Written by Lisa MacDonald.
Image credit: author.
In the Highlands of Scotland, we live close to unique and beautiful habitats. Our hillsides and moorlands are home to a multitude of delicate, small flowers, as beautiful as they are resilient in spite of harsh weather conditions and the nutrient-poor, acidic soil. Amongst the heathers and the saxifrages grow the orchids: around twenty species, the Purple, the Spotted, the Marsh, the Butterfly and the Coralroot, recently rediscovered after 250 years. They are about as tall as your hand, dotted amongst the grasses, with tiny, fragile petals. They have traded fragrance for stubbornness as they bend in the fierce winds, and you have to get down on all fours to appreciate their intricate shape and colour variance. These are the orchids I know. I have seen bigger orchids, too – when I was a child, my mother grew orchids in pots on our windowsill using a hydroponic feeding system. Those plants felt aloof and unreachable: torn from their natural habitat, they had lost the ability to speak.
The Taiwanese orchids in Naomi’s story, however, I do not know at all. When I was translating her story, I could not imagine how and where they grow, what they smell like, what colours they take and what they feel like. I imagine they must have been vibrant and important for a whole village to carry their name. I think I can see Grandma on the back of the scooter, holding on tight as she breathes in the heavy, damp scent of the vegetation and the riverbank. But I see her fleetingly, and vaguely, and I cannot quite grasp the essence of this composition.
Does it feel like I once did, a long time ago on an exceptionally warm, summer’s night, emerging from a dark cinema, startled by the weight of the evening and the promise it held? Is there a breeze? Do the orchids fill the air with sweetness as the frangipani flowers do in the South Pacific islands? I cannot quite see them or hear their voices – they are just out of reach for me. They are rooted where they should be, in their own ecosystem, and I in mine. The story is the better for its rich authenticity and its deep situatedness. It is I who lacks access to the nuances. I could simply be glad that we have a shared word for the same plant – and yet, I understand enough to know that it is not, in fact, the same plant about which we are talking. The sensory effect as well as the cultural connotations are, I suspect, quite different. Does it matter? I think it does.
All translation is, by its very nature, interpretation first. In order to reach across two languages in a meaningful way, I need to understand both as if they were my close friends. I need to know their cultural and historical context to understand the ways in which they see the world. I need to calibrate my word exchanges carefully, but that’s not enough. I need to be able to see the essence of what they describe – to grasp what is said between the lines as much as within them. An ecosystem like these orchids within their environment, a living, breathing, interconnected network of belonging anchored in time and space, is difficult to transpose, particularly when the differences between the languages go beyond grammar and syntax to include the very view of the world. Simply substituting word for word is not enough – this is not a blind jigsaw, but one in which a similar picture is being attempted with different media.
Some languages are fairly closely related, and then translation is not so difficult. If their worldview and their cultural references are comparable, then the translation is even more straightforward. Some, however, paint with such different brushes that it feels almost impossible to convey the image at all. There is a fine balance to be struck between being true to the writer’s voice and loyalty to the story, which sometimes requires boldness and heavy lifting between cultural contexts.
The best translators know more than the language. They can see how each word, phrase, sentence and paragraph will land, and how it will affect the reader. They also realise the power of rootedness and the importance of imparting this message to the reader. If someone wanted to read a story about my orchids, they could simply read a Scottish story. That’s not what we have here: this is a completely different flower, and a completely different experience. This is Taiwan, the Island of Orchids, and this orchid grows lush and luxurious. I would wager that it does not conjure up survival, but benevolence and generosity, and that this is implicitly communicated to the reader who knows the locality. When faith, customs, culture, climate, topography, flora, fauna and everything else that inhabits a story are truly local, the writer creates a richness, a realness, that is precious and clear.
The translation, though, needs to be both recognisable and yet true to its source. It needs to move to a different locality without losing its essential qualities. It needs to hover lightly yet sure-footed between the two contexts. It needs to cherish that which is beautifully unfamiliar whilst communicating something recognisable about a universal human experience, for this is surely the main reason humans tell tales. We are social creatures: herd mammals for whom the social fabric provides endless comfort and tension, but we carry the astonishing gift of counterfactual thinking. We can work through any number of scenarios through narrations that are entirely made up, yet utterly true. We only need access, gained effortlessly through shared cues or gifted to us through the midwifery of transposition.
The task of interweaving the familiar and the new just enough to open the door to other humans who lack the key can seem daunting: an act of uncertain gatekeeping. The responsibility weighs heavy – I can see it now, this picture you have created, or at least I think I can. How well can I replicate it for others? Am I passing on what you intended? In the case of endangered minority languages like Taiwanese and Gaelic, there is an additional aspect to this process. Remaining faithful and true in words as much as pictures goes a step further: the lasting testimony becomes an act of resistance in a wider sense. Using our words and witnessing our customs, and then sending both out into the world, defies the narrative of decline and neglect. We become part of a collective sense of presence, no matter the type of orchid. We may puzzle over the nuances, but there is no mistaking the fundamental concept of beauty in variety, be it horticultural or linguistic.
Lisa MacDonald is a teacher, a lecturer and a writer. She has won numerous prizes for poetry and short stories, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications across Scotland. She is also a parent, a singer and a PhD student. She lives in a small, rural community in the Highlands of Scotland, where the beauty of the landscapes belies centuries of social upheaval. Her deep investment in place and community takes many forms, and she draws strength from connections and shared concern. Her collection Mnathan na Còigich | The Women of Coigach was published in 2023.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese & Gaelic‘.
Taiwan Insight 