European Day of Languages, by Lisa Shaddick, Managing Director

“One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way “. That’s what Frank Smith, author and psycholinguistic researcher said, in his book To Think: In Language, Learning and Education. And while speaking more than one language expands your perspective and fosters better cross-cultural understanding, it is never so true as today - European Day of Languages, a Council of Europe annual initiative that began in 2001, and something everyone at Indaba can get behind.

European Day of Languages promotes plurilingualism throughout Europe by encouraging people to discover more languages at any age. According to the Council of Europe, “linguistic diversity is a tool for achieving greater intercultural understanding.” It also cites plurilingualism as a key element in Europe’s rich cultural heritage. As a consultancy who since 1984 has worked in upwards of 15 languages for its clients every day, Indaba couldn’t agree more.

Proud of our polyglots

Indaba’s multinational, multilingual team has been at the core of our business model since our inception in 1984. We have bilingual, trilingual, fluent, and those truly impressive polyglots. For me personally, despite a fairly decent level of “menu” French and Spanish, I stick to the two languages in which I am bilingual: British English and American English. That usually gets a smattering of laughs in meetings, but as George Bernard Shaw quipped, they are indeed “two nations separated by a common language”, so it does come in handy when looking at vocabulary, idioms and general cultural context.

Cultural nuance for the win

As we barrel towards a ChatGPT and AI focused world, it may feel like the need for a multicultural team is becoming moot. For translations, for example, while I can appreciate the place of machine translations to do the bulk of a job, the nuance, tone and subtleties that shape that language and that piece of content can only be honed by a person with experience. A single word can change the meaning. Language is, after all, infinitely more than a sum of words put together.

The beauty of idioms

What better way to end a discussion about languages than to finish with some exceptional examples of idioms from some European languages that the Indaba team has flagged as their favourites.

  • In German - jemandem auf der Nase herumtanzen means to act up with someone but literally translated is dancing on someone’s nose
  • In Polish - mieć muchy w nosie means to be in a bad mood but literally translated is having flies in your nose - you would be in a bad mood with flies in your nose!
  • In Swedish - ge igen för gammal ost means to seek revenge but literally translated is to get back for old cheese
  • In Dutch - helaas pindakaas means too bad but literally translated is the utterly glorious unfortunately peanut butter, which I encourage everyone to use on European Day of Languages and beyond!