From Words Without Borders:
Translation took to the big screen this year in the Academy Award-winning film, Arrival. Indeed, when an ominously oblong spacecraft touches down on Earth, translation proves to be humanity’s only hope. As the world descends into utter chaos, linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is sent to the frontlines to attempt to communicate with the mysterious “Heptapods”—to find out what they want and why they’ve come.
We asked three top translators to watch Arrival and to give us their two cents (via email) on the linguacentric feature.
. . . .
Words Without Borders (WWB): What did Arrival get so right about being a translator?
Esther Allen: In “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, on which Arrival is based, the words associated with Dr. Banks are “linguist” and “linguistics”; the word “translate” never appears in the story. Part of what Arrival’s cinematic translation of the Chiang story does is introduce translation. And Arrival is an incredible translation, which takes a short story written in 2000 and adapts, expands, and reinvents it to make a statement that is profoundly and presciently about where we are now in 2017. Reading the story provides an interesting perspective on the film’s origins, but the story’s intellectual and political ambitions are far more limited.
What Arrival gets—far better than the Chiang story does—is that translation is about context. When Banks translates one of the alien symbols as “offer weapon,” the world goes into a panic. But she argues that in context the term could have a number of meanings, “weapon” being only one. This is exactly how a translator deals with the ambiguity that is inherent in every word and particularly challenging when moving between languages. Any given term in one language has the potential to become, legitimately, a range of other terms in translation, depending on context, intention, and a host of other factors.
Hillary Gulley: I like that Arrival so vividly illustrates that what a translator communicates and receives in language has at least as much to do with the subconscious element of language as it does with the information that we receive and reconcile consciously.
Will Evans: The importance of translating the whole experience of language—beyond words, combining the phrase or statement or entire text, adding in context, nuance, phrasing—rather than to think of translation as a direct word-for-word transfer of meaning.
WWB: What did Arrival get horribly wrong about being a translator?
Hillary Gulley: The movie confounds the skill sets of a linguist and a translator, for one thing, and then the separate skill sets of a live interpreter and an ESL teacher on top of that. I couldn’t figure out why Dr. Banks was expected to be all four. Maybe because she is a woman? Women tend to be great at making seventeen disparate jobs look as though they belong to one seamless role. Look at the rest of the characters in the movie, who are all men, each with a single mission—or maybe two: their assigned task, involving either fighting or science, and their seemingly self-assigned duty to second-guess the only woman there, who also happens to be the only one of them equipped to save humanity. At some point I said, this screenplay was definitely written by a man. (I was right—and the same applies to the short story that inspired the screenplay.)
In any case, there is this assumption—in the movie and in life—that a linguist and anyone else who speaks multiple languages is automatically a translator, which isn’t the case at all: some of the best linguists and most fluent speakers of a second language I’ve known are not great translators, and vice versa.
The film also propagates the common misconception that translators are walking thesauruses. Maybe this bugs me because I am the worst thinker on my feet, and prone to blanking on all names and the simplest terms. At home I handle this by using a series of sound effects—there’s a favorite clicking sound I usually resort to—so I can move quickly through a sentence without getting stuck on a word. In the film, whenever someone asked Dr. Banks for a term, I wanted her to pass them a copy of Roget’s instead of obliging herself to answer as if it were part of her job description.
Link to the rest at Words Without Borders
I found the movie all painfully dull and slow. I thought the “offer weapons” bit was one of the worst parts.
Obviously words have multiple meanings depending on context. And given the stakes, and her unfamiliarity with the aliens, why would she even suggest “weapons” when she wasn’t sure. Why wouldn’t she say, “offer tools” “offer technology” or at worst, say the last word could be several things, including “tools, technology, weapons, etc.”
But instead, because it helps create a silly crisis, she simply translates words she doesn’t understand as “offer weapons.” Pretty much went down hill from there.
(Good story telling would have been for her to use the words “tools” or something and then only admit later under pressure, it might mean weapons. Rather than the way it was played, where she jumped to weapons and then tried to explain it might not mean that.)
Ahhh. See, the good idea you suggested? I’d imagined the “offer weapons” business going down like that (tools, tech options), not the crazy way it apparently happened. It’s a shame; the movie seemed to have a lot of potential.
Hollywood mindset.
Soldiers = trigger-happy madmen.
They needed something to trigger the bloodthirsty ones.
Hollywood also seems to think time-loops are a new, never-before seen concept good for getting out of corners you painted yourself into. The new Deus ex-Machina.
I have enough linguistics that the linguisticuu errors got my attention, as did the magical linguist crap.
But the set designers did go to the extent of copying real linguist offices, texts, and doodle styles, so I gave the movie more credit for that.
My brother who had been in the military was greatly annoyed by all the military groaners, many of which affected the plot.
There were many plot holes. I could think of several ways to end the movie in five minutes. So could anyone except the heroine.
There was at least fifteen minutes of staring at people’s inexpressive expressions, to the point that I initially thought somebody had been poisoned or was catching an alien plague. Needs editing out of these boring parts.
I have worked as a translator, and I didn’t see much wrong with the main character. I know translators aren’t linguists, but yes, I would ask the best linguist in the world to come try to figure out this language. Translators and interpreters don’t necessarily have the tools to figure out alien ink blots. My Czech-German dictionary isn’t going to help me. And then, once she was there, yes, I would expect her to translate and interpret, because she’s the only human in the world who knows the language.
The main character had linguistic superpowers, but I suppose one or two people like that exist. You have to accept a little exaggeration in a movie.
The only thing that knocked me out of the beautiful reality created by the film was the rogue captain and his group of conspirators. That wasn’t the sort of thing a stereotypical US military officer would do. To make it believable, you would have to spend a lot more screentime explaining why he thought he should risk provoking a war with a technologically superior species and how such a mentally unstable person was able to gain command and loyalty of those soldiers.
But I was willing to overlook that, because it’s nice to see serious science fiction in theaters.
What Arrival gets—far better than the Chiang story does—is that translation is about context.
See, now that has a lot of exciting plot possibilities, and the weapon example definitely seems promising. Idioms alone are fraught with peril in this scenario. Consider:
On an episode of the Tonight Show, Jay Leno and Antonio Banderas had a misunderstanding over the meaning of “throw the baby out with the bath water.”
Banderas was describing a party he gave and he said they “threw the house out the window,” which I’d guess is Spanish for “we brought the house down.” However, Leno thought it translated to the baby idiom. Banderas replied, “no, with our way nobody dies.”
I was looking forward to seeing how such misunderstandings could play out in a first contact situation; it’s surprising to see that the movie managed to be boring (for some). I hope to catch it on Netflix/Prime/Hulu if it’s ever offered on those services.
Did anyone else eye roll at the 3rd to last paragraph?
Does this movie bring out the sexism people or something? The ones that read gender into everything?
The reviewer I watched liked the movie because, and I’m not joking, a soft science that women are good at saved the day. “A more feminine science.” I looked it up and women aren’t dominant or anything in the linguistics field.
Not trying to fire off some flame war. I was just wondering if I’m missing something about this movie, if anything.
I’ll crawl back into my cave now.
Well — I think that the woman having so many “jobs” is a little more about the main character getting the screen time.
But I dont have a career in linguistics or translation, so I didn’t really think of it as her having many jobs, since I dont really know what the lines are. (I do have a bit of a reaction to really unrealistic job portrayals in my profession)
But if the dude had been the main character instead… I think he would have had the many jobs.
but sexism is a real thing everywhere. Things have improved, but it still exists. So I don’t think it is really wrong that she saw it here and spoke about it. She was asked about her opinion and this is part of her opinion.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. Clearly this is a story choice. To say the main character had a ton to do because a man wrote it is not just ignorant it’s a weird take. I mean, heroes have stuff to do, things to overcome. Seems like a hammer looking for a nail to bend things that far.
This is the 2nd time I’ve seen this movie discussed like this online and was wondering if it was the movie bringing it up or people bringing it to the movie.
When I watched it I was glad to find it devoid of boring gender politics. I watched around election time and not too long after the Hugos.
Thought maybe I’d missed something.
I read the story well before seeing the movie. I believe I enjoyed the movie much more because I had read the story first.
I can believe that. It felt like something that would have worked much better as a story than a movie.
“Arrival, though, is a different kind of movie altogether. It masquerades as a Hollywood sci-fi flick but it isn’t really one. Louise Banks is emphatically not a superhero and her communicative ability is not a superpower. She is a professional, confronted with a difficult problem she learns to handle in a slow and painful process, full of complexity, ambiguity, obstacles, and pain during which she never once pulls out a gun or yells at anyone.”
Casual bigotry raises it’s head. “It can’t be science fiction, because it’s good.”
To be fair, it really wasn’t. It started slow enough that my girlfriend gave up before they even met the aliens, and the deus ex machine ending left me wishing I had, too.
It had the potential to be good, but was just a mess in my opinion. It also pretty much skipped over anything interesting in terms of how they figured out the alien language. One minute they’re just squiggles, a few minutes later they’re holding conversations.
In what way is it not science fiction?
Actually, I meant it wasn’t good, not that it wasn’t SF per se.
But, now you mention it, I’d also argue that it’s more fantasy than SF. There’s nothing realistic or scientific about the storyline; it’s all based on the alien language being magic. There could have been something interesting in the way they decoded the alien language, but that’s all glossed over in a few minutes.
IMHO, it would have worked better if they’d been Elves rather than Aliens.
Yes, I do wonder what sort of science fiction this person reads/watches, but I suspect the answer is “little to none.”
it is science fiction because it has aliens !!
Maybe it is a military story cause it has so many military characters?
but neither of those is really what the story is about, those 2 elements are really just back-drop.
I really liked the movie. I can understand what you are saying about the slowness but I actually enjoyed that too.
I think it is really hard to show how a thought process works, so I think showing how the translation works in a film is not going to happen.
In what way is it not science fiction?
In what way is it not science fiction?
My best guess:
It is science fiction. But it’s obviously not Hollywood sci-fi because there are no comic-book characters. Also, no cars get thrown into skyscrapers.
But when I read the quote that way, I find myself asking, “In what way does it pretend to be a Hollywood superhero movie?”
I think the only science fiction element in it is there are aliens.
Otherwise it is a contemporary earth movie. It is the reaction of the world to many “space ships” showing up and doing nothing.
Then how the main character “talking” to them changed her and “saved” the world. And the “talking” does come across as more magical than scientific.
None of this really bothered me, because I liked the story and how the film showed it. It didnt have to be heavy science fiction for me.
It has been a long time since i saw close encounters of the 3rd kind… but the alien element kind of reminds me of that. A spaceship that sits there doing nothing but causing all kinds of strife for the humans attempting to understand why it is there.
And the “talking” does come across as more magical than scientific.
I think this is because movies don’t give one a chance to assimilate new concepts. I see two very different branches of science at work here:
(1) Einstein says that time is relative and that our measurements of time and distance depend on our point of view. The mathematics of relativity do not dictate that we should only remember the past. Perhaps it is also possible to remember the future.
(2) Language shapes the way you perceive the world. For example, Czechs have a special kind of bowl they call a “deep plate”. It’s just a shallow bowl with a flatter bottom. But an acquaintance of mine felt hard done by when he had to eat soup from a rounder bowl. That was a “bowl”, and every Czech knows you should eat soup from a “deep plate”.
Anyway, when the writer puts those two facts together, he comes up with the what if: What if aliens who can remember the future could teach us their language? What if that made us able to remember the future, too?
It was mindblowing. But since I had encountered those two concepts before I saw the movie, it wasn’t magical.
Well, okay, in some sense it was magical. But so are rainbows, aurora borealis, and the Orion Nebula.
It’s an interesting “what if”, no doubt.
But without an explanation of the mechanisms that handwave away what we know of brain function as relates to language and memory, it *is* magic. We know quite a bit about how human brains process memories and language and precognition doesn’t really fit the known biochemical processes. Sure, there’s a bunch of ways we could posit that would allow for precognition, but the movie offers none.
Good SF requires you stay within the bounds of what is not known to be false. Or at least explain how or why current knowledge is wrong. Saying “because…” abd shrugging isn’t good SF.
Don’t forget, “what if” isn’t just the province of SF but also fantasy. And fantasy can happen in any setting.
Arrival probably is best described as a fantasy. Or magical reality, given its generally mundane plot.
Not saying the linguistic issues aren’t important, but it’s been a long time since I watch a more boring movie. They lost me early.
My response is precisely the opposite.
I long have been a fan of Ted Chiang and have my own copy of the collection that includes the story this film is based on. And the film was more enjoyable. I found myself rivetted. One of my fave films of recent memory.
They lost me when the dragged out the sequence where they first see the aliens. Maybe they thought they were dragging out the tension, but I was thinking, “Can we get on with it, please?” You know it’s bad when I’m wishing I needed a bathroom break.
Maybe because I loved the mystery of the “other.” The aliens were very well done, they ALMOST reminded me of things, and not quite, seemed primitive and wholly advanced at the same time, even mystically so. I simply adored how it wasn’t easy to grasp them. I expect aliens to be very other, not look like us or our ideas of martians, etc.
I’m with you. This was probably my favorite “aliens arrive” movie ever because it was so different and had such unique twists and methods of storytelling. I was riveted by it. It’s a thinking type movie (and I also love the turn off my brain and enjoy movies), and I always love when someone takes a familiar trope (aliens are here to eat us, steal our resources, exterminate us, etc.) and turns it on its head into something totally unexpected.