Bhavneet Kumar
Earth is a vast entity, even after more than a billion years of evolution and centuries of mind boggling studies and discoveries, which surely brought prominence and ‘Nobel’ to some personalities, yet so much more is out there: shrouded in the blanket of obscurity either buried deep in the bosoms of water bodies or frozen solid in glacial history. Still, we humans try our best to solve these mysteries of nature, finding the essence of our existence and learning new ways to capitalize on the knowledge gained in the process to prove our superiority over this planet.
The picture of ants is an easy example of how even the tiniest and seemingly inferior creatures on earth have developed a highly specialized model of society. Ants colonized the land millions of years ago and have evolved into a complex hierarchical organization of castes. Through evolutionary pressures over time, acquired knowledge and interactive teaching, ants have developed a high degree of self-organization efficiency and adaptability. Each member is assigned a specific role within the colony and the individual sections are governed by simple behavioral rules. So, we can find these little cogwheels specialized in their own respective roles while maintaining individualistic characters.
To take note from this little episode of Ant heroics is the fact that we humans too, try to stimulate our structural organization through specialized core functions, building up the basic fabric of society, ‘bottom to top’. One such group of organizational human-ants is of ‘Translators and Interpreters’, working as the Bridge Builders; correlating quite appropriately to the picture in question.
As we know ‘language and communication’ are the two biggest factors – among others, for the survival and continuance of any race or civilization. When we talk and interact, useful information gets transferred, which ultimately becomes the basis of knowledge that makes us who we are: a superior race, and it is the role of translators and interpreters to ‘bridge the gap’ created by differences in understanding, ethnicity or predominant beliefs. The job of a language expert does not end with the translation of ‘source to target – language’ but it far exceeds the common consensus, we translators have to nurture a proper understanding of both languages as well as the culture – customs, history and expectations of people belonging to the sphere of influence. Only then we could be of proper service to the society because otherwise, sometimes even the ‘fruits’ of machine translation achieved by computer software and artificial intelligence fall not too far from the tree.
Quite contrary to the popular belief that learning a language is easy and inferior compared to the hard-experimental science and genetics, I personally believe that it is a tough job if not the toughest, but the sweet results of forming a connection between two or more cultures, bringing this divided world together, becoming even the smallest ‘ripple in still water’ and cause change is far sweeter than receiving a treat of chocolates on Valentine’s day and Christmas.
Therefore, to build upon the character as translator, taking inspiration from the ants-networking skills, the grand umbrella provided by Modlingua that has an ensemble of translators and language enthusiasts from different nations, presents a rare opportunity to polish our socializing skills; exchanging views through perspective comments on the Facebook group, and become much more aware of our own limitations while working on the given assignments. We are slowly realizing the importance of working under supervision in accordance with divided tasks, with timely submission for an impressive and acceptable final output.
Writer Bhavneet Kumar is Japanese and English Language and Translation Intern at Modlingua, India's No1. certified translation and Language service providers based in New Delhi
