Friday, September 08, 2006
Entrée
Finally - the International Edition is here! New posts, not translated, all for you!
My Grand (Dé)tour has not come to a halt - that any international reader can understand more easily than a Swedish one, or even the author himself. Just home from my Balkan tour, full of experiences... but getting ready for an autumn back home. But: Any report from Sweden would be as exotic or unique to most of you as one from for example Poland would. Or much more so, for those of you who are Polish...
It is to keep the channels open I finally, at this logical point, the rentrée, the back-to-reality time of year, start this international edition of my blog.
Languages are different. Perfect translation is simply not possible. (Even if it would, my limited knowledge is the first barrier...) To write in another language also invites you assume a role, or at least use a different style. I have come to think of languages more as means of communication than anything else - everything is allowed if you get your message across. Like how that Pidgin Polish comes in handy in the Balkans, and actually opens a whole new world for a non-Slavic visitor like me.
So, maybe, writing in English, I will be more focused on communication. It can only be a blessing - to throw any self-imposed stylistic demands overboard. Or? Everything will be banal? No. Different means and different styles will complete each other. An themes and readers will cross across language borders, I hope.
There is another reason. I could not write a lot about international relations, travels, the elusive European identity etc etc, only in Swedish - now that I know another language known to so many. It would be... stupid. It would of course be easier to formulate my views in splendid isolation, but once I crossed the Baltic Sea... No can do.
Margot Wallström, Swedish Vice-President of the European Commission, blogs in English, because she can. Even though it makes some people angry - everything at that level is supposed to be translated to all official EU languages, some argue. (And I would take efforts to have that done if I were her, think such a way to make goodwill. But I guess blogs are still underestimated as communication at this level, that's maybe the problem here.) But I agree with her, and her supporters in the post I linked to: we have to communicate as good as we can, about things that matter, if we want any cultures left to live in, in the end.
---
So, please, if you are here from the start, as part of a select(ed) few; my friends in the international brigade, give me your comments, raise an imaginary piwo, latte, or whatever, and let the discussion go on... ;-)
My Grand (Dé)tour has not come to a halt - that any international reader can understand more easily than a Swedish one, or even the author himself. Just home from my Balkan tour, full of experiences... but getting ready for an autumn back home. But: Any report from Sweden would be as exotic or unique to most of you as one from for example Poland would. Or much more so, for those of you who are Polish...
It is to keep the channels open I finally, at this logical point, the rentrée, the back-to-reality time of year, start this international edition of my blog.
Languages are different. Perfect translation is simply not possible. (Even if it would, my limited knowledge is the first barrier...) To write in another language also invites you assume a role, or at least use a different style. I have come to think of languages more as means of communication than anything else - everything is allowed if you get your message across. Like how that Pidgin Polish comes in handy in the Balkans, and actually opens a whole new world for a non-Slavic visitor like me.
So, maybe, writing in English, I will be more focused on communication. It can only be a blessing - to throw any self-imposed stylistic demands overboard. Or? Everything will be banal? No. Different means and different styles will complete each other. An themes and readers will cross across language borders, I hope.
There is another reason. I could not write a lot about international relations, travels, the elusive European identity etc etc, only in Swedish - now that I know another language known to so many. It would be... stupid. It would of course be easier to formulate my views in splendid isolation, but once I crossed the Baltic Sea... No can do.
Margot Wallström, Swedish Vice-President of the European Commission, blogs in English, because she can. Even though it makes some people angry - everything at that level is supposed to be translated to all official EU languages, some argue. (And I would take efforts to have that done if I were her, think such a way to make goodwill. But I guess blogs are still underestimated as communication at this level, that's maybe the problem here.) But I agree with her, and her supporters in the post I linked to: we have to communicate as good as we can, about things that matter, if we want any cultures left to live in, in the end.
---
So, please, if you are here from the start, as part of a select(ed) few; my friends in the international brigade, give me your comments, raise an imaginary piwo, latte, or whatever, and let the discussion go on... ;-)
# posted by Gabriel : Friday, September 08, 2006
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In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein wrote “Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt”. Of course, for him that line had nothing to do with speaking foreign languages. It was rather about the limits of thinking itself; that what we cannot articulate in words we cannot truly think. Without words we are stranded; left with nothing but immediate experience.
As for weblogging, I must say that writing in English has been a surprisingly easy decision, at least for me. It creates a filter which makes the feeling of producing a life-style magazine somewhat less apparent.
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As for weblogging, I must say that writing in English has been a surprisingly easy decision, at least for me. It creates a filter which makes the feeling of producing a life-style magazine somewhat less apparent.
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