Temba, his arms open
Dec. 10th, 2016 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyume![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
wakanomori announced last night that we had to watch a particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Darmok." It had come up in a discussion of Japanese poetry translation--relevant, because part of what makes translation of Japanese poetry difficult is its reliance on shared cultural references and metaphors to convey meaning, and the episode is about the Enterprise's encounter with the Children of Tama, an alien people that the Federation has never been able to communicate successfully with. The universal translator is no good, because the Children of Tama communicate entirely in cultural references and metaphors, and these are unknown to the Federation.1The aliens beam Captain Picard and their own captain, Dathon, down to the planet El-Adrel, where Dathon assiduously repeats pertinent cultural phrases ("Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra," "Temba, his arms open," "Shaka, when the walls fell"), trying to make Picard understand.
The way in which understanding finally dawns, and what happens after that, is very effective and moving and involves Picard reading from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Picard remarks at one point, "In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure." Those words of hope and confidence filled me with pathos, thinking of where the world is today.
Anyway. It's a good episode. I recommend it.
1 As the tall one observed, "They talk entirely in memes." Unsurprising, then, that the episode has generated memes of its own--like this one, featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.
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Date: 2016-12-11 01:05 pm (UTC)For the sake of argument, I'll say that I can imagine people's minds working in such a way that they didn't think to rearrange the small units of language (the verbs and nouns, etc.) into freestanding sentences that would explain things. In other words, I can imagine people having a conception of "walls" that attaches to the word "walls" and of "fell" that attaches to the word "fell" etc., but no habit (and maybe no possibility) of using those independent of some piece of cultural knowledge. Sort of like having numbers as adjectives to describe things (these sheep are fluffy, large, and two, these bowls of water are shallow, cool, and two) but not having a concept of numbers as freestanding abstractions. In the episode, "Shaka, when the walls fell" is used in instances of setback and defeat, and I imagine if people used it around you as a small child every time those instances arose, you'd get the meaning. If there are other phrases with Shaka in them, you might get a sense of Shaka's overall story.
But yeah: it's hard to imagine how you'd get new information into the system--how would "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" be conveyed to the rest of the society, who weren't there? And, as you suggest, that retroactively makes one wonder how the initial phrases could ever have gotten established.
I guess the best I can think is that you'd have a society in which straight talking, without references, is very weak and underdeveloped, and a very strong preference for talking in references. But that's still a step back from talking entirely in references.