Whenever a person is compelled to study a foreign language  - unless with the aim of broadening one’s culture – that person will suffer restriction on their linguistic right, mainly if the foreign language is to be used in communication with someone who has it as their mother tongue.

In a dialogue; those compelled to speak in the interlocutor’s language is always at a disadvantage to one who speaks it as a native.  The attention of the person who seeks to express himself in a different language is divided between the use of the language in which ones tries to communicate and the subject of the conversation.

It is far easier for those who use their own language to negotiate, to influence, to convince, to sell, and even to dominate, as the non native speaker has his attention turned not only to the subject matter, but also to the worry of not expressing themselves in an inadequate or even ridiculous manner.

The apprehension in relation to committing mistakes in pronunciation or expressing oneself in non-unusual phrase constructions is a cause for much inhibition, as on speaking, the native speaking person recalls hilarious situations regarding foreign people who are speaking their language and which are largely explored in regular comedy programs.

There are many situations in which the native speaker understands, but as the phrase construction is not used, it causes oddness at least.

Therefore, to elect globally, a natural language for the performance of a task of inter-language is to hurt the legitimate right of all people who do not have this particular language as their national language, giving the people who talk it as natives a series of prerogatives against which other peoples must rise up against, arguing the same right to not to be compelled to the costs and efforts needed to learn a foreign language.

Translation is not as it seems, a simple activity - It is very true that each foreign language that one is able to communicate in represents an open window to the world. This case is very different from the compulsory study carried out for international communication at an academic or professional level. The language of another people, learned by necessity, is a violation of man’s linguistic right.

How many years are required for a learning process that enables in the majority of times just a poor, deficient performance?

Is it fair that users of certain languages have natural ease of communication, while people of other languages spend precious time and resources to achieve a deficient and imperfect communication?

The learning of foreign languages carried out by those who are compelled to use them as an international language hurts a natural right of equality, by forcing someone to use a language code that presents a level of difficulty differentiated between the two parties.

But if everyone wants to exercise the right to speak their own language there is no possibility of communication in the world, except by resorting to translation services. Translation is a positive step in the field of respect for language rights. But the presence of the translator greatly burdens communication, especially verbal, besides in many instances, disfiguring it completely.

Without reaching for the hardness of the Italian aphorism: "traduttore, traditore," is to recognize that the intermediate figure of the interpreter minimises - when not erasing all - many important nuances of speech. Moreover, it should be recognized that translation is not a simple activity as it seems at first glance.

To translate is to transverse from one universe to another - To translate does not mean simply replacing the words of a language with their counterparts in the other, as the layman usually thinks. If it were, there are a lot of computers which would be operating to replace human translators. To translate means to decode a message, interpreting it completely and deeply, and then recode it in another language, which often presents specific features in its structure, in its expressive resources, often very different from that in which the message was originally prepared.

To translate is to transverse from one universe to another, as each speech community cuts reality, categorizing it in their own way, thus building, its linguistic universe. Natural languages are symbolic and reflect the world in a very special way, confining their own reasoning within the linguistic limits of each people. So, a good level translation requires from the translator; besides a large amount of specific knowledge of the area in which one operates; a large mastery of the two languages, which necessarily includes deep knowledge of the psychology of these languages.

Written translation is simpler. Deep in his office, the translator has time to research, analyse, compare, and meditate, to finally, after having consulted a colleague, decide the most appropriate way.

But with verbal interpreting, either parallel or simultaneous, there is the psychological pressure of possible comparisons of expected listeners who have access to both languages. There is also the time factor. We have to translate, anyway, that sound sequence because another will succeed immediately and the first sequence can not be repeated. However great the translator’s competence, one looses the eloquence, the nuances of voice, the liveliness, the magnetism, the feeling of the speaker.

A translator is a human being, not a machine - In the case of the translator functioning as an interpreter, in the presence of the interlocutors, there are other aspects to be considered: the physical presence, the facial expression, mime, the timbre of the voice, all this may favourably or unfavourably impress the translator, whose emotional state will influence, if not in tone, at least in the choice of the word or phrase they will use. A translator is a human being, endowed with preferences and idiosyncrasies, and not a machine.

In many cases, however much one tries, one fails to convey the message with colourful or desirable emphasis heard, simply because he is a translator, a linguistic interpreter, not an actor who completely takes on the personality of who one is reproducing the message.

Unless the message is extremely simple, it is very unlikely that it is not affected by the translator, this effect ranging from simple mechanical translation, with the deletion of the expressive power up to unconscious or conscious cuts and additions.

Therefore, in a conversation between speakers of different languages, the communication will be more effective if it is direct because then the intermediate personality of the translator gets eliminated. But, as a matter of fairness, of respecting the linguistic rights of the people, this direct communication should be carried out through a language other than the mother tongue of any of the parties.

In the case of adopting any neutral language, the influences received from outside would be originated from different sources, as they would be conducted through a language equally accessible to all people.

A neutral international language is not a utopia - The adoption of a neutral international language would allow those people whose languages do not have  international penetration, the disclosure of their politics, their philosophical thought, and their social and scientific progress directly to the rest the world, without being subject to the selection process of the flow of information to which translation into natural language would lead.

On translating a work into a natural language, rarely does one have a view to its worldwide release, except in the case of scientific or technical work. Who would translate works of our literature into English or French, if there was no interest in the countries where these languages are spoken?

For example: a work written in Portuguese will hardly come to the knowledge of a Dane, a Finn, a Hungarian, a Swede or others, if does not pass through the sieve of interest to the users of English and, to a lesser extent, French.

The reverse is also true: Portuguese-speaking readers fail to take notice of numerous works originally written in lesser known languages, such as those cited, because they were not previously translated into English or French. One rarely has access to these works and of some other people, due to this perverse selection process.

Translation into a neutral language, on the contrary, would be intended equally to all peoples and would greatly facilitate access to a world literature, much more vast to the people in whose languages the translations would not be profitable.

A neutral international language is not a utopia, because in Europe for nearly a millennium, people communicated through a neutral language, Latin, which was an instrument of diplomatic communication, dissemination of scientific and philosophical discussion and policy. The use of this language by Roman Catholicism carried on up to the twentieth century.

Esperanto, the new Latin of the Church and Ecumenism - It is to be noted that Latin used as inter-language was not the Latin that was spoken daily by people, known as the "Sermo Vulgaris" Latin. It was not the language which, subject to the instability of natural evolutionary process, would be transformed and diversified into the various Romance languages. The language used in international communications was the stable product, highly developed by grammarians and stylists of Latinity, which it might be called today as planned language.

The fact that it did not belong to any people, it gave Latin the first condition for performing the role of inter-language: political neutrality. In the academic and diplomatic scope, Latin started losing ground to French and then to English. Its use carried on in Roman Catholicism until the second Vatican Concillium, because religious services were still celebrated Latin. The only exception was Esperanto, by expressed permission of Pope Pius XI.

Today, communication difficulties in the conclaves of the Church are appearing with more evidence to the point of arising a book entitled "Esperanto, the new Latin of the Church and Ecumenism" (1), prefaced by Dr. Gyorgy Jakubinyi, Archbishop of Alba Iulia, Romania. The commitment towards being maintained at current condition is great, but in truth, there is no single natural language that ensures its user free movement around the world, not to say even throughout Europe.

Natural languages always find strong restrictions on their use as an international language, restrictions that vary according to the areas where you intend to use them.

Nevertheless, the economically and politically powerful nations concentrate great efforts and spend enormous financial resources in order to disseminate and, to some extent impose their languages for international use, as the political prestige and the economic advantages are undeniable yields that return as high dividends arising from well applied investments.

By highlighting the severity of this problem, I do not defend nonsense nationalism, closed to renovating ideas from abroad. It is common sense that no country can progress appreciably if it is closed to salutary confrontation with ideas generated in other cultures. (To be concluded in the next issue.)

Sources:

1. MATTHIAS, Ulrich. Esperanto - the New Latin of the Church and Ecumenism. Campinas: 2003

2. PIRON, Claude. La Bona Lingvo. Viena: IEM, 1997.

3. SAPIR, Edward. Linguistics as a Science. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Acadêmica, 1969.

4. BURNEY, Pierre. Les Langues Internationeles. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962