"Language is More Than What We Say"
In his piece “Translating Translation: Finding the Beginning” through a series of short stories integrated with novice linguistic knowledge, Alberto Albaro Rios discusses translation. He eloquently portrays to the reader the complicated act of translation and how much can be lost if you only translate words, “Language is more than what we say -- it’s also how we say it, and whether or not we even understand what we are saying...Maybe that’s exactly what keeps a computer or a book from doing the job.” Rios begins the piece by explaining that not only do different languages sound different, with different words, different letters, and different pronunciations, when an individual speaks a different language they physically speak in a different way as well. As an example, Rios stated that “English has tenser vowels than, for example Spanish” (Rios, 506). Rios is fascinated by the physicality of language, fascinated by the idea that “words aren’t simply what they mean -- they are also phy...
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