Do Understand Us!

A short anecdote to start with: recently the head of a band of counterfeiters was arrested in Vienna. The police had no end of trouble with him, as they could not work out where he came from. Not only had he several forged passports from different countries, he also spoke four eastern European languages without an accent and so fluently that none of them betrayed his true identity.
Almost everybody has a number of stories to tell on the theme of language. Language affects each of us, it represents identity and is thus an important aspect of what it means to be human, and it is a fingerprint of the soul. There is a Slovene saying that goes: "A person has as many souls as the number of languages he or she speaks.“

This makes it all the worse when your language is taken away from you, if you are obliged to express yourself awkwardly with a smattering of perhaps 1500 English words. Everybody knows the feeling: you feel amputated, alienated from yourself. However, you are not alone with this kind of experience: over 50 different languages are spoken in the western areas of the EU, but by now, in the eastern regions alone, twice as many.
 
But how can we solve the problem of language in the EU in the future? Although the publisher Lojze Wieser (see interview) accepts the existence of what he terms "communicative" languages, such as, for example, English, at the same time he insists on everyone's right to an interpreter. A measure that, according to Wieser, would require only a modest financial expenditure, especially if one takes into account the kind and number of social conflicts that could be prevented as a result.

The Croatian philosopher, Boris Buden (see interview) believes that there is neither a European language per se, nor that one of the European national languages could take on this role. He says that a language of Europe can be understood more in terms of a kind of translation practice, as linguistic communication that takes place within a process of constant reciprocal translation.

But it seems that we haven't (yet) reached this stage – not in our magazine either. At present (regrettably) it appears in only two of the major "communicative" languages of the EU – English and German. But, as you can see from the language buttons we have already set up, we are pursuing the process of constant reciprocal translation, which at the moment is taking place backstage – in the editorial office. Translations of individual articles into Hungarian, Slovakian and Czech are planned for the future.

In this context: please try to understand us nevertheless!

With kind regards,
Antje Mayer and Manuela Hötzl
Redaktionsbuero

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