Translating Vibes: Why (Good) Translation is About More Than Just Words

Words by: Rob Myatt

Art by: Sharwin Falevich

There is a theory in linguistics and translation studies that any act of translation, whether written or oral, professional or informal, involves not two, but three languages: the source language (German, for example), the target language (English, for example), and a third, intangible language. This third language exists only in the mind of the translator and consists not of words, but of signs and abstract concepts. It can therefore also be referred to as a “conceptual store” – a “vibe language,” if you will. It is where meaning resides in its purest form, untethered from bothersome words, with their multitudes of alternative meanings and implications.

This conceptual store is not unique to translators and interpreters. In fact, all beings that are capable of communication could be said to have one, which means that actually, all of us are translating all of the time. I mean this in a much wider sense than what is traditionally understood by “translation” (those pesky alternative meanings are rearing their head already). When you feel a rumbling in your belly and tell a friend you’re hungry, that is an act of translation. You are translating an internal sensation – body needs sustenance – into words – “I’m hungry” – together with the implications of those words – “Let’s go grab some food.” And as with any translation, there’s never just one option: You might be “starving,” “dying of hunger,” or even “so hungry I could eat a horse!”

This form of translation is not limited to verbal communication, either. We can translate feelings of, say, anger, into hand gestures or facial expressions; we can cry to show that we are upset. Nor is translation exclusive to humans. Your dog wagging her tail when you get home is an act of translation – she is translating her internal feelings of joy into an external sign that those around her can interpret.

That said, professional translators and interpreters certainly spend more time than most rooting around in their conceptual store. It is here that the meaning ascribed to  a particular sequence of signs or sounds is deconstructed, analyzed, felt, and absorbed, before a new sequence is produced. It is where translators lean back in their chairs, furrow their brows, and say, “I totally get what they mean… But how on earth do we say that in English?” 

Once the vibe work is done, it’s time to leave the conceptual store. This is the point at which the translator takes a holistic view of the text (or speech act, etc.), and puts the vibes back into context. This is how a professional translator knows to translate the German “Sicherheit” as “safety” when referring to physical integrity (product safety, health & safety), as “security” when referring to, say, keeping passengers safe or protecting intangible assets (airport security, data security), and as “collateral” in the context of taking out a loan. It is how German subtitlers of Hollywood movies know, when translating the title of the movie, to include extra information which, to English-speakers, would be considered spoilers (my personal favorite is Horrible Bosses which appeared in Germany with a different English title: Kill The Boss). And it is the point at which translators of drama, fiction, and non-fiction consider things like register, tone, and when the text is set or when it was written, in order to decide how someone would express themselves in the target language. Even such a seemingly innocuous word as “Ja” could elicit translations of “Yes,” “Yeah,” “Yep,” “Yup,” or even “Yass,” depending on who is saying or writing it.

I personally spend most time in the conceptual store when translating concepts that are either unfamiliar to non-speakers, or which can be expressed much more succinctly in the source language. I don’t subscribe to the notion of “untranslatability.” There are only “challenging translations.” It is about accepting that a concept, once repackaged, might look a little bigger than when you started, perhaps because you needed to include a small instruction manual for the recipient. But as long as it is still neatly wrapped, you have done your job.

For me, one of the biggest appeals of learning another language is discovering these unfamiliar concepts. I am, admittedly, a huge grammar nerd who genuinely enjoys studying tables of verb endings and noun declensions. But I also love seeing how the same concept can be expressed in so many different ways. I love that German feels much more positive about not having things than English does. While we “don’t have any money” (not a dime!), Germans “haben kein Geld,” they “have no money” – they still have something, even if that something is “no money.” Russians, meanwhile, are far less possessive than us Anglophones. You can’t have anything tangible in Russian: from money to friends, these things simply “exist in your presence” (“u tebya yest”). But what I really love is that every time I learn a new language, I learn a new way of interpreting the world and my experience of it. I expand my conceptual store.

Developing fluency in the “vibe language” of a speaker community is, therefore, just as (if not more) important for effective cross-cultural communication as mastering grammatical structures and learning long lists of words. It is about knowing that when a Pole tells you that there is a “przeciąg” (literally “a draught”), they’re not simply commenting on the atmospheric conditions in the room. They are informing you that all the doors and windows must be closed this instant, lest they catch double pneumonia and perish (true story). It is about knowing that “Scheiße” is not as bad a profanity as “shit,” despite them both coming from the same root. It is about understanding that you can’t just take a thesaurus to a so-called “literal” or “bridge” translation without fully appreciating the source vibes and then call yourself the “final translator” (yes, it happens).

Currently, modern language programs are being cut at an alarming rate across schools and universities in both the US and the UK. Meanwhile, translation as a profession is at a critical tipping point. Commercial translators have been feeling the squeeze of machine translation for years now, and literary and culture translators should not be so naïve as to think they’re not next on the chopping block – as Danish-to-German translator and Chair of the German Literary Translators’ Association (VdÜ) Marieke Heimburger recently told The Guardian, “I am not really scared of AI, because I know it cannot do what I can do. What I am afraid of is the people who think that AI can do my job.”

In a political economy where a thing can only have value if it facilitates the accumulation of capital by capitalists, fluency in the “vibes” of a language is increasingly considered surplus to requirement. Yet it is precisely this deeper level of understanding that is so vital in an age of increasing polarization. We cannot hope to learn to live with others, if we do not properly understand them. And understanding is about more than just words. It’s about vibes.