'Words can enhance experience, but they can
also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain
characteristics and classify it –a fly. And in that very cognitive exercise,
part of the wonder is gone. Once we have labeled the things around us we do not
bother to look at them so carefully. Words are part of our rational
selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive
selves.’
Jane Goodall
-Reason for Hope
'Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.'
Sherlock Holmes
-Silver Blaze
I am multilingual, there, I said it – I speak multiple
languages proficiently in both the traditional and non-traditional sense, and
it is a lot of fun! I believe that there
are many forms of bilingualism, including proficiency in music or computer
programming; and I would guess most people are multilingual in one sense or another.
Multilingualism makes our world such a confusing, nuanced and
just-plain-awesome place. This week, however, being multi-lingual has me feeling like I
am constantly on the brink of disaster, a mental Chernobyl waiting to happen –
full of energy and new reactions and insight, but difficult to manage and
complex enough to cause the projects (or the project manager-me) to have a
melt-down.
Thus, I have been thinking a lot about the impact of
multilingual interactions on our social structures, our work products, and our
individual brains. This is an interesting
article on the subject, from the NY Times from March.: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html
One of my favorite quotes in this article reads, “The key
difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened
ability to monitor the environment.” This
certainly rings true for my own experience. This access to multiple modalities
for communicating ideas has given me a new internal understanding of my world ,
and not just in verbal or written expression. For
example, I have adopted the concept of ‘now’ vs. ‘now, now’ from my work in
Southern Africa when managing projects. I tend to recoil when saddled with a
time and date stamp for a deadline and am terrible with numbered priorities on
to-do lists . So, I ask myself at the beginning of the day, “OK, what has to get done ‘now, now’ and what is in the category of ‘just now’ or ‘just
then’.” This helps me to think about
projects as a continuum of urgencies within the final, broader project-deadline;
rather than separate, disjointed tasks. When discussing language with multilingual
friends we often identify new perspectives for understanding situations – How a
directly translated word can bring such new insight in another language and
context; and The way the rhythm of language can change the entire dynamic in a
meeting.
So, why was this week so particularly tough on my multilingual
brain? Almost, every day this week I was required to rapidly transition between the
following tasks:
- First, there was the statistical software - I know how to use Stata for modeling analyses with aggregated and cleaned data, I know how to use SPSS for well-defined survey data, I know how to use Excel for budget analyses, and I know how to use SAS for more intensive data cleaning and merging of data sets. This week I was called on to do all of the above and to learn how to apply some of these tasks to different software. This meant taking my SAS language skills and translating that into a language that makes sense with SPSS, etc.
- Second, there was the process of editing a survey translation in Spanish, which required thinking about how the translation may impact the validity and reliability of the survey item, along with consideration of literacy levels in Spanish and English, and the impact for data analysis.
- Third, I was attempting to communicate the nuances of programmatic design and service provision into the language of economic evaluation in preparation for a grant proposal.
- Fourth, while hunting for sample evaluations to help with the design of our own study, I finally found an ideal example of an economic evaluation but….it was written in French. So, I tried to turn off my other languages and turn on my French and Economics language.
- Finally, while developing a training course, I was asked to translate program evaluation jargon into a language that would be more accessible for non-evaluation professionals.
Every time I switched languages or began to translate, I
learned something new about the way an idea was conceptualized previously: I found
holes in my logic and processes, I gained new understanding about the bias in
the study design, I realized how I hadn’t communicated clearly when managing up
and down, I saw new possibilities for answering questions. In short, I felt like
a 3-year old, learning, integrating, and re-experiencing my world at every
turn, while trying not to trip over myself. There was so much richness to be found,
but I also had to utilize another gift of multilingualism, the ability to exercise
my “executive-control systems”. This capability to shut out irrelevant information and the creative process of “divergent thinking”, also linked to multilingual cognition, are essential tools for balancing a world flooded with new options and information. Both are described further in this
article: http://chronicle.com/article/Being-Bilingual-Beneficial/126462/.
Thus, words, or more precisely, symbols of communication are precious to me. Without mincing words (insert chuckle), I despise the over-used phrase, “It’s
just semantics” - as if semantics are
inconsequential! Semantics within and across languages have given me
myriad pathways for understanding myself, navigating conflict resolution and defining
creative solutions. Indeed, my own
cheesy sense-of-humor mostly involves some play on words that leaves me a belly
full of giggles. Dissecting the way
language is used , translated and interpreted allowed me to question many of
the dogmatic prescriptions that I had been asked to swallow whole in my youth
(in the Evangelical Church); and, as an adult agnostic, I now find intense
richness in the language used in religious texts without feeling beholden to external interpretation. Further, in my career as a program evaluator,
the act of translating numeric findings into words requires a dedication to
accuracy in semantic utilization.
With a multilingual tool set, I am well equipped to choose the syntax,
verbiage, and mediums of delivery to effectively filter, absorb and share information; and I am also ready for the weekend and some whiskey!
