When I was in high school I learnt something which made me realise how amazing human beings really are. As far as everybody knows, we are the only living beings with self-awareness and knowledge of our own consciousness. We are the only race that is different from the rest, but what is it that makes us that especial?
We are not stronger than bears or tigers: physically, we are one of the weakest of all living beings. For example, at the moment of birth, even mammals have shown an impressive characteristic: most baby animals are able to crawl or even walk abound, often just minutes after they are born, whereas humans need at least one year to achieve the same. In this sense we are a really weak living being. Though, at the same time, we are the master race. Why?
We have something that the rest of the animals do not have: language. This is our own unique characteristic and yet we don’t really pay it enough attention.
Language is not just a form of communication which goes from signs to words; it brings us the most important part of humans: the ability to think abstractly. By language we can think, something that otherwise would be impossible to achieve. We can think thanks to the words that we have learnt since our childhood. Thus we are at the same time one of the weakest animals and one of the most amazing ones. As Descartes said “I think, therefore I am”.
However, as I said above, language is learned, what means that even your own thoughts are dependent on your country, culture, institutions… The concept of language is universal, but learning a language cannot be achieved without contact with human society. This is why we are social beings; since our birth we need one another. Thus, thoughts, speech, and our whole identity are all thanks to language, but as I said, even if it is universal, it’s dependent upon many factors. An example of this could be seen in this picture:
In fact, there are many different languages with different structues – English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese… And, upon those our form of thought is very much dependent. For example, in Asiatic languages (and Finnish!) there are no have future tenses, which means that native speakers of those languages think in a completely different way than English speakers and others whose native language has a way of expressing future tense.
This is why, since language has made us what we are, and since different forms of language can affect even the way we think, I think that translator work is one of the most interesting jobs in the world.