Reading in foreign languages

”Books should always be read in their original language” is something I often hear from book lovers who speak more than one language. Though I am not entirely convinced that this is true (I may return to this issue in a later post), I thought it might be helpful to dwell a moment on the art of reading texts in languages that are not one's mother tongue.

Whether you find that you need to read a book in a foreign language because it is not available in yours or you choose to voluntarily challenge yourself, there are a few things that I have found help me to not only work my way through foreign texts but moreover have a good time doing it. In this post, I focus on languages that one is not fluent in. To most of you who read this post, English will be a second language that you feel quite comfortable with. But if you took two years of Spanish in high school and have had no exposure to the language since, you may find some of the below thoughts relevant.

Before I get to my advice, I would like to share a little experiment I did the other day in preparation for this post. I gave my wife a simple text (212 words) in her native language but where I had replaced 25 words with native-sounding but completely nonsensical made-up words. I asked her to read the text and then tell me, in general terms, what it was about. She could not do it. The 25 words that she did not know trumped her understanding of the 187 words she did understand. I then changed the text to put blanks instead of the words I had made up. Now she understood the text perfectly well. My point here is that the brain will focus on what it does not understand first, and what it does understand later. It can easily fill in blanks (no information), but when the empty spaces are occupied (unintelligible information) it causes a tilt in the system.

So on that backdrop, here are five pieces of advice for readers of books in foreign languages.

1. Don’t be afraid! It is easy to be taken aback by a wall of words which at first glance seem impenetrable. Maybe you have sometimes read the first two or three sentences of a book and realised you have not understood anything so you put it away from you with a depressed conclusion that the text is beyond your reach. My advice is, do not fear. The text is not your enemy that you need to conquer or die trying. Try instead to see the text as a friend that gives you clues to the story. Approach it with curiosity and love instead of awe and suspicion.
2. Don’t stop! We commonly focus on what we do not understand and take what we do understand for granted. If you read a text and understand only half of the words, you are therefore likely to discard the whole text while in reality you have understood as much as you have not without noticing it, like my wife did. With some imagination and power of deduction you will soon realise that you can actually make out most of the message even though you do not understand all the words. My advice is, keep going. Sooner or later you will find that key word that explains the entire setting or plot. You will stumble upon a phrase that makes what you have just read make sense. Do not go back and re-read the same sentence one hundred times. Keep pushing forward and remind yourself that it is perfectly fine to understand only the main outlines of a chapter.
3. Don’t overuse the dictionary! If you are used to reading in your native language you will also be used to understanding practically every word you encounter. If you, like me, like to look things up in a dictionary or Wikipedia you will sometimes pause your reading to go down some rabbit hole triggered by a term, name, event, or concept that the author has mentioned and that you realise you do not know enough about. If you are reading a book in a different language you will have to stop doing this. If you try to look up every word you do not understand your reading will become unbearably tedious and spasmodic. My advice is, if a word you do not know appears more than twice on the same page, you must look it up. If a word appears more than twice in the same chapter, you may look it up. If a word does neither of the above, you never look it up. Of course, exceptions could be made for words that from context can be understood to be extremely important and which could be looked up despite not appearing very often. Speaking of context, understanding a word from context counts as understanding. Do not look up words you already understand just to reassure yourself. Trust your instincts!
4. Read out loud! When trying to take in complex information make use of as many of your senses as you can to help you. One way of doing this is to read portions of the text out loud. It will force you to pay attention to intonation and punctuation and it will give your brain the opportunity to learn more about the text by not only seeing it but also hearing it, which is the way the brain is used to normally processing language. Most of us speak/listen to language much more often than we read/write it. My advice is, read a paragraph here and there out loud to yourself. You might notice that even though you still do not know the meaning of any more words than you would reading it silently, there is a chance you will understand the general message of the sentences better. I have also noticed that when I feel stuck and re-read a paragraph or two that I have not understood an iota of out loud, I not only understand those paragraphs better but also the following ones after I have returned to reading in silence. Still, if after re-reading a paragraph out loud you still do not follow, advice #2 above applies.
5. Summarise! I have noticed that I sometimes concentrate on the words more than on the story. Especially when I follow my own advice to read out loud. It happens that I pay so much attention to my pronunciation that I forget what I am reading about. My advice is, take some time at regular intervals to recap what you have just read just to remind yourself of the story. The end of each chapter is a natural place for this exercise. Also, when you pick up the book after a break, begin by recapping the story so far before you start the next chapter. Try to evoke pictures, feelings, sounds, and smells. Everything is easier to understand if you are familiar with the context.

I hope that some of these points will prove valuable to you. My only claim to authority in the field is that I speak four languages fluently and can speak and read in another three which I from time to time try to do, as will be evident as this blog develops.

Good luck with your reading!

EBRD Literature Prize 2019 nominees

For the second year running, the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is awarding the EBRD Literature Prize. For those of you not familiar with the EBRD, it was established right after the fall of the USSR in order to facilitate financing for the re-building of the neglected and largely dilapidated economies of the former Eastern bloc. The EBRD’s mission was further broadened after the Arab spring to include also the Northern Africa region.

As part of its mission, the EBRD has also identified the virtues of supporting cultural exchange between the 38 countries in its area of operation and funds several cultural projects. A year ago, the bank added the EBRD Literature Prize, which is administered in cooperation with the British Council, to its toolbox. The monetary value of the prize is EUR 20,000 to be equally distributed between the author and the translator. Eligible entries are work of fiction originally written in one of the languages of the bank’s area of operation, translated to English and published in the UK.  Last year’s winner was “Istanbul, Istanbul” by Turkish writer Burhan Sönmez and the translator Ümit Hussein.

The nominees for the 2019 prize were released today and are:

• ·         “Lala”, author Jacek Dehnel (Polish), translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• ·         “Soviet Milk”, author Nora Ikstena (Latvian), translator Margita Gaeltis
• ·         “The Devil’s Dance”, author Hamid Ismailov (Uzbek), translator Donald Reyfield
• ·         “My Name is Adam”, author Elias Khoury (Arabic), translator Humphrey Davis
• ·         “The Clash of Imagies”, author Abdelfattah Kilito (French), translator Robyn Cresswell
• ·         “The Peace Machine”, author Özgür Mumcu (Turkish), translator Mark David Wyers
• ·         “Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”, author Olga Tokarczuk (Polish), translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• ·         “The Aviator”, author Eugene Vodolazkin (Russian), translator Lisa C. Hayden
• ·         “The Book of Whispers”, author Varujan Vozganian (Romanian), translator Alastair Ian Blyth
• ·         “Shatila Stories”, short story collection by nine authors (Arabic), translator Nashwa Gowanlock

The winner will be announced on the 7^th of March. More information on the EBRD website 

TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS

Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Year: 2014 (1922)

Publisher: Norstedts

Language: Swedish (translator: Sten Andersson)

DISCLAIMER: What follows is in no way the thoughts of a trained philosopher. The ideas and concepts herein are not based on formal studies of either contemporary or classic or ancient thinking, nor have they been examined or tested by philosophical scholars for accuracy and coherence. For all intents and purposes, this is the work of a dilettante.

And so is my review.

Tractatus logico-philosophicus was written by an Austrian engineer and wunderkind who never underwent any organised education or conducted any studies in the field. It is not only possible but moreover likely, that most of you who read these lines would be able to produce a more comprehensive philosophical bibliography than the man who is frequently cited as one of the most influential philosophy professors of the 20^th century: Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Despite this, Tractatus has become one of the most admired philosophical books in history. Trying to offer an analysis of this puzzling text would make me an even greater fool than I most of the time pretend not to be. However, one would have sadly wasted one’s time if after having read Tractatus, not a single new thought had sprung to life in one’s head. The first time I tried to read Tractatus was two decades ago. I read it as I would any other book: from cover to cover. To my disappointment, the contents made no sense to me whatsoever. Recently, I tried a different approach and read it from top to bottom, as it were. It still did not make much sense but I think that this time around I misunderstood it in a – shall we say – more useful way.

In order to properly address this piece, it is helpful to first understand the man who wrote it, the purpose of it being written at all, and the age in which it would have made sense to write it. For an incomplete sketch, I humbly refer to my previous review (“Filosofen som inte ville tala” by Sten Andersson) published on Facebook the 8^th of December.

Tractatus posits seven main claims (“propositions” in Frank Ramsey’s and C.K. Ogden’s traditional translation) about the world. Each claim is then followed up by explanations and clarifications in bullet points following the pattern:  1. Claim, 1.n Explanation to 1, 1.n.m Explanation to 1.n, etc. until we reach 2. Consequence of 1., 3. Consequence of 2. and so forth. 

I propose to read the book in the following way: First read the headline propositions 1 through 7. This will give you a broad outline of the book. Then read 1.1, 1.2, ... 1.n until the end of proposition 1. Proceed to Proposition 2 and read 2.1, 2.2, ... 2.n until you exhaust that proposition. Once you have done this for all 7 propositions (proposition 7 is only one point), it is time to dive into the details. Re-read Propositon 1 and point 1.1 and then all lower level points for that proposition. For each point you read, refer back to the nearest higher point. Before you read 1.n.m, read 1.n and then read it again after you have read 1.n.m. It takes some time but to me, this method made a lot of sense. 

I discovered that Wittgenstein makes some provocative statements about the way the world is understood through language. What Wittgenstein really proposes is that the whole world appears to us via the totality of our language and that ultimately our language is our world.

Wittgenstein, like Immanuel Kant (and Plato before him), seems to argue that we can never say anything for sure about any object, only about an approximation of the object, since we will never be able to study anything other than our image of the object. Contrary to Kant, who had the singular object, “Das Ding an sich”, in the crosshair, Wittgenstein rejects isolated objects as invalid facts and instead proposes that the true fact is the relationship between objects. This relationship is what we make pictures or images of for ourselves and found our language on.

It would appear that Wittgenstein is onto something. In 2017, linguists from Lund University discovered a previously unknown language spoken in a village in Malaysia. It turned out that the language lacked words for own, steal, buy, and borrow, as well as possessive pronouns. On the other hand, they had a rich vocabulary describing different forms of cooperation, assistance, help, and sharing. Another language, in Polynesia, appears to have no nouns. Instead, phenomena that we recognise as objects are referred to using verbs. In German, by contrast, all nouns are written with a capital letter, as if to indicate that the term used is merely a name for the object, not the object itself. These three examples would make for three radically different ways to express and manifest the world in language.

Despite its impressive title and deep impact on philosophical thought, Tractatus logico-philosophicus is a work of modest worldly proportions. In fact, the introduction by Bertrand Russell, which regrettably was omitted by Norstedt in this edition, is almost as long as Tractatus itself. What strikes me the most is that, unlike many other philosophical monoliths, Wittgenstein’s is actually entertaining. It is quite simply spanking good fun to read. My copy is a recent Swedish translation by Sten Andersson from 2014 which constitutes a modernisation, albeit not necessarily an improvement, on Anders Wedberg’s classical translation from the 1960s. All things considered, Ramseys’s and Ogden’s English translation from 1922 is still, in my view, the most intelligible, if that word can even be applied to Wittgenstein’s writing in any form.

I have nevertheless taken the liberty of noting down the main propositions made in Tractatus and coating them in some primitive thoughts of my own. I would gratefully accept any effort to correct my mistakes and add to my understanding of what Wittgenstein is trying to teach.

1.       The world is everything that is the case

1.1.    The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Here Wittgenstein basically says that the world is not limited to mass. But what then is a fact?

2.       What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts

2.01.An atomic fact is a combination of objects

Here we learn that facts are made up of relationships between objects. NB that although Ramsey & Ogden use different words for objects and things, as does Wittgenstein in the German original (“Gegenständen” and “Dinge” respectively) in the German text, Wittgenstein actually defines the term Gegenstand as “Sachen, Dingen”. It is hence not the object/thing in itself that is the building block of the world. It is the relationship it enters into with other objects/things that becomes a fact. Wittgenstein furthermore states that being able to enter into a relationship with other objects is an integral property of every object, without which an object would not be an object.

Further down in this proposition he arrives at the key for our understanding of the world

2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts.

Keep this in mind for the next main proposition.

3.         The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

Here Wittgenstein has something important to say to all of us who like to accuse others of being unable to think logically. If the logical picture of the facts IS the thought, it follows that a thought IS a logical picture of the facts. Consequently, a thought is always logical or it would not be a thought. I will honestly say that this part freaked me out a bit. He goes on to say that everything that can be thought can also exist. It does not have to exist, but it could possibly exist. The human brain can only process the possible.

4.         The thought is the significant proposition

4.001 The totality of propositions is the language.

So the language is the complete catalogue of thoughts which are the pictures we make in our mind of facts, which are the relationships between objects which make up the world. If we subscribe to these definitions then Wittgenstein’s famous statement that “the boundaries of language indicate the boundaries of my world” becomes valid. The size and detail of the picture I am capable of creating of the world is directly proportionate to my grasp of language. They are, essentially, one and the same.

5.         Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself)

This is where  Wittgenstein leaves the realm of analytical philosophy and veers off into the dense woods of metaphysics. Since our thoughts will always be pictures of the facts, we can never actually know anything about the fact except what the picture allows us to see. We will always only work with pictures, never the fact, and we can never know how similar our picture is to the original fact. However, if I understand this stuff, it will mean that our picture of a fact has a relation to the fact thus constituting a new fact of which others again make their picture all the time adding facts to the world. If we assume that 3 persons are sitting around a table. There are 4 objects which together form cases. But each case will generate 3 pictures. Hence, the world is made up of more pictures than objects. Wittgenstein does not say that there is no truth out there. All he says is that the closest we get is to study the proposition’s truth-arguments or truth-possibilities.

And this is where I think that many of us often go wrong. Suppose that there has been a theft and there are two suspects: Adam and Beatrice. There is a 95% chance that Adam is the thief and 5% chance that it is Beatrice. It is equally LOGICAL that either Adam or Beatrice stole the goods, it is not equally LIKELY that Beatrice as it is that Adam did it, and cannot be TRUE that both did it.

6.         The general form of truth-function is: [p, ξ, N(ξ)]. This is the general form of proposition.

I will admit right away that I have not been sufficiently trained in the notation of logical reasoning to be able to follow this proposition. In his introduction, Bertrand Russell tries to shed some light on Wittgenstein’s notation but even he seems confused. I will refrain from commenting on this and go straight to the last and most famous proposition

7.          Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.