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36
fell. Tens of thousands died in Hiro–
shima and Nagasaki. This is the story as
presented by Kasuo Kawai, former edi–
tor of the influential Nippon
Times.
This unusual incident serves to illus–
trate the potential for monumental
problems as a result of the language
barrier - a barrier not yet conquered
even in our twcntieth-century tech–
nological and scicntilic age.
Language Barrier Separates
Friend and Foe
The language barrier plagues the
United Nations. Translating each speech
and document into fivc official lan–
guages (not to mention thc many
independcnt translations into nonoffi–
cial tongues) slows efficiency to a snail's
pace.
I t takes, for example, 400 man-hours
by 124 different persons to record a
single one-hour speech into the official
languages of English, French, Spanish,
Russian, and Chinese. It requires three
men working six hours each to translate
an English speech into Russian, and one
translator thirty hours to put the
~ame
speech into Chinese. for the twenty mil–
lion words spoken in a seven-week
meeting of the General Assembly, it
took
one htmdred mil/ion sheels
to
translate them into the five official
languages.
The Translation "Business"
The United Nations is only one of
countless organi zations spending vast
sums of money for language translation.
A Jist of them could go on and on:
various fields of science, commerce,
tourism, international politics, educa–
tion, history, etc., etc. Scicntific informa–
tion is often available free to one
scientist who understands a particular
language. But the same data may be
quite unobtainable, cxccpt at g reat
cost, to a colleaguc ignorant of that
language.
Almost anyone who has traveled
abroad has cncountered the same lan–
guage problem. The problcm is, unfortu–
nately, apparent even to speakers of the
same /ang11age!
An American traveling m England or
one of the Commonwealth countries
may soon find out - often by embar–
rassing blunder - that certain harmless
The
PLAIN TRUTH
expressions in one's native country can
be quite unacceptable in another coun–
try, ostensibly speaking an identical
language.
George B. Shaw aptly described this
dilemma with the observation that
Britain and America are two countries
separated by the same language!
Even in tbe same country, different
arcas and social dasses have their own
accents - generally with a detrimental
effect in social relations. No matter how
educated he may be, a Cockney is usu–
ally relegated to the working dass
unless he changes his accent. Witness
My
Fair
Lady.
The particular language
and accent a person learns in childhood
may shackle him throughout Jife.
A native of the southern Un ited
States soon ñnds he is marked as a
Southerner by every word he utters out–
side bis home arca.
Can Education Solve
the Problem?
Because of the language barrier, edu–
cation from dimmest anli<¡uity has
included language instruction - both
in one's native tongue and in foreign
languages. Ancient Romans employed
Greek slaves to impart the Hellenistic
/ing11a franca
to their children. Modero
school children are taught "how they
say it" in Mexico, France or Germany.
With the millennia of language
instr<.~ction,
one might assume that al!
the major learning difficulties have been
licked.
Far from it!
The modero American or English
grammar school student experiences the
same
difficulty learniog Latín as did his
Anglo-Saxon forebears. And Greek is
jmt
as much Greek to him as it was to
tbe sons of Cícero.
Everyone admires the person who can
master another language. Most do well
just to grasp the intricacies of their
own. Almost anyone can get a point
across, using a few broken words
accompanied by multiple gyrations and
gestures. But there is a gigantic chasrn
between this and the ability to converse
Buently on an intellectual leve!.
Although there are many who daim
mastery of another language after learn–
ing to say líttle more than "helio" in it,
December 1970
the nurnber of really bilingual people
is very small.
The
big obstacle
to solving the lan–
guage problem through education is
this:
Language mastery
is
a lifetime
job.
The courses to train a person to speak
Japanese in thirty days, or French in
four hours, are tempting but grossly
exaggerated. You might marvel at how
quickly a young child can pick up a lan–
guage. But a basic fact is often over–
looked. A six-year-old may carry on basic
conversation, but he has far to go
before mastering his
native
tongue.
Only after one has reached
early teen–
t~ge
-
after six or more years of formal
education and double that of actual
experience - does he really know even
his
0 11 '/J
language.
World-farnous Jinguist Mario Pei
says that language 1earning "Comes
close to being
a
lifetime
job,
and is cer–
tainly
1101
to be acquired in two years at
the rate of three hours a week, or even
in six months at the cate of eight hours
a day" (emphasis ours).
Dr. Pei, coosidered one of the
world's foremost experts in the lield of
linguistics, has a fluent command of
four languages and can "stumble around
in 30 others." Hís is the voice of expe–
rience in the laoguage problem.
Simultaneous Translatiog -
Difficult Isn't the W ord
It is true that the occasional prodigy
can be found in language learning just
as in other fields. Perhaps U.N. trans–
lator Georges Scbmidt, who claims to
know 66 languages plus additional dia–
Jects, is the epitome of such linguistic
wonders. But even this accomplishment
is a mere pebble in a grave! pit an1ong
the estimated 2500 to 3500 laoguages
in the world today.
Mr. Schmidt is an exception among
translators.
The average United Nations trans–
lator knows three languages. Two of
these are "passive" Janguages
from
ll'hirh
he translates. Tbe other is his
native tongue
into which
he renders
the original speech. His knowledge is
the result of many years of hard work
and study. But this work doesn't end
when he acquires the job. An average
simultaneous translator may spend only