Untranslatables 不可言喻

According to French philosopher Barbara Cassin, an untranslatable is not a word that cannotbe translated but a word that deserves to be translated again and again. Often when we wantto create difference and some kind of a gap between us as people from different ‘cultures’we might claim that some words from our language cannot be translated into otherlanguages. At times, this creates some (manufactured) characteristic of who we are thatmight place us above others. This is the case with one of the words that appears in thispainting, sisu. A Finnish word, sisu is often said to be a typical characteristic of Finnish people– resilience, perseverance in English. It often serves the purpose of placing some kind of wallbetween us and them and, in few cases, to discriminate against others – as if saying: only wehave sisu, resilience. However, in different languages, there are many potential equivalentsto this Finnish untranslatable. These are the other terms appearing in the painting (e.g.cojonesin Spanish; sumud in Arabic…). I created this landscape in two parts: the front is meantto symbolize racing tracks where the untranslatables compete for difference and (maybe)superiority; the back is yet another mountainous background which looks unattainable,unreachable. My assumption is that by the end of the tracks, if these words encounter insilence, leaving space for confronting and negotiating meanings and connotations, they willcome together and succeed in climbing together in silence (again) the rugged mountainswhich remind us by their grandeur of how small we are as beings. Although difference oftenleads us to noise (“my difference makes me better because…”; “your difference does notallow you to…”), coming together quietly around apparent difference can help us be merehumans who struggle for the same things and who share the same aspirations.

根据法国哲学家Barbara Cassin的说法，不可翻译的词不是不能翻译的词，而是值得反复翻译的词。通常，当我们想在来自不同“文化”的人之间创造差异和某种差距时，我们可能会声称我们语言中的一些单词无法翻译成其他语言。有时，这会创造出我们的某些（人为的）特征，可能会使我们凌驾于他人之上。这幅画中出现的一个词就是这样，sisu。作为一个芬兰语单词，sisu通常被认为是芬兰人的典型特征——在英语中是坚韧、毅力。它的目的往往是在我们和他们之间设置某种屏障，在极少数情况下，歧视他人——就好像在说：只有我们有韧性。然而，在不同的语言中，这种芬兰语不可翻译的语言有许多潜在的等价物。这些是画中出现的其他术语（例如西班牙语中的cojones；阿拉伯语中的sumud…）。我将这一景观分为两个部分：正面是卑鄙的，象征着不可翻译的人争夺差异和（也许）优势的赛道；背面是另一个山的背景，看起来遥不可及。我的假设是，到了轨道的尽头，如果这些词遇到了内在的东西，为直面和协商意义和内涵留下了空间，它们就会走到一起，并成功地（再次）在寂静中一起攀登崎岖的山脉，这些山脉以它们的壮丽提醒我们，作为一个生命，我们是多么渺小。尽管差异经常会让我们产生噪音（“我的差异让我变得更好，因为……”；“你的差异不允许你……”），但围绕明显的差异安静地走到一起，可以帮助我们成为为同样的事情而奋斗、有着相同愿望的人类。

BIODATA - 艺术家简介

A renowned scholar in the field of intercultural communication and education, Fred Dervin (Chinese name: 文德 Wende) is also an artist. He holds two PhDs (Sorbonne University in Paris and University of Turku, Finland), is a full professor and PhD supervisor at the University of Helsinki, Finland.  Dervin also holds several distinguished and visiting professorships in Australia, Canada, China, Luxembourg, Malaysia and Sweden, as well as in other Finnish universities. Dervin has published internationally on questions of identity, interculturality and mobility/migration (over 150 articles and 80 books). His interest in art began when he was a teenager and has continued to grow over the decades. Over the past decade, he has produced artworks in China and Finland to showcase his scientific ideas. His commitment to the arts has also influenced his personal research (e.g. the benefits of arts education for intercultural communication). For decades he has collected and specialized in Finnish art from the mid-20th century and since 2015 he has been actively involved in producing his own art in relation to his research work. In his 2022 book entitled Interculturality in Fragments: A Reflexive Approach (Springer), he included 10 of his works of art to stimulate his readers to think beyond words about intercultural communication and education. He is just about to publish a book on art and interculturality in education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

Dervin is interested in the complexity of depicting faces in his art work by using different techniques. Interestingly, the Finnish word "face", "kasvot", always appears in the plural, which piqued his curiosity about the human face. This interest also comes from his scientific research on identity and intercultural communication, as well as his experience of living in different parts of the world.

文德是世界跨文化教育领域的知名学者，同时还是一位优秀的艺术家。他拥有法国索邦大学和芬兰图尔库大学两所世界知名古老院校的博士学位。现担任芬兰赫尔辛基大学的终身教授及博士生导师，同时还在世界各国及地区担任荣誉教授和客座教授。他发表了超过150篇学术性文章和80余部学术专著，探讨关于身份、跨文化交流与教育、流动迁移等社会问题。他对艺术的兴趣始于青少年时期，经过多年的积累形成了自己独特的艺术风格。在过去的十几年中，他在中国与芬兰这两个他热爱的土地上创作了许多带有鲜明个人特色的作品。同时，他将艺术创作与个人学术研究相结合，并放入个人著作中，以帮助读者更好地理解和思考研究背后的故事和意义。特别是近一年间，他对脸和镜子进行了细致地观察和理解，并创作了许多富有内涵和想象力的创作，这些作品部分也将会出现在他明年的著作中。