Perhaps when we were in Paradise, a light of clear understanding streamed through the Garden of Eden and every creature in it spoke the same language. How else did the Serpent tempt Eve and convey his life-altering message about the Tree of Knowledge?
But since then, mutual incomprehension and impenetrable difficulties have been the norm. “Oh is that what you meant? I thought you meant something else… ” is heard every hour and everywhere even among those who speak the same language. What can one say about people who use different languages?
Shall we make a list at the Tower of Babel? Even with a language dying every fortnight, the world is still speaking some 6,000 languages, give or take.
In the bad old days, every time a civilisation was overrun, the tension between conflicting values resulted in the repression of the language of the vanquished.
This cultural invasion was a form of psychological violence. As an example from our own history shows, the Portuguese suppressed Marathi and Sanskrit in what is now Goa and forbade worship in those languages.
Like iron and fire
In more recent times, linguistic repression has discouraged newspapers and schools and any kind of public discourse in the language of a subordinate population because oppressors know that while words release their power slowly, their influence lasts longer than iron and fire.
At about the time the media was beginning to demonstrate how it could influence thinking, Napoleon Bonaparte, who died this month in 1821, said that he would rather have four newspapers behind him than four battalions.
Amazingly, in a country like India, once every decade or so, speakers of some ancient languages are told that a far less developed language is actually better for them than their own.
Naturally temperatures rise and sizzle.
Which language is better than all the others?
Here, in the synopsis of a parable created by Alex Gross in 1987 and published in the Language Monthly of Nottingham, is an answer.
Fifty contestants enter a large hall and sit down at 50 desks. Each of them receives an identical and oddly shaped package—the same shape, the same size.
Next to each package is a small pile of wrapping paper, tape, some string. None of the piles of wrapping paper is the same. There are rolls or strips, some are fragments or badly wrinkled shreds.
On every table is a pair of scissors. The contest: to wrap the ‘shape’ with the materials placed by the package on every desk.
Then comes an announcement: no contestant will be able to wrap his package completely; 10% of the package will remain uncovered. Even so, contestants were to use all their skills to wrap their packages, using only the pile of materials on the desk next to the package. They were not to step out or source anything from anywhere else.
Contestants employ various strategies. Some cover as large a surface as possible, leaving the unwrapped area for their last.
Some try to hide this space. Others do not care where this space ends. A few, with an eye on their supplies, try out a postage stamp technique, taping small pieces of paper on all surfaces of the box, with the unfilled spaces spread out on all sides.
And now, to decode this metaphor.
The package is reality, with all its ups, downs and scoops. The piles of wrapping paper, tape and string are our languages, computer languages included, with all their rules and structures.
The places where the contestants fail to follow the package’s contours are the spots where our languages lie to us about reality. The scissors are grammar and usage that we teach and cling to. The bit which cannot be covered by the tape or paper are those parts of reality no human can escape: birth, hunger, and animal passions.
No winning here
It is finally announced that none of the wrapping procedures is distinctly better than the others. Protests and boos rise from the hall, as many contestants are convinced that their method of wrapping is easily and obviously the best. Others complain that hundreds of other possible contestants were not invited to take part. Still others claim that the contest is too simple-minded because everyone receives the same reality/ package, contrary to “true” reality, which differs from people to people, culture to culture, language to language.
The judges leave.
No prizes are awarded.
I opened with a reference to Eden and shall close with a query about Indian religious epics, which describe manner and grace of speech at great length but are silent about diversity. What about the many royal, religious, and demonic characters in them who crossed borders into alien kingdoms?
Did they use interpreters?
The writer edits literary translations for Oxford University Press (India).
