Bridging Gaps

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Today began with a cute little breakfast with our UTPL colleagues. As we munched on fruit, we all navigated side conversations that were a strange medley of English, Spanish and Spanglish. Since I’m probably the most fluent in our group, that naturally makes me the translator—despite the fact that I lack a lot of stupid, simple vocabulary. Not only that, but translating involves not just the vocabulary but knowing the context and phrasing. 90% of the time I find that what people are trying to say not only involves a word they don’t know, but a rephrasing too. This is interesting, because there are so many parallels between English and Spanish, yet the more I have to translate, the more I realize that direct translations are much less ubiquitous than those learning the language hope for. But despite all these intimate nuances of language, everybody is a great communicator and listener. Despite all our different language levels in either language, I don’t think anybody walks away thinking “what????”. And THAT is amazing.

After breakfast, we once again parted ways, and being that I didn’t have any lab equipment to calibrate or any high-stakes meetings, I went to the library to work on what you’re reading right now. But I did get a little bit distracted by some people watching, in the sense that people were literally watching me, and I could feel their eyes scanning me. I think humans are programmed to focus in on what is different, which is why we still struggle with things like race, gender, sexuality, etc. Especially when someone different from us emerges in our more homogenized spaces. Maybe it seems ignorant to complain about being white—but that’s not really the point. The point is that we don’t get very far when we place so much emphasis on something we can’t control. Because when I actually started talking to one of my staring fellow library-goers, we realized we were both working on personal writing…The power of language and writing wins yet again.