Bridging the Gap

The best auxiliary is a thoughtfully-designed artificial language, because it minimises politics and learning time. Sadly, history suggests people instinctively resist artificial languages, no matter how easy or ingenious, for reasons no less persuasive for being devoid of common sense.

Colonial languages sometimes establish themselves as de facto auxiliaries. These are the tongues of nations looking to build an empire, be it military, economic or cultural. English is the most active colonial language in the West. Russian, Arabic and Mandarin dominate other parts of the world. Colonial languages have the benefit of presence and power, but as auxiliaries they create as many problems as they solve. Non-native speakers automatically receive second-class status. Worse yet, colonial languages work their way into target cultures and tinker with their values, causing weaknesses colonisers may exploit. Such concerns are moot if 1) the coloniser has been neutralised, as when a colony becomes independent, and 2) no indigenous class speaks the colonial language maternally.

Machine translation has been ballyhooed for fifty years as the definitive solution to the language problem. Science has in fact made incredible strides in that direction. Nevertheless, my position remains "as if." Language is fatally illogical, far too complex for contemporary technology. Fluent electronic translation may be reality one day, but no one alive today will see it.

Apollo-Soyuz, the Canadian system and auxiliary languages work well when conscientiously applied. Sadly, few multilingual ventures start out with a viable communication plan. Usually a colonial language is imposed on everyone else, with predictable consequences.

If you're involved in a multilingual venture, memorise this sentence: "Bite the wax tadpole." Don't recognise it? It's "Pepsi" in Mandarin, according to Pepsi's multi-million-dollar Chinese advertising campaign.

The implications are clear: you spend on language, or you spend on failure.

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