Culture Context Amongst us

http://www.thinknpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/lostintranslation.jpg?w=300

We often hear of the phrase “lost in translation”, and surely, all of us have encountered this in some form.

Take the word “you” for example, “You” in English is used to address the second person and it’s definitely translatable to any other language. However, while I was learning English, I have always had problems addressing my teachers with “you”. For anyone that has ever tried to learn another language, more than likely they have encountered “you” in different forms: The formal one, “Sie” in German, or “Vous” in French which can also be used as plural forms, the other, “du” or “tu”, typically to be used in an intimate or informal situation.

Unlike French or German, “you” only comes in one form in English. I on the other hand, being raised in a traditional Taiwanese family with a Confucian background, calling my teacher “you” indicates an informal setting. Having been taught to respect my elders, especially teachers, it just seemed wrong to me.

My non Taiwanese peers though, never seemed to have problems with this. They are fine addressing the teacher as “you”, and they have no hesitation in saying “I don’t understand”, which with the Confucian mind set, translates to “your explanation is bad, do it again”.
Of course, that is probably not their intention and I eventually learned that these mental conflicts stem from the differences in a culture’s context. A high context culture tend to have very specific meanings for words in specific situations while a low context culture has less emphasis on specific messages from words to words.

High context culture embeds tradition and history within the language which sometimes adds specific cues and calls for different reactions in situations. For lower context cultures, messages are passed much more explicitly and no further interpretation are needed during communication.
As my English proficiency has improved, I have adapted to these culture context cues and I am no longer bothered by the conflicts between languages. In fact, the more I learn about culture context in different languages, the more I enjoy distinguishing them. With the internet being used by users of all background, it is now easy to search for words that cannot be directly translated into English, which somehow, makes “lost in translation” almost an obsolete term as countless users continues to thrive on explaining each terms, in different languages.