You Interpret Me

A couple months ago, I had the chance to meet with a professor in Vancouver who grew up and studied in South America earning her Master’s before moving here. At one point in the conversation, after demonstrating my Spanish ability, I share that I would like to take some courses while in Peru, but that I have a really difficult time with academic articles in Spanish. I feel comfortable conversing with others and defending my opinions, I even recognize most of the vocabulary, but I always finish reading feeling as if I hadn’t understood.

To my surprise, she completely understood and had an unexpected (to me) explanation. How could a born-and-raised South American ever feel the same as I do about reading in Spanish? It turns out, it all has to do with writing style. In North America, there is a clear introduction outlining the body of the paper, then each issue one-by-one, and then a conclusion summing everything up. That’s the way I learned to write and communicate. On the other hand, a respected academic paper in South America can have a lot of back-and-forth arguments with only the mere suggestion of a point – one has to interpret what the author is trying to say. It was why she had a hard time translating an article written by her Peruvian colleague for a North American audience.

To me, it was a concrete example of how a circular or cyclical worldview could permeate a lifestyle and it only made me more excited about what other new ways of being and knowing I will discover.