Languages are a link in time

Only through languages man has been able to link his present life to the past and to let future generations build their own links to a time that will then be their past.

I've already written about how important and how great languages are, and about how they have a crucial role in man's history and in the construction of different kinds of stories that are essential for thousands of cultures from all around the world.

This time I want to share with you a beautiful poem by Carl Sanburg, an American writer, editor and poet that has win three Pulitzer prizes. The poem is called "Languages" and says a lot about what they represent for man in time, and about how man molds them to make them become a symbol of what he really is.

It also talks about how time changes everything, both man and languages, and about how, like rivers, languages can transform and also die…

I'll just share it with you and leave these beautiful words to your own interpretation. I hope you like it!

Languages

By Carl Sandburg

THERE are no handles upon a language

Whereby men take hold of it

And mark it with signs for its remembrance.

It is a river, this language,

Once in a thousand years

Breaking a new course

Changing its way to the ocean.

It is mountain effluvia

Moving to valleys

And from nation to nation

Crossing borders and mixing.

Languages die like rivers.

Words wrapped round your tongue today

And broken to shape of thought

Between your teeth and lips speaking

Now and today

Shall be faded hieroglyphics

Ten thousand years from now.

Sing--and singing--remember

Your song dies and changes

And is not here to-morrow

Any more than the wind

Blowing ten thousand years ago.

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If translation didn't exist...

"Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament". Milan Kundera.

We live in such a modern world and we are now used to so many technologies and devices that we hardly value or stop to think about the different disciplines and arts that make so many things possible…

There's one good example of great importance because of everything that has been created and transformed thanks to it, and that is translation. Translation has united cultures, societies, artists, writers, businesses, countries and people around the world within the passage of time.

The art of translation has made possible that the most amazing history, poetry and literature works of the greatest thinkers and authors of all times can be read, studied and understood by millions of people that speak hundreds of different languages.

The fact that there are professionals dedicated to study languages and specializing in really knowing the cultural details and customs of different countries and regions has made possible that persons from really faraway places of the planet can establish communication and find that they actually have things in common.

Since there are more than 300 spoken languages in the world, if translation didn't exist, you wouldn't be doing a lot of the things you do in your daily life. For example, you wouldn't be able to watch thousands of movies from directors of different countries because there would be no way for you to understand them, since there wouldn't exist subtitles for you to read the dialogs in your own language.

Also, many television shows that have been adapted from the originals from other countries wouldn't reach your national television providers guide, because they would be in their original languages…Furthermore, a lot of great famous books that have been adapted to the big screen couldn't possibly be so because of the fact that the books are written in the author's native languages, which can't be comprehended by the scriptwriters.

There are countless examples in countless fields that transform your everyday life because of the possibilities that translation has brought to life. The world would be a completely different place and wouldn't be so culturally rich and so full of knowledge if it weren't for translation and, of course, for translators.

Even scientific inventions and science development have advanced much more and faster because of the possibility of uniting the knowledge and the experiments of scientists from around the world that do research and work in their own languages.

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