Polonius. What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet. Words, words, words.
Polonius. What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet. Between who?
William Shakespeare «Hamlet»,
Act II, Scene 2
We never read books with the sole purpose of retrieving useful information. A book is always a window into another world, rarely accessible by any other means either because of its historical and geographical distance, cultural difference, or simply because it does not exist in the reality.
Furthermore, certain words and phrases enable us to identify “kindred intelligences”, people of a cultural background similar to ours. Quotes from certain books, songs, or films act as passwords, instantly indicating a possibility of better interaction and understanding. Bulgakov, Pushkin, Ilf and Petrov, Chekhov, The Strugatsky Brothers, Dovlatov and many other writers form an intrinsic part of our lives. Their writings are deconstructed, reduced to a collection of expressions and sayings and, in this condensed form, committed to our collective memory and psyche.
Here, in North America, the passwords are not the same. Having read them in translation, we are not accustomed to their original sound and phrasing. We are unable to identify a reference to Salinger in a seemingly plain English sentence. A quote from Mark Twain will not bring out a flood of memories, will not make us crack a smile. An all-familiar tattered volume of O.Henry now sounds a little bit off, even if we understand the meaning of the quote. There are very few among us who read Hemingway in the original, we cannot cite from memory our favorite bits of Eliot’s verse. The places may have stayed the same, but the passwords have changed.
By becoming bilingual, our journal makes another step towards an attempt to establish a better contact with the world. We will continue searching for the right words and trying to understand what we hear, hoping to reach a finer level of interaction with our cultural surroundings.
Besides, we have a wonderful tool just for that purpose...
