Words and ideas between cultures

Huffington Post now has a Japanese feed, and I’ve subscribed to its Twitter feed. As a result I get a daily stream of new articles in Japanese. One headline that caught my eye contained the phrase｢生きづらさ｣ (ikizurasa).

In our Bible studies, on a number of occasions, we’ve discussed the idea that words can be translated directly into another language but lose their meanings across cultures. What I found above is an example.

Ikizurasa is literally translated (by Google) as “Difficulty in living.” That is a literally precise translation and it make sense. The phrase really is about a general sense in which people find it difficult to live their lives.

Now when I first saw that phrase I “knew” what it meant. As I struggled to find the right English word or phrase, what came to my mind was not the literal translation but the thought equivalents of “depression” and “hopelessness.” The fact is that there are other literal Japanese translations for these words.

In the article that I first saw ikizurasa, the causes for this state of being included things such as bullying, corporal punishment, abuse, experiences of significant loss, romantic heartbreak, and “hired” romance. The article described self-injury and suicide as possible results of this state. I searched for the use of this term and additional causes include un- under-employment, the sense that one has no ability to change his/her circumstances, and the inability to find meaning and purpose in life. In the American culture, we would call someone experiencing these thoughts and feelings, depressed.

Yet “depression” fails to adequately account for the entire state of being that is connoted by ikizurasa. Hence the automatic translation does not see the two as equivalent.

I thought of another word that helps translate ikizurasa. This is the French term ennui which has found its way into English and other languages (including Japanese, as a direct phonetic of the French). But that too, describes only a subset of what I conjure up in my mind when I hear ikizurasa.

I think this is a real-life, contemporary reminder of how we misread, misinterpret, misunderstand, and misapply the Bible because we assume that a word we read in English means what is means in English, today, to us. In reality, the word may mean much more or less, and something quite different from what we assume. The translator may have had no better words and found the closest approximation. Or the translator may have precisely and literally translated to English, but the meaning is something altogether different.

For me this is a warning against stating any definitive conclusions based solely upon the biblical text, particularly from a translated text. And even if one uses the “original” text, it is impossible to truly identify and immerse into the culture where and when it was written, thus disallowing any sort of definitive interpretation. All interpretations are approximations with a strong component of opinion. We need to see them in that light.