silver

This a poem by Reid, published in 1963 and taken out of An Introduction to Poetry, 8th edition, by Kennedy, X and Gioia, D (1994), HarperCollins.




Speaking a Foreign Language
Alastair Reid

How clumsy on the tongue, these acquired idioms,
after the innuendos of our own. How far
we are from foreigners, what faith
we rest in one sentence, hoping a smile will follow
on the appropriate face, always wallowing                                       5
between what we long to say and what we can,
trusting the phrase is suitable to the occasion,
the accent passable, the smile real,
always asking the traveller's fearful question--
what is being lost in translation?                                                        10

Something, to be sure. And yet, to hear
the stumbling of foreign friends, how little we care
for the wreckage of word or tense. How endearing they are,
and how our speech reaches out, like a helping hand,
or limps in sympathy. Easy to understand,                                        15
through the tangle of language, the heart behind
groping towards us, to make the translation of
syntax into love.



I have books all over my home, and I read them at odd times. I read this poem and thought: "This is it. This explains it exactly." It is incredibly frustrating to try to speak and write in French, in Chinese: two languages that I am more or less proficient in, the latter more fluently. In English, having used that language for years and still using it everywhere, the struggle to find words, to describe things adequately is easier. I never think about accents or syntax or grammar; by virtue of living in that tongue, I trust that the people I talk to understand.

In speaking Chinese, sometimes the accent slips from me; my family traditionally speaks another dialect close to Mandarin, but not quite. And so I find myself grasping, trying to form the words exactly right, and always having to think: what do I say next? How does this translate from English to Chinese? In French, because there is nowhere that really requires me to speak in the language, it's even worse. Seeing a word beginning with "r" induces a mild panic in me; I scramble to find the correct word that has already popped up in my mind in English.

Writing is even worse. Working in English is like using tiny tools to craft delicate jewelry; trying to write in French or Chinese is akin to using big thick gloves and trying to manipulate those tools. That exquisite control that makes some writing such a delight to read is lost when I try in other languages.

And yet, like the poem describes in the second stanza, when I talk with people whose native tongue is not English, it hardly matters whether they have an accent or not. The worry that the speaker feels is not translated into frustration for the listener; the mangled syntax is endearing (line 13) and easily pushed away.