Incidentally, this profusion of thoughts and feelings was triggered by a simple line I read today in Shakespeare’s Sonets: “As truth and beauty shall together thrive.”
On Language Being a Tool
Some people insist that “language is but a tool for communication”. Even intelligent people say so. My answer to this is generally simple: “Yes, I agree that there are people for whom languages are but a simple tool. Likewise, there are people, for whom women are but a tool for childbearing.” Think simple! Do your job well! What else is there to do in a technologically intricate and spiritually neolithic era such as ours. This is one reason why I dislike working for translation companies who deal with “localizations” and “technical translations”. Why, Google Translate is verily a tool and a mighty one for such translators. The natural follow-up of this “toolist” thinking is “language is a function of the brain for making money”. And we translators sell our brains and precious time not for creating artefacts of culture, but for localizing other people’s means of money-making. Cynical, isn’t it? No? Well, then why do you consider the thought of women being tools of genetic translations as cynical? Matter of nature, matter of course! People are highly illogical and inconsistent in their “promotion” of ideas. Laws punish severely murderers of children, but neglect industrial murderers of Nature which in turn kills millions of children. They prosecute kidnappers of children, but overlook cigarette kidnappers of children’s health! There is a world of “toolism” and duplicity for a simple quest for happiness for you!The overall gains of this why-bother “toolism” are time-saving for more entertainment consummation. But! For me, language is the clothing, the house and the food of our soul. We need a great deal of purity, tidiness, nutrition and meticulous care for our language, in order to be genuine human beings. Otherwise, we are also becoming tools. In other tools’ hands.What a toolish world!