Speaking on identity: expanding language and the violence of translation
“The limits of my language means the limits of my world” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Translation is innately violent.
The act of expressing meaning in another language shifts the original into a palatable sound and image for those never intended to experience its native form. Commandeering text from another language then borrows their foreign influences, histories, and cultures.
Translation, although decidedly necessary in some instances, is a betrayal that allows its users to move between languages.
These ideas, born from best-selling author, R. F. Kuang, developed while reading her first stand-alone publication Babel. In her writing she illustrates speaking and translation as listening to the other while attempting to see past your own biases in order to glimpse what the other is trying to say. As Kuang so eloquently stated, communication is showing yourself to the world and hoping another individual may understand.
However, unless the proper words exist, one cannot explain and thus, one’s meaning is misconstrued. As Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” I emphasize the second “my” in Wittgenstein’s quote to depict that language has a layered and complex relationship to one’s reality — which varies from person to person and is constantly evolving.
Take, for example, an issue I’ve repeatedly run into since coming into my queer identity (both in terms of gender and sexuality).
As any college-attender knows, there are a slew of forms required while applying, and later enrolling at a university. This was especially true for my experience when completing nine separate graduate program applications at the beginning of this year. While not entirely identical, each program application bore a similar format — asking for background information, letters of recommendation, professional and academic history, personal essays, etc.
However, in one particular area, each program’s application varied largely: the space provided to self-identify one’s gender identity and sexuality.
Few schools provided a box for write-in answers; others offered three choices between male, female, or undetermined; and some housed a lengthy drop-down bar listing various choices for gender identities and sexualities.
For some, gender individuality is not a term that translates. They see others in a binary male and female standard reflective of one’s assigned sex at birth. While for others, including myself, gender individuality offers solace.
The first and third examples (box write-in and lengthy drop-down menu) signaled the schools’ efforts for inclusivity and, one could infer, potential resources for those outside of the gender binary. But, the second option, particularly the word “undetermined” was untranslatable. Because, as I understood it, undetermined meant not definitely decided, settled, or identified. And, my genderqueer identity is both decided, settled, and something I can easily identify.
So, I was confronted with the confusing decision of selecting “male,” which is not a marker I identify with; “female,” which does not encapsulate the nuances of existing outside the male/female binary; and “undetermined” which seems to communicate that I am incapable of determining who I am.
These language barriers are not unique to university forms, however. They’re common on health applications, retail and athletic/sport websites, job postings, in conversations, and much more.
Words tell stories about history and the persons made up of those histories. Words are a historical artefact of cultures before, present, and after us. Reflecting the variety of all through language allows the collective “we” to understand one another as complex individuals. And oppositely, when language disregards power imbalances and issues of equity that inherently shape lives, it further ostracizes marginalized groups.
Words are not carved and incapable of change. We form language and can expand it to honor individuality.
It is a beautiful thing when the unknown becomes known. And words, they can be beautiful if they do not take from those meant to wield their grandeur and instead, dilate the capacity of our world and what is known.