Gaining on translation

This blog is bilingual. Yiddish is the language on the other side of the blogwall (if this web page smells of garlic, that’s the reason). Sure I have a love for languages in general; there’s a close link between my fascination with what people speak and my research into how people talk to their doctors. More details on that score in my book of a similar title.

But there might be an even closer link between translation and medicine. The philosopher W.V.O. Quine pointed out that there is no one perfect mapping of my words in English, say, into a set of words in Japanese that mean exactly the same thing. Translation, in his words, is indeterminate.

Something similar happens in the doctor-patient conversation. It is very rare (or impossible?) for the two members of that pair to say the same words in the same way to refer to the same health issue.

The way out of this conundrum is probably the same one that working translators take. Just as there is no perfect translation, only different attempts at it, there is no perfect conversation, much less between a doctor and a patient.

The translator tries to produce a work of art which elicits a sought-after effect. Similarly, doctor and patient should seek to improve communication not to get the techniques perfect, but to achieve healthy aims.