Solidarity in four different languages: tricky terms to translate.
In December each year, the BBC runs a series of lectures by leading figures. These are called the Reith Lectures, after Lord Reith, the BBC’s first director-general.
The joy of the accidental discovery
In December 2023, it was Professor Ben Ansell of Oxford University giving these lectures. This year I came across the lectures by chance, tuning into Radio 4 in the car while taking my dog to her grooming appointment. The glamorous life I lead!
This chance discovery reminded that, when we carefully curate and filter the content we consume through podcasts and streaming services we sometimes miss out on this joy of discovering something by chance.
What is the true mean of ‘solidarity’ in languages other than English?
This year’s lectures were entitled ‘Our Democratic Future’, and the episode I tuned into was ‘The Future of Solidarity’ – the third in the series. I quickly reached to turn up the volume, because when I heard ‘solidarity’ it got me thinking about the word itself and what it really means.
‘Solidarity’ is not a term I hear much among English speakers, except when someone is expressing their backing or sympathies for someone or something. To me, the word ‘solidarity’ also has quite strongly political connotations.
There are terms that look very similar to ‘solidarity’ in other languages, for example ‘solidarité/solidaire’ (French), ‘solidariedade/solidário’ (Portuguese) and ‘solidaridad/solidario’ (Spanish). In my experience, these are used more often in those languages than in English, where a different word is usually more appropriate. Especially in the international development field.
For translators, these terms are notoriously tricky to translate and, when it comes to deciding on the English word that fits best, that decision is guided by the context. So what we English speakers think of as ‘solidarity’ is not necessarily what French speakers think of when they say ‘solidarité’. Or is it?
Narrow definitions need to be ‘unpacked’ to fit their context
What I found so interesting about Professor Ansell’s lecture was that he seemed to me to be proposing a definition of solidarity. One that gets closer to the meaning of the equivalent term in French, Spanish and Portuguese. Or am I wrong about that? Let’s see what my trusty bilingual and monolingual dictionaries say.
Compared and contrasted definitions
The table below compares the meanings of roughly equivalent terms in French, Spanish, Portuguese and English. It’s worth noting that a dictionary definition is just a starting point for a professional translator – the definition can rarely just be inserted into a text as is; context is everything.
Translators do their research
What do you notice about the English definitions and examples, compared with those in the other languages? Some sources provide quite a few different examples from specific contexts and sectors. One glaringly obvious thing is that we don’t often use the word ‘solidary’ in English. Well I don’t!
Perhaps you also notice subtle differences in nuance, or perhaps you don’t think they differ much at all. What I notice is that it’s those examples in context that really tell you what the term might actually mean.
You’ll also notice that not all of the examples I’ve quoted are from conventional dictionaries. One is a corpus, and another is Wikipedia. This shows how, though the dictionary is often a translator’s starting point, things get REALLY interesting when you dig deeper than that.
I find it intriguing that the Wikipedia articles in French and English, and the parallel language corpus, offer the most context (I use Sketch Engine on most days for that reason). Perhaps because language is always evolving.
More real-life translation examples
Whichever the source language, it’s generally true that English prefers more concrete language. Over the years, this has often required me to ‘unpack’ the intended meaning behind a French, Spanish or Portuguese term to pinpoint the right English word for the context.
Depending on context and register, I’ve used some of the following words and phases to express the concept of ‘Solidaire/solidario/solidário’:
Community/community outreach
Supporting good causes
Pulling together
Inclusive
Close-knit (if talking about a team)
Socially responsible (referring to funds)
Standing shoulder to shoulder
(Re)connecting with others (when talking about people)
Charitable initiatives
For the common good
Caring (education)
As a translator, my task is to successfully communicate across cultures in a way that someone who simply ‘speaks the language’ cannot. Intercultural communication is about more than simply replacing words with other words; it recognises that our understanding of words is forever shaped by our (changing) social and cultural contexts as humans.
Over to you
Going back to the Reith Lectures, what I believe Professor Ansell was proposing was a revival and almost a repurposing of the term ‘solidarity’ that I think fits more closely with the French, Spanish and Portuguese concepts. He talks about solidarity as the ‘social glue’ that binds us together in our polarised societies.
The lecture distinguishes solidarity – a shared feeling of ‘us’ – from charity, which is more an act of a fortunate ‘us’ giving to an unfortunate ‘them’. And Ansell argues against seeing ourselves through a binary lens – us and them.
What do you think about the various meanings of the term ‘solidarity’?
Would you agree it has subtle nuances and differences between languages?
Have you found any other definitions, or have you used any other translations of these terms in your work?
From the archives: Lazy marketing speak that makes you cringe – in any language.
This is a post I wrote on my old blog back in 2010. The online world sure was a different place in 2010!
I was pleased to discover that the link to Adam’s post still works. Yay! And Synergie and dynamique are still common translation headaches for us French into English translators!
Image courtesy of Melanie Deziel @storyfuel
Lazy marketing speak that makes you cringe – in any language.
Buzzwords that don’t buzz
Earlier this week I enjoyed reading a post called ‘The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases’ over at Adam Sherk’s blog (discovered courtesy of @Betti_Moser). Reading the post, it really struck me that high ‘bleurgh’ factor buzzwords like synergy, and dynamic tend to rear their ugly heads in languages other than English, too.
GET the right TONE OF VOICE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE
When I translate French press releases into English, for example, I can usually see straight away that the ‘bleurgh’ factor could be reduced by about 70%. The tone of French press releases is often a lot more gushing and flowery than you’d normally see in English, so that’s one challenge. But the individual words themselves present a second, delicious challenge.
CHECK THE MEANING, NOT JUST THE WORDS
Synergie and dynamique are of course words with French origin, but do they really mean anything in either language, or are they just linguistic padding?
I suspect that in both languages they are used in marketing texts to give the reader a warm fuzzy feeling about the product or service being sold. In fact, here’s an aside thought: how true would it be to say that use of these words in English marketing texts is to some extent a result of unimaginative translationease creeping into English?
We’re all guilty of letting these words slip in. They’re part of our collective marketing vocabulary, and to a large extent we expect to see them. But we could probably all use them a little more sparingly (and I include myself in ‘we’!) and focus instead on packing in the information-bearing words.
DIGESTIBLE CONTENT
I’m all in favour of warm fuzzy feelings as a marketing technique, but let’s not forget that in the highly competitive, fast-paced world we live in, consumers and customers are looking for the FACTS, presented in a digestible, appealing way. My personal view is that as a wordsmith (whether you’re a translator, copywriter or writer), your mission if you choose to accept it is to use words to craft something that is a pleasure to read while conveying information in an unambiguous way.
Playing with words in this way is an art, and it takes time to perfect it. For help with copywriting, and writing in general, I highly recommend ‘Write to Sell: The Ultimate Guide To Great Copywriting’ by Andy Maslen.
So which foreign language marketing buzzwords irk you the most?
For me, it has to be synergie. Bleurgh!