As I constantly repeat (much to the annoyance of the people I socialise with), the key to any language is not solely with the grammar and vocabulary. You have to know the history of the people and their country, and something about the culture – both modern and traditional. Ideally, anyone seeking to learn a language would visit that country and spend time there immersing themselves in daily life. If only we could all afford to do that whenever we sought to learn a language! The world would be a better place, even if there was less need for the document translation work that I do. If you’ve been thinking about learning Bulgarian (perhaps inspired by my recent enthusiasm for that language), here are some fascinating tidbits of information about that country to entice you.
Everyone is impatient these days, and I understand, I think. There’s simply so much to know. I recently had that moment that I think comes to us all where I realised I would never be able to read all the books that had been recommended to me. There are simply too many. Even if I abandoned my legal translation work and began reading at a rate of a book a day – impossible, for me, but let’s just stipulate it for the sake of argument – I’d fall far short of the goal. There is quite simply too much knowledge out there for anyone to learn it all. You can’t learn every language, so naturally people seek shortcuts. If you can’t learn Bulgarian, for example, why not at least get some of the basics – the “gist” of it. With that in mind, here are some of the basics about Bulgarian, a complex and beautiful language.
We return again to one of my favourite activities in document translation work: Proverbs! I love proverbs. You learn so much about a culture from the sayings it produces and still uses. They’re a form of oral history, passed down from generation to generation, generally unaltered, offering a glimpse not only into the collective psyche of a nation and culture, but into its past, which many of these proverbs reference even if their origins are no longer current or obvious. Bulgarian is no exception; as I’ve been reading up on this language I’ve been collecting proverbs. Here are some of my absolute favourites.
I am fully aware of the ironic nature of a subtitle like “a brief history” when writing about a language like Bulgarian that spans thousands of years and which is spoken by about 12 million people in the world by some estimates by my fellow translation services professionals. How can you call any history as complex as the one Bulgarian enjoys “brief”? Still, I think there’s value in these high-altitude flyovers of languages. The scope of language history is often huge, and a brief overview often communicates that size much more effectively than drilling down into details. So, let’s take a very high altitude look down at Bulgarian!
Translation services is a complex and ever-changing business, something I know all too well from my daily work in it. For outsiders it can seem pretty straightforward: You know two languages, so you read a document in one and re-write it in another! Simple, but that misses all of the complications. Languages are rarely uniform even within themselves; they are filled with dialects and regional differences, accents, and other complicating factors that make them challenging even to those that know them well. Take the example of Portuguese: Spoken by 250 million people in the world, you can be forgiven for thinking that becoming fluent in Portuguese is a wise investment for a document translation pro. Consider, however: Which Portuguese? Because if you are fluent in the “European Portuguese” (EP) they speak in Portugal, you won’t be hired to work on anything in Brazil. Because “Brazilian Portuguese” (BP), while the same language, has enough differences to make your expertise useless.
The eternal struggle between time available and intentions never ceases, and we must always remember that some things that are easy for us are difficult for others, and vice versa. I work in translation services and have always found language study to be fun and easy. I pick things up in languages, and it hardly seems like work. On the other hand, I’ve always wanted to be able to do mechanic work and fix my own car, but I simply don’t have the head for it. So I remind myself that me telling someone they should really learn a language is sort of like my mechanic telling me in a pitying tone that I should really learn how to rebuild engines. We all pursue our own talents.
Language is fun. I think I sometimes go too far into the intellectual satisfactions that come with a study of languages and document translation work, and forget that this doesn’t really seem like motivation to many people. I remind myself to stress how much enjoyment there is in being able to communicate with people from other countries, and how much fun language itself can be – the power of being able to express yourself in a million subtle and powerful ways. Plus the ability to pretend to be continental and sophisticated even though you are quite clearly neither of these things!
Some of the most powerful design ideas can be found in the everyday objects and devices we take for granted – partially because of the unexpected nature of the work. When going to work in the morning or coming home at night, the last thing most of us expect from our elevators is surprise – in fact, considering the most common way elevators surprise us this is often not desirable at all! But these elevators are surprising in a good way – and you may find yourself spending more time on them than you might have expected!
I have several friends from Brazil who visit me from time to time, and I am always eager to talk to them about their country and the languages you encounter there – we all met via professional translation services events and share a love of language, so that’s naturally what our conversations centre on. The Brazilians I know all have an intense pride in their country that can sometimes be misinterpreted as arrogance, because they will describe everything about Brazil as “the best”. I don’t find that off-putting, though, I find it charming – especially since Brazil is, in fact, a fascinating and interesting country, in many ways.
As a document translation services professional, I sometimes like to pretend that we’re a secret society that has a lot of arcane rituals and ways of identifying each other. This is a much more romantic vision of document translation work than sitting in my office at home with a cup of tea and two computer monitors, a cat purring in my lap. Actually, when I put it that way that sounds pretty romantic too! But my imagination is fun: I always think that a good secret way to identify another translation services pro would be to simply ask them what the second most-spoken language in India is. If you get the answer right, you’re one of us! If you get it wrong, you’re not.