Learning another language can turn your perceptions upside down. When I first began learning Tamil, for instance, I found that being “cool” toward another person can actually mean being “warm.”
I got to speak about this recently with writer and translator Anil Sarvepalli on the wonderful and popular literary podcast Harshaneeyam.
He asked me what studying Tamil taught me about how English perceives the world and I told him one of the things that surprised me most at the beginning.
Coolness As Warmth
In English, we use the word “warmth” to refer not just to temperature but to a person’s friendliness, gentleness, and affection. We speak of people being warm-hearted, or conversely, treating others coolly or being downright cold.
This idiom can be so taken for granted that it might not even occur to us that it is an idiom at all. That’s why studying another language can be so revealing. It shows what our language itself assumes about the world without us assuming that it assumes it.
In Tamil, with its thousands of years of history in a much warmer climate than the British Isles or much of North America, the desirable quality is coolness, not warmth. One can thus speak of something satisfying, comforting, or consoling one’s heart by saying that it “cooled” or brought “coolness” to it.
In fact, one of my favorite lines from Andal’s 8th century devotional masterpiece, the Thiruppavai, uses a Tamil verb for “cooling” to speak of being “delighted” and divided no longer. She thus directs our attention to how, as we overcome enmity, we are refreshed and renewed, as by cool water.
Translation as Transubstantiation
All of which can help suggest why translation isn’t merely substituting a word in one language for an alleged equivalent in another. It is, instead, bringing a vision of the world into a new set of words while keeping its substance intact.
I invite you to listen to my interview with Anil and explore how the ways that we bring work across the borders of language can deepen and enliven our perceptions.
Here are a few of the things we talked about:
- How reading entered my life not only through stories at bedtime but through a visit from a magician to my preschool.
- The way I found myself starting to translate, not so much as a choice but out of inner necessity.
- My experience with and commitment to one-on-one teaching, and my ongoing engagement with contemporary Tamil writers.
- My current writing projects, including a novel, and my ongoing fascination with music, adolescence, ecology, and time.
Listen On Spotify.
Listen on the Harshaneeyam Podcast website.
Warmly, or rather, with delighted refreshment,
Thomas
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