- Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the Open Translation Lounge here at TEDGlobal, 2013.
We're doing these sessions all week,
inviting TED speakers to meet with translators
both here in Scotland as well as others joining us via Skype
from all around the world.
Today we have Hetain Patel joining us, who actually did an amazing talk
and if there was a speaker we could actually pull out
of all of the speakers that was perfect for this space, it was him.
Talking about language and identity
and how language shapes identity, and things like that.
So, the conversation's going to be great,
given we have translators in the room today.
Joining us here on site is Sebastian from Argentina,
Palash, from Bangladesh.
Keumseong from Korea,
and Katja from Germany.
And joining us remotely from Skype, we have Lidia here from Spain,
Jenny Chen from Taiwan,
Jenny Yang who is in Chicago,
and Lazarus joining us from Greece.
Hi, guys, how are you?
My intro talked about language
and how much of our identity is built up into language.
And I was wondering, actually, we did a session this morning
which was all in Arabic, and I've been spending a lot of this week
with a lot of the translators, who are all speaking their second language.
And I noticed the people that were speaking in their native tongue
seemed different.
Their body language was different, their personalities seemed different.
The question I pose is if you speak multiple languages,
do you have multiple identities, given your work?
I'm just curious.
Maybe you do.
Language theorists kind of say that you think through your first language,
that you understand the world and any subsequent languages you learn
through the, kind of, codes and constructs
and the rules of your first language.
But I guess with people who are bilingual or multilingual from an early age,
it comes into question which one of those languages
forms the way you think.
For example, my first language was the Indian language of Gujarati,
but I feel like my first language was English
because somewhere along the lines, they swapped a bit.
So, if I had to describe which way I think, I'd probably say English,
but it's probably not even English, or Indian, or Gujarati,
but somewhere else in-between, or elsewhere.
In terms of do you think differently or have different identities,
as you were saying in your question,
I think certainly you will feel differently
when you speak in another language.
I speak little bit of French
and when I speak French,
again, I find myself moving my body differently,
just as you described, almost in imitation,
almost remembering French people I've spoken to.
You know, my wife is French.
And how they talk, and some of that comes into that.
But I think, also, regardless of whether it's a different language or not,
even different topics you talk about, or who you're talking to,
I think can change how your body language is
and the way that your body and your words communicate.
Actually, Keumseong, do you feel like you have multiple identity?
Is your English identity a totally different person?
Well, it makes some difference, but I'm slightly different from his ideas,
what he's saying, because I sometimes get confused
between those two languages.
I speak Korean and some English.
Things like using gestures, in my country,
is not considered to be very serious talking.
What we do is, like, you know--
Get your spine straightened up
and you speak slowly without moving your hands or things like that.
Because speaking English, I get, you know, I do very similar things.
So, it's kind of very hard to get the line between those two languages.
- OK. Let's go back onto Skype.
Jenny Yang, who are you in English and who are you in Chinese?
(She laughs)
I think talked to Crystal about this.
(Inaudible)
She mentioned that when she goes to the West,
people think she has come from New York.
But when she's in New York, people think she's from the West.
So, I'm living in Chicago, I come from Shanghai,
at work, daily, I speak English.
When I talk to people who speak English,
I don't feel significantly different.
I feel I mix very well with my colleagues.
The interesting thing is when I go back.
If in Shanghai I speak English, I felt totally different.
And they feel like I was coming from a different country.
- OK. Hetain, if I can get back to you, humour is a big part of your work,
and humour is one of the things that gets so lost in language.
I think when you speak a foreign language,
trying to be funny in a foreign language
is even harder than being funny in your own language, sometimes.
Could you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I guess.
A lot of my work, I like to use humour because I talk about identity,
and because it can be such a serious subject matter,
I always want to connect with an audience or with someone you're talking to.
So, humour feels like a good sweetener to kind of connect with somebody.
And I'm influenced by the humour that I engage with,
which is a lot of English humour from comedy which I like.
So, naturally, this is the way that I also make humour in my work.
So, to me, to be honest, it was a question whether it could work outside the UK.
I had anxieties also of coming to TED and there being such
an international audience, and whether that would translate.
So, to get such a heart-warming kind of response was a bit unexpected.
And I think part of that--
Well, I'd be interested to hear other people's ideas on that,
but there's so much more involved in communication rather than words.
I think that translates not just to ideas
but also the transmission of humour or warmth or connection,
body language that we spoke about, facial gestures, tone of voice.
- Wonderful.
The session is going to start soon,
so we're going to wrap up relatively quickly.
One more answer, actually.
I was hoping Katja could answer that same question.
Humour - how it translates.
- For us, it's funny as we have three languages in our family.
I am German, my husband is Turkish, my children go to an international school.
They speak English.
So, sometimes, there are very funny situations
when we switch languages in between.
I think somebody who's not in our situation
wouldn't understand the jokes behind it.
So, we really enjoy this multilingual experience.
And, sometimes, we make a lot of fun about it.
So, no 'knock knock' jokes in the house.
OK, we're going to have to wrap.
Thank you everybody for coming
and please come back again after the next session and tomorrow morning.
So, thank you so much. Goodbye.