By Dom Serafini
A new book, Speaking in Tongues, analyzes authors who prefer writing in other languages than their native tongues. This phenomenon is more prominent among non-English writers than English-speaking natives. Among the examples that the book authors, J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos, give for English natives is Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), who chose to write some of his books and plays in French over his native English.
Then there’s Laurence Kaufmann, a former A2 executive in France, and later a producer, who used to say: “No matter how many languages people speak, they always count in their original language.” Then there is the problem of translation, which cannot be done literarily, but by conveying the meaning.
My case in point: I learned how to write in English before I could actually speak it, and not by choice, but out of necessity, and translation was an extra challenge.
Imagine today for someone not yet familiar with American subtleties translating into a non-English language, the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out,” (TACO) or, for example, “brown-nosing Putin.” TACO literally translates into U.S. President Trump doing something with poultry. In reality, it describes Trump’s tendency to make reciprocal tariff threats, only to later back off. “Brown-nosing,” has nothing to do with the Russian dictator’s nose, but with a sycophant. And, what about “rich’s filth” and “filthy rich”? the same words, yet two different meanings.
In those early years I used to translate my Italian articles (which I wrote for Jacopo Castelfranchi Editore, the Milan-based publisher I worked for) into English, in order to supplement the meager salary I was receiving from Italy. One of those freelance works was done for Sol Paul, the publisher of Television/Radio Age, who later on called me to run his publication’s international edition.
But still in addition to speaking English, I had to learn the nuances of the American language, which came courtesy of Al Jaffe, the overall editorial director, who would never let me use words like, for example, “famous” before a person’s name (“If they’re famous, why say it?”), or use “I think” (because “everyone thinks”).
That’s why “I feel” for dubbers — despite the significant help AI provides — because they have to translate the content into their own language, while still conveying the full original meaning, as well as needing to make sure the lips sync with the translated words. One wonders how the Japanese dubbed the 2003 Sofia Coppola film, Lost in Translation, which was about misunderstandings in Tokyo.
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