Language

Using language correctly when you are trying to communicate in a different culture is acutely important. When making the effort to write/speak as clearly as possible the chances of misunderstandings occurring are greatly diminished and thus clear communications can take place and lead to happy endings and great results.
A challenge for this trip which I think about and face every day of my life is ‘the language barrier’. Fortunately for me my brain and my tongue have never really considered English a barrier. However, now we are going the other way - and although the majority of Danes are quite used to both listening to and using the English languages it is still important to be  very clear and concise.
And so the challenge for me on this trip is to polish up the language which I grew up in. But since I don’t use it with lots of people for exchange of ideas and thoughts every day the vocabulary tends to stagnate a bit.
This I discovered to my great dismay when I sat down to translate our bios - well, I thought it would be a ‘quick job’. And I was wrong.
The thoughts which were so clear and vibrant in English suddenly got muddled and murky when I started to translate. The intensity of the sentences or the ideas were weakened and truthfully I started to sweat a little.
Someone had mentioned the translation services on Google and I admit that initially I laughed it off. But as I struggled along I thought, ok, what will happen? and .... I asked Google to translate a bio for me. What happened was not that I was suddenly relieved of all the work.
No, I still had to keep myself in the midst of the word pie. What became abundantly clear though was that now I could see what the words in the bio were not saying. When the translation was way off in left field it became easier for me to see or hear the word combination which was the right one for this or that sentence.
It was quite a revelation, for the ‘confuser’ translations were sometimes so outrageous that I had to laugh before I changed the words and thus was able to get the ‘right’ sounds and feelings out of each bio.
I also had the great pleasure of spending lots of time on Skype with both a friend and family members, whom I had sent all the bio’s to. I had several hours of language discussions switching between Danish and English before being satisfied that the translations sounded great and coherent in Danish as well as being as true to the original English pieces as possible.

First tapestry for the exhibits in Denmark coming along nicely - ah, the inspiration of those walls around us can be quite captivating and twisted!

These days I am working on putting together an article for the magazine Husfliden, a magazine connected to VærkstedGalleriet in Kerteminde where we will exhibit our creations from mid September until mid October. The article is fermenting and changing shape and colour most every day, but I do think that it is almost there - the time is neigh for the words to come out in one long stream - hopeful a coherent and delightful stream. We shall see.

Weavingly yours,
Warped participant in SEVEN,
Pia
Wonderous Woolerie