Bilingual Musings
The most difficult text to translate is the one you have written yourself. I have long ago given up the idea of publishing the same idea of a post here in my blog in English and the one I write in Spanish. When I attempted the exercise once, I felt I was a kind of traitor to myself. It was definitely someone else's voice I was using. It just did not feel right.
So how do I decide to write in one language or another in the first place? I simply do not. There are ideas that come to mind in a certain language and they are to be expressed there. The trigger of the idea, though may have been an article I have read in another language.
There are states of flow to be considered as well. A thought will take a different road in English or Spanish. Writing is travelling your mind inwards. The beauty of bilingualism is that words and syntax wire your musings into different adventures.
I am quite sure that if I used the first sentence of this post in Spanish and carried on, it would take me to some unknown corner of the city of my mind.
The way you express yourself in a language is a synthesis of everything you have read, shared and lived in that language. Life has a coding. Language is your life.
Post a Comment