The Bon Mot, or Choosing the Right Word

As a writer, you need to be as sensitive as possible to the nuances of language -- natch.  You need to be alert to the various meanings a word can have, and how context can alter them.  In the editing process you need to make sure you have anticipated every possible way in which your sentence can be construed, because if the words you choose are even slightly off target, the consequences can be disastrous.

I know that things can often get skewed -- or lost -- in translation, but even so, in this age of globalisation I hope the marketing consultants who came up with this brand are kicking themselves now.

Lost in Translation

On the menu in the only cafe in the little village of Gurgy we saw ( Oh jubilation) Eggs stink to a smoked salmon house, a starter to be sampled at all costs and then followed up with Net of trout in the green cabbage wipes French blue-veined cheese.   

 

What a transport of delight!  It made me think of Jonathan Safran Foer’s irresistibly funny book Everything Is Illuminated, which transforms the mechanics of translation into something approaching an art form.  At the moment I'm reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which looks at the clash of cultures between Dutch traders and the isolated citizens of Nagasaki in 18th century Japan (much better than I'm making it sound). David Mitchell dissects the delicate tissue of the different layers of meaning in different languages with a surgeon's precision.  With the lightest touch he shows how language politicises meaning and manipulates intent.

All of this makes me wonder whether there may be mileage in having a go at duff, well-intentioned but misplaced translation as a writing exercise. I think it might make you explore the relationship between meaning and context - how a word can mean slightly different things in different situations, even in different sentences - and through that alert you to the sliding scale of nuance, which is one of the things that gets lost in translation….