began the “translation,” explaining to her how part of what we are cultivating, when we meditate, is a safe, secure, warmly curious, loving, accepting holding environment, for whatever arises during meditation. I explained that when we sit to meditate, it’s like sitting before the most loving, accepting, wise parent, or mentor, and simply being beheld, being held, just as we are. I explained that we aren’t trying to get or achieve or improve or perfect anything. We are actually finally, finally getting a break from all the constant cutting remarks and judgments and shoulds, we get to put all that heavy baggage and weaponry down, and allow things the space to be, just as they are. I offered her an instruction I had received from one of my teachers, which is to say, to any and everything that arises in the mind, “this belongs.” I explained sometimes the mind “acts out” as it needs and wants loving, non judgmental acceptance - and also perhaps some more secure holding, maybe some containing, maybe some nurturing ... just like a child.... how when we sit to meditate, we get to offer this kind of holding environment for our minds, for our experience, whatever that may be. On this occasion I could sense a look of relief on her face... I think the idea that meditation was a way to “become better” and that she was already so “bad at it” got dismantled, disoriented... and the idea that she could actually relate to her mind with love... this I think offered a place to land, or at least orient towards. It was a very transformative for her - as she shared with me she never thought of mediation that way before - and for me too, as I could relate so much to her sense that she was uniquely bad at meditation (perhaps a universal or at least extremely common experience), to understanding it in a wholly, holy, different way. What if everything belongs?
Thank you, as always, Pádraig for this invitation to reflect on a Sunday morning, and for being such a translator of poetry - and life - in ways that have engendered deeper understandings, and therefore love, of myself and of others.
I am constantly translating myself to myself. My brain seems to have been set up in a way where thoughts and words come in slower and more fragmented than my mouth wants to speak. In my enthusiasm to respond or feel the timeliness to participate, or if I feel any pressure to speak, words often jam up, spill out or need constant rephrasing. I have so often felt misunderstood like a stutterer if not given the time for my mind to catch up with my mouth. That has been terribly frustrating. Maybe that's why I've always felt in natural company around people with all kinds of expressive language challenges, and even relish the beauty of "broken" English. I have often marveled at those who can speak in ordered paragraphs. But I know I am not alone in these feelings. I have learned to translate some of my feelings of inadequacy into advocating to myself for myself to take my time. Over the years this has become more of a tender practice.
Writing helped and became a trusty translator at an early age.
My teenage daughter is studying American Sign Language and loves that interpretation is a mash of language, meaning, and art. If only all languages were so embodied!
I’m also pondering nonviolent communication and conflict resolution in terms of interpreting stated wants/needs vs perhaps buried or guarded needs and desires.
Thank you for this soul-tending invitation. As a longtime spiritual care provider and educator in healthcare, I thought I had a good grasp on the world of healthcare until my own disorienting cancer diagnosis last year. Even though I have accompanied many on this path, including loved ones, I felt like I was a stranger in a strange land. Even the language of health care, which is a native one for me, was foreign and terrifying when I became the subject of that language. And, I learned that my human, emotional language seemed foreign and difficult to understand for my doctors. This experience has been a terrible and beautiful reminder of the uniqueness of each human journey, the vital role of gentle curiosity and the sacredness of deep listening. Even when we speak the same language understanding requires the humility of an open mind and heart. Prior to my diagnosis, I think I’d become a little too comfortable with my own sense of knowing.
Really thoughtful post.
Regarding the question of translation: any immigrant (even those who move between countries that share a language) translates daily.
My first language is English, and I moved many years ago to the Netherlands. I speak and write Dutch fluently, and I find myself often speaking English but thinking first in Dutch or vice versa. Sometimes a word in a particular language escapes me, or I swim back and forth between languages in conversation.
Even within Dutch, there are dialects and regionalisms that require the speaker and listener to engage in a bit of translation to make themselves understood.
Before I lived in the Netherlands, I moved from the US to Australia, and that was also a daily struggle to understand the subtext of what was going on.
Recently I was sitting with a friend in the ER when a nurse rolled a large computer monitor toward the patient's bed nearby. On the monitor was the face of a translator who began to translate the nurse's questions into the patient's language and then the patient's responses. It was obvious that the medical emergency was serious and I was struck by the importance of the translator's responsibility.
He needed not only to be accurate in the words he was translating, but also mindful of the impact they were having on the person whose very physical health was in question. It seemed so critical that the patient could see the translators face as he revealed the meaning of the words he couldn't understand. How helpful technology can be for such a situation and how frightening it would be to be without that assistance in such a circumstance. It is so important to remember that when we are afraid, we need more than just words to help us understand what is happpening.
My mother lives with Dementia which involves a constant process of translation and interpretation. We have the most amazing conversations that to anyone observing may appear nonsensical. It is a lesson on being fully present and listening deeply, to be able to catch the nuances of her beautiful created language and determine her meaning, needs and wants. She makes up the most incredible words and sometimes looks bewildered when they come out in conversation; I assure her it is a magnificent word and she beams. She has maintained her ability to read so far and does so well, it is delicious to see her read poetry, as she reads with feeling and intonation, still able to translate the feeling of the poem for her. I visit her daily and it is a privilege each day to be so immersed in her ever diminishing sea of words and language. Knowing her history is a tremendous help, yet being able to just be present enough to actually feel her words, is what gets us both through as we laugh and love our way through it all
I love the lines about "if someone doesn't understand my history then my pressant may be incompressibilités to them. " that explains a lot/1
I Will be at the event today. so looking forward to it. So fortunate.
The new translation, hearing. My husband and I experienced a time of irritation and impatience noted by our adult children. I agreed, it was a new phase in our normally fun banter. I realized the words that were dropping off due to each of us losing our hearing was causing a loss in “translation”. He not hearing an important closing word or my not hearing an important tone was causing a breach between us.
We both wear hearing aids and that is a wondrous thing but a new intentionality, facing each other, speaking louder or better yet enunciating is the new intimacy. We laugh as we touch each other’s forearms to make sure the other heard the complete sentence. My best friend is Swedish. She speaks four languages and in her brilliance has kept us close, she in Stockholm me in America. I know when she doesn’t understand a word because she loves me she will pause and say “what is that word, “rumination” ? I will explain and she will say the word back to me and we’ll grapple with the cultural and emotional feeling of what I am expressing. It is love, caring enough to hear, to understand and to know.