Liaison Magazine - LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and ...

700 words
“Familiarity with another culture or
language does not automatically
result in the ability to communicate
across cultures.”
perceive the ability to speak other languages. A conversation
with a mathematician gave me pause for thought. His view
was that, with technology developing rapidly, portable
automatic machine translation will soon lead to a Star Trekstyle
universal translator, making language learning superfluous.
This view of translation as a purely mechanical activity is
difficult for a linguist to comprehend, especially when we hear
stories such as “out of sight, out of mind” being translated by
machine as “invisible idiot”. Any bilingual can give examples of
words and phrases which are difficult to translate, or which
serve a social function beyond their literal meaning. In the
Star Trek episode,“Darmok”, the universal translator cannot
help with a language based on allegory and metaphor;
individual words are understood but cultural references make
their meaning impenetrable. Captain Picard’s cultural empathy,
along with his knowledge of history, literature and
anthropology enables communication when direct translation
does not.
I have met many monolingual people who demonstrate the
kind of cross-cultural capability which we espouse at Leeds
Met; people able to communicate across cultures, regardless
of linguistic barriers and who relate to other human beings in
all their diversity. Without using their language, Michael Palin
communicates easily with nomadic tribesmen or Himalayan
yak herders. His handling of unfamiliar situations, however well
researched in advance, is an example par excellence of this
view of internationalisation. In contrast, I know linguists who
depend on their language skills and expect to make
themselves understood, finding unfamiliar contexts just as
difficult as someone without experience of cultural diversity.
The presence of international students on campus cannot
alone develop the global perspectives of UK students. In the
same way, familiarity with another culture or language does
not automatically result in the ability to communicate across
cultures.While language learning can help, we cannot assume
our students will inevitably develop cross-cultural capability
through international experiences. It is our role to lead and
challenge them to ensure that they do.
Elspeth Jones is International Dean at Leeds Metropolitan
University and co-editor of Internationalising Higher
Education (Routledge 2007). She also edits “International
Reflections” www.leedsmet.ac.uk/internat/reflects, which
have appeared daily since September 2003 on the Leeds
Metropolitan website.
Liaison magazine • llas.ac.uk •45