Reflexivity

Some thirty stalwart spirits braved the edge of Hurricane Hannah to begin building “Belchertown’s own pyramid.” Sailing knots secured the tarp which – propped up by two ladders – withstood the night, protecting us from the downpour and thrilling us with sounds of rain and wind as we christened the cairn near midnight with Wrongo Dongo. Howls mixed with cheers in a cacophony of exuberance as we embraced the spirit of ritual, blending our voices with nature’s infinite chanting. I was asked for a convocation (see “Other Use“); all I could muster was Thank You. I felt calm and peaceful in our candlelit circle, humbled by and proud of my friends.

In all important respects, we gathered as we always do – indulging delicious food, drinking comfortably, talking, dancing, teasing, touching, teaching and calling each other into being. I learned so much, as I always do. Everyone oriented to the ceremonial element in their own way. Some recalled significant moments of shared interpersonal interaction, acknowledged difficult aspects of private histories and/or future challenges, and speculated on the symbolism of our individually swirling energies encapsulated by nature’s capacity for storm. Others lost themselves in dance, told tall tales, lampooned themselves and others, played tricks and carefully watched for the precise moment to deliver a perfect pun. Most of us did some of everything. We take our fun seriously, without letting fun completely overtake the serious.

There was power in our utterances last night and this morning. Dorothee educated me on linguistic minorities in France and the Belgian Flemish/French controversy (more on these later!), and Nick proposed jazz as a uniquely unreproducible medium. The confluence of these topics with my upcoming research woke me right up (or was it the Turkish coffee?!)
“Oh yea, that was in quotes,” Don said, walking by a few minutes later as Nick explained, “I don’t want my life to be an open book, I want people to question me.” We were talking about how online social networking could remove mystery from our lives by producing a vast field of ambient awareness (another longer-term side effect of ambient awareness could be the evolutionary loss of certain cognitive skills associated with fact-based memory). An iPhone provided entertainment for awhile, its accelerometer on display with Newton’s Cradle . This put me in mind of the results of a recent “mind map” of local and global trends affecting a particular organization’s anti-racism and social justice activities, in which nearly all trends were described in terms of increase (more more more and faster) instead of decrease.
How did we get from the accelerometer to air-conditioning? I cannot recall, but the comment reminded me of Christopher Dickey’s claim:

as air conditioning conquered the lethargy-inducing climate and Northerners by the millions abandoned the rust belt for the sun belt, the past wasn’t forgotten or forgiven so much as put aside while people got on with their lives and their business.

Somehow nostalgia for the “old days” of answering machines (when you received your telephone messages only when you got home at the end of the day) got intertwined with the luxuries of heating and cooling . . . The Chosen One mused, “we’ve had heat for a long time, it’s harder to make cold.” Indeed, air-conditioning as we know it today is a phenomenon of only the last century: for millenia humans have known how to keep ourselves warm, but only “yesterday” have we figured out how to make ourselves cool. (Uh oh. Global warming is here, now.)
When Brandon left is when it hit me. Some of these people I really may not see again. Dhara reminisced about meeting me at bowling her first year here. She and Henk had been the ones to unveil the group present. (Rumor Mill: going viral. First batch original orders for t-shirts and bumperstickers should be placed here.)

The Nepalese mantra gracing the cairn is, as best I understand it to date, a kind of paean to precious knowledge and pure beauty. We have created physical evidence of passing this way; and less tangibly we have left our marks upon each other – bits of spirit inspiring compelling turning and calling us on, always with the invitation to return. “It’s good,” Franz said today, “to be a little bit bothered by each other.” Yes – such is the evidence of communal connections: they persist!

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The first act of will is to decide that time does not matter.

Immersed in the presence of this new language, I forgot that I was here for a reason! “We know you love your metaphors,” Rachel teased before I came. The other roommate just laughed.

Lauren described my fourth rock balance as “precarious.” Ah – momentarily I recognized myself. “Taut control,” said Andy Goldsworthy in an excerpt of a video we watched, “can be the death of our work.” As the workshop ended, during the closing circle, Rita recalled Lila’s introduction of Hermes, the god of boundaries and the travelers who cross them. (Hermes is also the god of thieves: what greater boundaries are there to cross than those imposed by custom and law? (shhhh!))

I had forgotten. Our teacher, Lila Higgins, spoke first in the closing circle, describing the cairn she’d built a few days earlier at the crossroads leading to our final rock balancing site,



and her delight in communion with the unknown balancer who had rebuilt it in the days since. Listening to her, my consciousness was nudged to remember: I was here to mark the current turn in the trajectory of my life. Then, after others including myself had spoken, Rita recalled Hermes. How had that god slipped my mind?! It seems I had achieved – if only for a short while – the intention expressed by another workshopper,

We watched videos of Bill Dan building rock balances, and also of George Quasha. My mind required time (exposure, continuity) to shift from its usual operational state-of-consciousness (ahem) to this altered perceptual state “charged with an air of contingency” in which time has no substance. For hours at a stretch, I experience only concentration and sensation: ripples of subdued emotion (annoyance, tenderness, impatience, resolve, fear of failure, renewed commitment) and yearning for that satisfying moment when the rock finds its place.



Will my intellectual work emanate a similar resonance? I hope so. I have felt similar types of ‘click moments‘ in the past. Trusting them has led me here – to this junction, where I discover conviction deepening without reducing uncertainty.



Carter Ratcliff introduces the artistic ethic of George Quasha (who is inspired by John Cage) with words that likewise describe the ethical center of my action research goal:

More photos of rock balancers and some rock balances produced during this workshop are on this page at Lila’s rockbalancer site.
See also hickoree, rebranca46 (Rocks Balancing), and bebalance (Super Balance: Birds, Bottle, Bricks, Birds Again…).

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I found

while prepping the final lecture for the intensive summer course on interpersonal communication.

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Last night I hosted my first Fete Francophone. My guests parler-voused Francaise off-and-on (they promise to exclude me more, next time). Many wonderful language stories though – oh, the faux paux’s I can anticipate!
I was also introduced to some music (Jacques Brel, MC Solaar, and Les Négresse Vertes), a news broadcast (Actualités), and Les Guignols (probably a prototype for John Stewart).
We will do it again, oui?
[The menu, by the way, was international in scope. Italian and French wines, goat cheese, a salad of local mesclun greens, red cabbage, haricort verts green beans with Wernz famous New England Vinaigrette, pasta with walnut sauce, and mango sorbet.]

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There are concerns being raised about translating the research invitation to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). My friends and colleagues composing the Translation Team (!) are encountering the challenges of linguistic rotation. I am borrowing the technical term, rotation, from matrix algebra. (Disclaimer: four decades later I begin to learn math!)
Which should I write first: the metaphor (a three–by-three matrix) or the data (the questions and concerns)? Let’s go with the data.
Immediately the question was raised, “Why translate at all?” Alongside the deep philosophical implications (which I need another few decades to work out) are practical concerns. Isn’t the effort to generate a “single” invitation in twenty-three languages rather absurd?

• unnecessary?
• the production of more work?
• impossible?
• just a nice gesture?

Possibly. Depending upon one’s logic, certainly so; given an alternative reference frame, however, perhaps the benefit, in the end, will be worth the trouble. Crafting the translations has, actually, been a bit of trouble - not just time and effort, but a source of some consternation. Three versions have been completed to date: Bulgarian, Romanian, and Polish. A few potential translators have dropped out because of the terminology: as much as I try to explain what I aim to do in plain language, a few conceptual/theoretical terms keep sneaking in: words that are obviously labels for something, a shorthand way of referring to a specific set of knowledge or kind of experience, a code that stands for or signals something more, something else, something beyond what a dictionary provides.
Part of my rationale, going in to this study of simultaneous interpretation in the European Parliament, is that this is always the case. One of the intriguing dynamics that I hope to explore is the way people generally know (in every day use) that words can mean different things at different times in different contexts. This inherent flexibility of language is what makes, for instance, a double entendre possible. There simply could not be two simultaneous meanings for a word or phrase without language having the capacity to mean more than one thing – even in one utterance at a specific time in a given context with particular participants under whatever situational and cultural rules apply.

Somehow, though, when the topic/process of interpretation comes up, this rich capability of language “to mean” many things seems to become a liability – even a problem. Whether or not we want to reduce language’s ability “to mean” in general, the discourse about meaning when a translation is involved (the things people say about it) shows an attitude that wants to impose some kind of confirmation or guarantee that only one meaning will be allowed. Even trickier, a moral element often comes into play: not just any (of the usual or probable) discrete/unique meanings, but The Right One.
The specific problem with my invitation letter is jargon. Maybe I am being too stubborn in wanting to provide MEPs with enough information to suffice as “informed consent,” but there are bureaucratic procedures and ethical dilemmas that must be addressed. I do not anticipate in any way that harm will come to someone by talking, confidentially, with me about their views about and experiences with simultaneous interpretation (SI). Really, what I want to learn is when, how, and why do people make the choice to go with an interpreter (and then how skillful are they in the use of this communication process), and when, how, and why do persons choose to use a lingua franca, trying to forego interpretation. The “people” and “persons” are, in this case, Members of the European Parliament. I am assuming that

a) the choice between SI and a lingua franca is a real option: i.e., interpreters are available and lingua francas are known, and
b) the choices made by MEPs are indeed representative of “people” in general, although in this case actually of Europeans in general, or – even more precisely, of the choices that would be made by the citizens of the MEPs respective countries if they were in similar circumstances.

The dilemma of the official invitation is that it serve to entice MEPs to want to talk with me! I do, quite sincerely, believe that there will be tangible benefit to those who agree to participate, at least in heightening their awareness of language choice and (ideally) the relationship between their language use and how influentially they help design policy. Meanwhile, the official invitation also must fulfill the ethical principles of informed consent. I want the MEPs to say, “yes,” and arrange an interview; I need them to have some basis of knowledge about where I’m coming from – even if it is only enough to ask a question! So, in the invitation, when “co-productively,” “voice,” and “action learning” are used by me, deliberately, in order to establish boundaries and set trajectories, I think it is totally permissable that a given language may or may not have a readily-equivalent way to handle the task I want these words to accomplish. My thinking is based on a logic of simultaneous interpretation as an ongoing, continuous, complex process of making meaning together (paraphrased from the textbook I am currently using to teach Interpersonal Communication).
This logic of simultaneous interpretation is different than the traditional logic of written translation. A written translator (especially a professionally trained one), seeks to establish a record for all time. The intent of the translation is not to participate in an immediate give-and-take, but rather to cement a particular viewpoint or story into a permanent fixed form. A simultaneous interpreter however (especially a professionally trained one), is seeking to adapt fluidly within a moving situation whose players are themselves in flux. A previously written text does not change, one can come back to the exact same words as often as one wants, from the gut instinct of first reading to the reflective analysis provided by situating a sentence (as the turning point in chapter three, for instance) in relation to the entire novel. A spontaneous interpretation works in concert with interlocutors to create endings that are not necessarily pre-determined, because they have literally not yet been said – the conversation is underway and can evolve.
So, this is a long explanation to get to the notion that those pesky technical terms could simply be left in English: to be explained later. Equally well the attempt can be given to render them as faithfully as possible in the logic, diction, and grammar of the target language. Either way the possibility of a conversation about what those terms mean is laid open. Without including them at all? I can assume, from the beginning, that the people I am going to meet and talk with will not understand – and use this as a reason to exclude these terms; alternatively, I can accept that they probably won’t understand the terms but are capable of doing so, with a bit of effort on both our parts.
It turns out that I am, indeed, stubborn for the latter.

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Seriously in vitro, but not with an actual human being (alas), rather with potential for a new hermeneutic.
I started a Facebook group, Interpretation: An Action Learning Set. The membership is not intended to be exclusive although the primary function is mundane: basic written translation of a one page letter into twenty-some languages. If you want to help (do you know any official European Union languages? Know someone who does?), or are interested in spying (!), or otherwise participating in discussions during gestation, please let me know.
There’s work in the subfield of language ideologies on emergence theory (on the www, brief googling shows many ties to religion; not the angle I’m interested in and yet – the interrelation makes sense – the core principle of procreation is an obvious theological hook). I have much more reading and talking/listening to do, now, in keeping with my main mode of learning. The notion of (having been) impregnated has enabled me to make sense of the seemingly static mode of stasis I’ve been in for days….

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Quoting from a Reuters article by Eric Auchard about Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, on “good, evil and monopoly fears“:

When he first joined Google as CEO seven years ago, Schmidt acknowledged thinking the “Don’t be evil” phrase was a “joke” being played on him by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Schmidt recalled sitting in Google’s offices later in 2001 when an engineer interrupted a strategy discussion over a planned advertising product by saying, “That is evil.”
“It is like a bomb goes off in the room. Everything stopped. Everyone had a moral and ethical conversation, which by the way, stopped the product,” Schmidt said.
“So it is a cultural rule, a way of forcing a conversation, especially in areas which are ambiguous,” he said of how the mission statement works in practice at Google.

The desire to ritualize such a practice of communication illustrates the ethic of “start[ing] from the perspective of what [big, world-class] problems do we have”? This is an example of the political divide characterized by David Brooks a few days ago as “a little culture war” between “”the highly educated coastal rich …. [and] … the inland corporate rich.” It would be nice, somehow, to get away from a blanket condemnation of whomever can be construed as part of the latter group (Brooks doesn’t do such a bad job of representing them – even if he does deploy inflammatory rhetoric at times), because we need them, too, to be part of the solutions we quite urgently need to be putting into place and action.

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There was The Biggest Salad Ever and a Bison Burger. Margaritas and Honey Pilsner.
Laughter looping across periodic boundary conditions. My blushing. (!) A handshake for the chinese zodiac. (Do you know what they say about Virgos?)



The Italian mafia. A Columbian cartel. Romanian espionage and disruption services. A South African escapee. Bhutanese royalty. Some Americans and a Turk.
Seriously, one language or many? Interpreted (essential heterogeneity) or lingua franca (reduced homogeneity)? Our debate draws forth a distinction: what do we value most and when – the depth and strength of relational connection or the collaborative effort to generate joint action toward a desired goal? I propose that

• we are always interpreting – the interactive presence of a simultaneous interpreter only makes the fact more evident, and
• more attention to this fact (of always and inevitable interpretation) could enable deepened collaborations to redress the critical needs of our time.

I am cautioned, again (and with great humor!), to be gentle with those who agree to talk with me: sensitivities about language skill can open vulnerabilities that could undermine the research endeavor. Refinements to the research problem have been percolating since the Committee exerted force on the prospectus. What matters – always – is the third, the locus of triangulation. There is the object of study – language use in an environment with an unprecedented range of language choice, and the emergent phenomena of an apparent preference for a (shared) lingua franca instead of a professionally-trained interpreter (to mediate linguistic difference). What, the committee asks, is the field of action within which language choice matters? What is the context that imbues significance to an individual’s decision to use their best language instead of a weaker one? (I will also have to take into account that small percentage who are truly balanced bilinguals.)
The site of the study is political, institutional, and driven by economics. The crux of action could be defined as leadership – not in the strict sense of hierarchical role, but in the generic sense of providing a necessary function in the crucial moment that brings a desired goal closer to fruition.
For the record: Zeynep, my Temporary Quasi Date, Sangria Girl, STFU, Roommate, Henk, Don, and Anuj. Earlier, assorted town officials, a bonedigger and the FBI (now required for a visa).

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I was honored to be invited to attend the Distinguished Teacher’s Luncheon yesterday as a guest of one of this year’s Award winners. I do not know how stimulating the conversation was at other tables, but I believe ours was the best because five of us stayed long after the delectable cheesecake (that even the French would love, and Allison thought was actually ok). Rob commented on my expressive eyebrows and Floyd raked in a surprise award for turning out graduate student Distinguished Teachers two years in a row (Jennie joined us too, she’s doing some awesome work now with a project providing computers to schools in Kenya). The other DTA honoree gave an emotion-filled tribute to his students (notably the 18 fourth-graders showing him stringed instrument finger Number Two). Shabnam’s devotion to Sumo Wrestling (and, may I add, Grand Theft Auto) played equally well: “sometimes you just have to give students a hook.”
(No, she was not nervous.)
I’m not sure how to connect Eduardo’s expertise with my interests, but Murray’s work (in progress) with owls and squirrels seems metaphorically close (although maybe we shouldn’t get too carried away with the food chain part). Human systems are not so linear, but why do I keep suspecting these mathematicians have created some ways with language that might help us address the dynamics of people in groups and societies? Just look at these Willmore surfaces! I know economists have done this somewhat – but everything they do is idealized (isn’t it?), assuming rational actors and fixed variables.
I suppose what I have in mind is a fairly simple regression (to start). We had some fun talking about language and interpretation. For instance, Rob brought up this classic from English to Russian:
English:

Russian (back-translated to English):

I was intrigued by this example, which seems (to me) as if it could have been appropriately culturally adapted: that’s what makes it funny, isn’t it? I can imagine this as the result of an excellent interpretation among real people in real time in an actual circumstance in which the gist of the message is what matters, rather than dismissing it as a limited literal translation. Of course, in most situations these two versions of a desired way to characterize and/or move through a particular point in spacetime would not align, but the thing that a simultaneous interpreter does that is truly unique is factor in all the variables of the specific instance and generate their best sense of how to convey a preferred endgoal.
Wikipedia backs me up that the original story is an amusing, non factual anecdote – but nonetheless characterizes it, unquestionably, as a mistranslation. Blanket judgments like this still rely on a mechanistic view of language, because the premise remains that there is only one accurate translation that could work for all situations and contexts. Instead, suppose that what matters more than the equivalence of word-for-word is the overall shape of the relational trajectory:

In communication theory (in my area, particularly at the interpersonal/intra- and intergroup level in terms of rhetoric, performance, and social interaction) we distinguish between a transmission view of communication and a ritual view of communication. The transmission view can be (loosely) linked with the stability of a particle, while the ritual view focuses more on the energy aspects of communication as a wave. The transmission view is about power (control) “here-and-now” and the ritual view is more concerned with influence and effects over time. These are two aspects of force present in every utterance and also in each pause between utterances. The interesting question then (to ask of your interpreter), is not “did you say what I meant” but “did you say what will accomplish for me the end I seek?” A dicey question, isn’t it? – that cuts both ways: interpreters are not psychic and must rely on all of the same cues perceptible to everyone else in the communication situation. Yet interlocutors often speak without a clear end-in-view, instead speaking in order to figure out what it is they mean and determine where exactly they are trying to go.
Certainly I had a grand time! I am lucky to know such wonderfully bright and articulate people.

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