New Words #24: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

But I’ll always remember what an agallamh beirte is

A few years ago, at a language school in Ireland, I found myself in the awkward position of being too advanced for the intermediate class but too, well, “intermediate” for the advanced class. There were a few of us in that boat, and since it was just for a week, we agreed to tough it out in the advanced class.

And it was fine, except for the agallamh beirte.

Near the end of class one afternoon, our teacher gave us our homework: to write an agallamh beirte, which we would perform for our classmates the following day.

She asked us if we knew what an agallamh beirte was.

We thought we knew.

We said we knew.

We did not know.

It’s an easy expression to misinterpret. Agallamh means “interview” or “conversation,” and beirt means “two people,” so we put that together and figured it was an interview or conversation between two people. A dialogue, if you will. (Clear as could be! Such simple vocabulary! We were slightly offended that our teacher doubted us; we weren’t that“intermediate”!) So we . . . wrote dialogues in which one person interviewed the other.

As we realized promptly the next morning, when the only clued-in duo in the class volunteered to go first, that’s not what our teacher meant. An agallamh beirte is a carefully scripted battle of wits—often poetic, usually comedic, always fast-paced and a bit whimsical. It’s more “Who’s on First?” than Frost/Nixon. (Here’s an example of a well-constructed agallamh beirte. Even if you don’t speak a word of Irish, take a look at the first minute or two and you’ll be able to pick up on the rhythm and rhyme, as well as some chuckles from the audience.)

What did I take away from this episode? (Besides the actual meaning of agallamh beirte, which I will never, ever forget.) It was a good reminder for me as a translator that even the simple things are worth double-checking. And as a teacher, I was reminded that a quick comprehension check—a “Do you understand?” with a yes/no answer—has its limitations, while asking learners to explain a task in their own words is often worth the time it takes. Sometimes the questions we most need answers to are the ones we wouldn’t know to ask.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure. This time, it’s a pair of recent essays about translating, reading in translation, and being translated.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s recent opinion piece in El País was published this week in Words Without Borders in a translation by Anne McLean under the title “In Praise of the Invisible.” (The original is here, but it’s paywalled.) Vásquez writes of translation as, “among many other things, a possible antidote against closed-mindedness and xenophobia of the spirit.” And in her introduction to Best Literary Translations 2024, reproduced in Lit Hub, Jane Hirshfield writes that languages “have their own sensibilities, and these qualities, too, a translation must try to convey, bending the receiving language beyond its home-ground capacities, opening tongue and ear to alternative ways of being, hearing, knowing, feeling. By this process of exchanging capacities, news, gossip, worldviews, and knowledge, cultures broaden, become more capacious.”

Here, Look at My Cats

The world is a mess, and you might welcome a pleasant distraction. For what it’s worth, here are my cats.

Alexis thinks my arm makes a great pillow. David feels the same way about her ear.

I’ll be back next month with some exciting fiction-related news to share!

Laura