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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
July 12, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| August 18, 2003 |
Express yourself workshop |
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| Express Yourself - a workshop on international communication from Sally Hewlett and Yoko Furuyama |
How can we express ourselves simply in both English and Japanese? This question was explored in a workshop held by the Peace Boat language course coordinators, Sally Hewlett and Yoko Furuyama.
Starting with "spectrums", the participants physically placed themselves somewhere between the extreme "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" sides of the room according to statements read out, for example "Smoking is sexy". After choosing their point along the scale, they were asked to comment on their opinion, and given a chance to move after hearing the thoughts of others.
Then in discussions - first conducted in Japanese - about topics ranging from something that has impressed them on Peace Boat so far, to defining the greatest imbalance in the world, various images and opinions came out. The next step was to break these ideas down into simplified Japanese, as they would explain them to a child. Only then were the points translated into English. |
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| Simplifying ideas before transferring them to another language can smooth communication |
Based on observations made on the voyage around the globe, the most common ideas to emerge were the imbalance between rich and poor, militarily strong vs. weak countries, and the differences between English speaking and non-English speaking regions.
Questions were raised as to why English was the universal language at all. Members felt that news and information was constantly aimed and bias towards the English-speaking world. Having the forum to discuss these issues openly and brought out many ideas in both Japanese and English.
Instead of getting frustrated when not being able to find the right words for a difficult concept, by breaking down the idea into simple language in the speaker's mother tongue first, the transfer to another language can be done much more smoothly. |
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