Translating on behalf of Animals & Le Guin
During the process of designing for and with animals there is always an inherent tension between our humanness, and the use of our human cognitive abilities to understand the experience of animals. The quality of our work is determined by our ability to understand and empathize with the animal user, and our ability to act as translators of their experiences and needs. Yet in translating, we must be weary of what we assume we are translating from, the context the translation is taking place, and into what we are translating.
The complexity and nuance of inter species translation is beautifully narrated in the short story The Author of The Acacia Seeds And Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics by Ursula K Le Guin. Le Guin’s ability to create succinct yet detailed fictional contexts that prompt the reader to complete her worlds by using their imaginations is magnificent. This story, beyond its literally beauty, captures 3 principles that when applied to animal centered design, moves the study of the animal experience beyond mere task analysis towards an intrinsic understanding of animal substance.
The story starts with the discovery of a message left by an ant before a colony was overtaken in war. The message is composed of a series of “degerminated acacia seeds laid in rows.” Le Guin first identifies the possible writer of the message, “a wingless neutered female worker” because, as she explains, “ants of the soldier caste are illiterate…” In doing so, she exposes the colony’s social norms and hierarchy, and their relatation to labor, knowledge, and ability.
Through the application of therolinguistics - the fictional scientific study of beast language - the seeds are translated. Contained in the message is the phrase “Up with the Queen.” The story considers the meaning of the phrase from a human perspective, interpreting it as a rallying cry to save the Queen; yet, when considered from an ant perspective, the narrative tells us that in fact the word up might indicate moving the Queen up and out of the colony to exile and death, changing the meaning of the phrase to a possible act of rebellion. That such a simple word as up could have such different interpretations highlights how important it is for us in animal related fields to be aware and learn how to resolve the tension between trying to stand in animals’ hooves, paws, fins, and talons, while applying a keenly empathic and humanly aware perspective.
The story continues with the Announcement of an Expedition by D. Petri, a therolinguist who has obtained a UNESCO grant to translate the “kinetic sea writings of Penguin…” a “script written almost entirely in wings, neck and air…”. The announcement includes an overview of the history of the study of Penguin language, which although initially thought to be similar to that of Dolphin; is now considered to be closer in content to that of birds; Penguins’ airborne cousins. Furthermore, we learn that the kinetic language of Adelie penguins has already been translated into dance by the world famous Leningrad Ballet; and that the expedition wishes to focus on translating Emperor; whose smaller yet highly social living groups might hopefully produce writings more suited to be translated into human speech.
The announcement makes the reader aware that similar to humans, single animal species might have very different language structures that can be outside our current human frameworks of linguistic understanding. Yet it pushes us to question our boundaries - should we focus on Emperor because of it’s potential to be more similar to human speech; or should continue to study Adelie and expand out understanding of kinetic language? The question highlights another facet of the tension between our humanness and our human abilities; requiring that our approach to the study of animals be assumed with a heightened degree of humility and willingness to move outside our comfort zones. Knowing that even if we continued to study Adelie we would be using human frameworks to translate movement, while requiring us to engage with animals into unknown territories
The final part of the story presents an editorial authored by the president of the Therolinguistics Association. He starts by stating that “Plants do not communicate; that is a fact. Therefore plants have no language.” Yet as his writing continues, he begins to question his initial statement, accepting that “for all the tremendous advances made by therolinguistics during the last decades, we are only at the beginning of our age of discovery …. and we have not faced the almost terrifying challenge of the Plant.” He continues, “Remember that so late as the mid-twentieth century, most scientists, and many artists did not believe that Dolphin would ever be comprehensible to the human brain-or worth comprehending! Let another century pass, and we may seem equally laughable. “Do you realize,” the phytolinguist will say to the aesthetic critic, “that they couldn´t even read Eggplant?” And they will smile at our ignorance, as they pick up their rucksacks and hike on up to read the newly deciphered lyrics of the lichen on the north face of Pike´s Peak.”
Here, we can again see the tension between our human tendency towards certainty and our great curiosity. As the apex species, we have the responsibility to use our cognitive abilities to continue on the never ending path of discovery. Acknowledging that the world around us and the pH-auna and flora within it are so vast that we would be foolish to think that we have it all figured out. Accepting that nature has an intrinsic language that we might just haven´t learned to understand … yet.
