Conversations About Language & Culture

Howard Burton

• Publisher: Ideas Roadshow
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781771701044
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sign Language
• Index: Social Sciences

FIVE BOOKS IN ONE! This collection includes the following 5 complete Ideas Roadshow books featuring leading researchers providing fully accessible insights into cutting-edge academic research while revealing the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research. A detailed preface highlights the connections between the different books and all five books are broken into chapters with a detailed introduction and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: 1.Babbling Barbarians: How Translators Keep Us Civilized - A Conversation with David Bellos, translator and professor in French literature at Princeton University. This wide-ranging conversation examines many fascinating features of language and translation, including the value of a translation as opposed to the original work, translating humour, the Bergman Effect and more.2. China, Culturally Speaking - A conversation with Michael Berry, Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at UCLA and a world-renowned Chinese literary translator and film scholar. After discussing the inspiring influence his English teacher had on him, the conversation covers a wide range of topics such as the appeal of literary translation, modern and contemporary Chinese literature, the history and development of Chinese cinema, popular culture in modern China, censorship, and the importance of staying true to one's values.3. The Value of Voice - A Conversation with Nick Couldry, Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. This wide-ranging conversation explores how the media can be used as a filter to examine power structures, political movements, economic interests, democracy and our evolving notion of culture, the importance of voice and the challenge posed by media institutions that order the social, political, cultural, economic, and ethical dimensions of our lives. 4. Perspectives on Mass Communication - A Conversation with Denis McQuail (1935-2017), who was Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Visiting Professor at the University of Southampton. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential scholars in the history of mass communication studies.This wide-ranging conversation provides detailed insights into how examining the media, and in particular mass media, necessarily involves a careful, probing look at our societal values; the concepts, metrics and ideas that McQuail developed to measure the sociological influence of the media; the critical role of journalism in society and more. 5. Sign Language Linguistics is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and renowned researcher of sign languages Carol Padden, the Sanford I. Berman Chair in Language and Human Communication at UC San Diego. This extensive conversation covers many topics related to sign language, such as growing up with ASL, Carol's early work with Bill Stokoe, the linguistic complexity, structure and properties of ASL and other sign languages, the development of new sign languages throughout the world, the role of gesture and embodiment, and much more. Howard Burton is the founder and host of all Ideas Roadshow Conversations and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and an MA in philosophy.

Ideas Roadshow conversations present a wealth of candid insights from some of the world’s leading experts, generated through a focused yet informal setting. They are explicitly designed to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn’t otherwise be encountered through standard lectures and textbooks.

Over 100 Ideas Roadshow conversations have been held since our debut in 2012, covering a wide array of topics across the arts and sciences. All conversations in this collection are also available separately.

See www.ideas-on-film.com/ideasroadshow for a full listing.

Copyright ©2021 Open Agenda Publishing. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-77170-104-4 (eBook)

ISBN: 978-1-77170-103-7 (pb)

Edited by Howard Burton; preface and all introductions written by Howard Burton.

All Ideas Roadshow Conversations use Canadian spelling.

Contents

Textual Note

Preface

China, Culturally Speaking

A conversation with Michael Berry

Introduction

I. From New Jersey to Nanjing

II. Found in Translation

III. Freedom of the Press

IV. Contemporary Voices

V. A Glimpse Behind the Lens

VI. Business and Art

VII. Flourishing

Continuing the Conversation

Babbling Barbarians

How Translators Keep Us Civilized

A conversation with David Bellos

Introduction

I. Introductory Musings

II. An Illustrative Capture

III. Getting the Joke

IV. Probing the Foreign

V. Films in Translation

VI. The Varieties of English

VII. Asserting Our Individuality

VIII. Translation and Meaning

IX. Mathematics and Music

X. Language and Thought

XI. Paying Respects

Continuing the Conversation

Sign Language Linguistics

A conversation with Carol Padden

Introduction

I. Choosing Languages

II. Distance Education

III. Signing as Language

IV. Diversity and Structure

V. Distinctiveness

VI. Embodiment

VII. A Cultural Window

VIII. Predictions and Proclivities

IX. Examining Diversity

X. Making Comparisons

Continuing the Conversation

Perspectives on Mass Communication

A conversation with Denis McQuail

Introduction

I. Plunging into the Media

II. Getting Rigorous

III. Journalism and Society

IV. Bringing It Home

V. Towards the Future

Continuing the Conversation

The Value of Voice

A conversation with Nick Couldry

Introduction

I. Round the Houses

II. Deconstruction

III. Investigating Power

IV. The Future of Media

V. Ever Onwards

Continuing the Conversation

Textual Note

The contents of this book are based upon separate filmed conversations with Howard Burton and each of the five featured experts.

Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies and Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. This conversation occurred on September 19, 2014.

David Bellos is the Director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University, where he is also Professor of French and Comparative Literature. This conversation occurred on June 14, 2012.

Carol Padden holds the Sanford I. Berman Chair in Language and Human Communication at UC San Diego. This conversation occurred on September 25, 2014.

Denis McQuail (1935-2017) was Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Visiting Professor at the University of Southampton. He is one of the most influential scholars in the history of mass communication studies. This conversation occurred on April 28, 2014.

Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. This conversation occurred on April 29, 2014.

Howard Burton is the creator and host of Ideas Roadshow and was Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Preface

Language, it is often said, is the thing that makes us human—the one feature that truly sets us apart from our fellow non-human travellers on the planet. But it is not so much language per se, of course, that distinguishes us, but rather what we do with it.

Because it is one thing to examine the human brain and try to deduce how it is so particularly hard-wired for language—which, as it happens, occurs quite frequently within Ideas Roadshow conversations with cognitive scientists such as Ellen Bialystok, Victor Ferreira, Greg Hickok, Martin Monti and others—and quite another to look at how our biological predilection for words and phrases manifests itself in the cultural realm, which is the subject of this collection.

We begin with two scholars: Michael Berry, Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies and David Bellos, Professor of French and Director of Princeton University’s Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. Both are highly regarded literary translators whose manifold experiences respectively translating French and Chinese masterworks into English have naturally influenced their appreciation of the subtleties of language that would otherwise be taken for granted.

Michael gives us a revealing, first-hand glimpse of what a translator’s “day job” is really like:

“When I’m translating dialogue, for example, I’ll often speak aloud just to double-check whether people actually talk like that in English, and try to figure out what the perfect equivalent is for capturing the nuance of the original. I think that you have to have a sensitivity of both languages to really capture how someone would express that idea, or thought, or emotion, in the other language. I think that’s key to being successful as a translator.

“A lot of people talk about ‘faithful’ translations or ‘literal’ translations. Often, to create the most faithful translation you have to betray the literal meaning in order to get at that faithful spirit. In Chinese, for example, a very common greeting that people will say to each other is literally, ‘Have you eaten?’ But you wouldn’t say that in a Western country. If I saw you on the street, I wouldn’t say, ‘Howard, have you eaten?’ It would sound very weird. A far better translation would be something like, ‘How’s it going?’ because you want to capture that spirit. They weren’t actually asking if you had eaten. It’s just a greeting.

“You always have to constantly navigate between being faithful to the original and making it readable. That’s the tightrope that you’re always walking as a translator: between faithfulness to the original and readability to your target audience. Some translators are more on one side than the other. There’s no one answer to this.”

David, meanwhile, intriguingly describes how the very act of translating French literature has led him to re-evaluate and re-assess his understanding of his native language.

“It’s a dialogic experience, it goes two ways. I’m sure that my command of the English language and my ability to write has been formed by all these foreign writers that I’ve had to translate. They’ve made me learn different things and different nooks and crannies of English.

“Years ago, when I started translating Georges Perec, it was just obvious to me to translate into English. I know what English is. English is what I write. But 25 years later, I don’t know what English is anymore. I’m much less sure of my ground in saying, ‘This is English and this isn’t’ or ‘This is good English or this isn’t’, or even, indeed, ‘This is British and this is American,’ because there are all sorts of strange crossovers.”

None of these insights would be particularly shocking to Carol Padden, an internationally renowned linguist at UC San Diego. Following in the footsteps of the hugely innovative sign-language linguist Bill Stokoe, Carol has spent years carefully examining the correspondence between the inherently multi-modal nature of language and the ass...

Table of contents

• Textual Note
• Preface
• China, Culturally Speaking
• Babbling Barbarians
• Sign Language Linguistics
• Perspectives on Mass Communication
• The Value of Voice