Arrival Movie

Require: analyze movie + quote [story + bellows]

ineffability of language vs. Sapire-Wolf

Foreignizing Time in Heptopod B

Louise’s ability to re-express her temporally-independent thoughts in English after learning Heptopod B represents a successful act foreignization of Heptopod thought for an English L1 audience despite this audience’s supposed limitations in understanding temporally-independent concepts according to the Sapir-Wholf Hypothesis.

Heptopod B does not have temporality

• RUSSIAN SCIENTIST: “Their final words translate to, “There is no time, many become one.” I fear we have all been given weapons because we answered the timeline wrong, please, if you - -”
• “Explain it by saying that light minimized the time needed to travel to its destination, and one saw the world as the heptapods saw it.”

So it seems like quintessential Sapir-Wholf: time hard to express with Heptopod, and so their way of thinking work around it.

• “Sapir’s point was that instead of saying that Latin and Greek are well suited to abstract thought, we should say, rather, that abstract thought is well suited to Greek and Latin and view the particular kinds of philosophical discourse that were developed by their speakers as a consequence of the grammar they used”

and there are evidence for it… Louis got this ability and then can think into the future.

• “It worked better when I didn’t think about it too much. … my initial strokes almost always turned out to be compatible with an elegant rendition of what I was trying to say. I was developing a faculty like that of the heptapods.”

Louise ditches temporality in her ENGLISH as well

And yet, Louis very effectively translated HB into English by abusing English grammar.

• “you will be twenty-five then”

• LOUISE “We are so bound by time; by its order.”

• LOUISE: “I forgot how good it feels to be held by you”

• So this lack of temporality not ineffable: “translation is the enemy of the ineffable. One causes the other to cease to exist.”

• nobody knows how to translate “animal signals” into human speech or vice versa. When and if we ever can translate nonhuman noises into human speech, species-related ineffabilities will evaporate like the morning haze.

So despite English grammar’s temporality, it can be adapted.

This process of translation can be explained effectively in English, even if the original event is not:

• DR. KETTLER “Not everyone is wired for what you’re about to do. Our brains aren’t always able to process experiences like this.”

Moving though over to another language is actually essentially just forenizing

So: non-temporality vis a vi Heptopod B can be expressed in any language that you desire, except for the fact that it will be forenizing and hence require understanding of their culture. It is not that L1 itself limits understanding of L2 culture vis a vi S-W; instead, L2 culture needed to be understood correctly to foreignize for L1 audience. Louis does this.

• louis is forenizing
  • “As a result, the “foreign-soundingness” of a translation seeking to give the reader a glimpse of the authentic quality of the source can only reproduce and reinforce what the receiving culture already imagines the foreign to be. … Foreign-soundingness is therefore only a real option for a translator when working from a language with which the receiving language and its culture have an established relationship”
  • Louise establishes this relationship
    • LOUISE: “Language is the foundation of civilization. “It is the glue that holds a people together, and it is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.”
    • “The only way to learn an unknown language is to interact with a native speaker, and by that I mean asking questions, holding a conversation … without that, it’s simply not possible.”

We get to hear it too: film VFX forenization; “in the pitch of the low tone reverberating inside. … another metallic ROAR. Followed by a distant HIGH PITCH.” the music is forenizing

Stuff from Chaing

• “you will be twenty-five then”
• “Over time, the sentences I wrote grew shapelier, more cohesive. I had reached the point where it worked better when I didn’t think about it too much. Instead of carefully trying to design a sentence before writing, I could simply begin putting down strokes immediately; my initial strokes almost always turned out to be compatible with an elegant rendition of what I was trying to say. I was developing a faculty like that of the heptapods.”
• “I could understand that: the physical attributes that humans found intuitive, like kinetic energy or acceleration, were all properties of an objectat a given moment in time.”
• “And these were conducive to a teleological interpretation of events: by viewing events over a period of time, one recognized that there was a requirement that had to be satisfied, a goal of minimizing or maximizing. And one had to know the initial and final states to meet that goal; one needed knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated. I was growing to understand that, too.”
• “Gary once told me that the fundamental laws of physics were time-symmetric, that there was no physical difference between past and future.”
• “Explain it by saying that light minimized the time needed to travel to its destination, and one saw the world as the heptapods saw it.”

Stuff from Bellows

• “A reader who says that poetry is what has been lost in translation is also claiming to be simultaneously in full possession of the original (which is poetry) and of the translation (which is not). Otherwise there would be no knowing if anything has been lost, let alone knowing that it was poetry.”
• “Because if the inhabitants of the distant planet did have a language, and if the space crew had learned it, then it must be possible for them to say what the aliens had said. Must, not should: radically untranslatable sounds do not make a language simply because we could not know it was a language unless we could translate it, even if only roughly”
• “The tonal and rhythmic patterns of whale song are of such complexity as to make it quite impossible to believe that what we can hear (and pick up on instruments more sensitive than human ears) is just random noise.”
• nobody knows how to translate “animal signals” into human speech or vice versa. When and if we ever can translate nonhuman noises into human speech, species-related ineffabilities will evaporate like the morning haze.
• Translation is the enemy of the ineffable. One causes the other to cease to exist.
• Foreign-soundingness is therefore only a real option for a translator when working from a language with which the receiving language and its culture have an established relationship.
• But there are significant differences between cultures and languages in how people do things with words.
• “Different languages, [Wilhelm] von Humboldt saw, were different worlds, and the great diversity of natural languages on the planet should be seen as a treasure house of tools for thinking in other ways.”
  • Wilhelm von Humboldt, elder brother of the great explorer Alexander
• “The evidence itself brought [Sapir] to see that any attempt to match the grammar of a language with the culture of its speakers or their ethnic origins was completely impossible. “Language,” “culture,” and “race” were independent variables.”
• “Sapir’s point was that instead of saying that Latin and Greek are well suited to abstract thought, we should say, rather, that abstract thought is well suited to Greek and Latin and view the particular kinds of philosophical discourse that were developed by their speakers as a consequence of the grammar they used”
• “It means that speakers of what Sapir called “Average West European” are poorly equipped to engage in Hopi thought. To expand our minds and to become more fully civilized members of the human race, we should learn as many different languages as we can.”

Movie Script

• Film VFX forenization; “in the pitch of the low tone reverberating inside. … another metallic ROAR. Followed by a distant HIGH PITCH.” all caps meaning
• LOUISE “We are so bound by time; by its order.”
• DR. KETTLER “Not everyone is wired for what you’re about to do. Our brains aren’t always able to process experiences like this.”
• RUSSIAN SCIENTIST: “Their final words translate to, “There is no time, many become one.” I fear we have all been given weapons because we answered the timeline wrong, please, if you - -”
• LOUISE: “I forgot how good it feels to be held by you”
• “This is the same scene as the first. Shot for shot.”
• “And now we stay here a moment longer than the opening scene, and see that while Louise is smiling, a tear slips down her cheek.”
• INT. LAKE HOUSE - LOUISE’S STUDY - NIGHT (FLASHBACK)

Childhood Flashback

• “memory is a strange thing”
  • “we are so bound by time, by its order”—progression of time backed into the inherentness of language
• the story opens with an emotional connection to the audience for imprinting

Lecture Scene—Alien Invasion

• “Authority assess the object” emphasis a weird place
• Shadow framing of the events
• question: why is she so worried
• Second time with plan down from blackness

Army Scene + Fly Away Scene

• “Fluttering” reproduced
  • Army attempts to replicate the results
  • Sanskrit word for “war” and its translation—“Louis: desire for more cows; Cal: argument”
  • Film environment from the back, filming forward

Helicopter Scene

• Louis: communication as first priority vs. Army: understanding as first priority

Approach Scene

• Music pitched the “alien” flutters tonally
  • Kind of emotional communication with the audience, the Dalian sound + high highs EQs is a foreignization technique
  • taller than it was in the movie

Entry Scene

• Driving: perspective questions
• “every 18 hours”
• continuous panning from black downwards
• Sargent’s differing eye length
• Difference in gravity and perspectives?
• Camera angle trickery, panning down is no longer the same direction
• “light at the end of the tunnel”
• again, music + dissonant sounds create foreignization in the audience

“they arrive”

Communication scene

• They are very animal-like as portrayed in the film

“Visual Aid” scenes

• Pairwise matching
• “A more advanced race”
• Rosetta stone behavior
• Taking of headgear: contrast between small vs. large (size differences
• Increasing breathing during a moment of transition
• Introductory scene
  • not sure if they have names
  • making an assumption
• what is happening to Louise’s thoughts
  • “As Banks studies the language, she starts to have flashback-like visions of her daughter. "

Panic worried Scene

• Fear of the unknown
• Thoughts flashing back: symbols muting sounds
  • Flashing back being real: Thoughts having panicked sensation of time
  • Repeating single syllable—foreignization
  • “unline speech, a logogram is free of time”

Voiceover Scene

• No directionality: complex understanding
• The repeated vocalizations help highlight the distantness

Dialogue Between the two

• “Sapire-Wolf Hypothesis”: being used incorrectly; hallucinating Louis'
  • China mobilizing forces
  • Majiong is a form of mobiling forces

Final Message Group

• “offer” vs “use” — the US understands it as “offer” and China understands it as “use”
  • contextual intepretation varies how the use of linguistics
  • language as something contextually dependent
• large amounts of communication can be packed very densely

Non-Zero Sum Game

• the ask to work together need to be interpreted differently
• different parts of time fold together to become hole: “non zero sum game”
• The alien speech is being subtitled!

Final communication

• Result becomes “objective”: i.e. there is a direct understanding of the aliens, suddenly
• Also, palendromic names: “Hannah” for daughter, not translatable
• Seeing into the future

Seeing into Time

• Being able to understand heptopod + time properly means that they are able to understand time
• Gave private number in the future allow you to see the past: General Shang can see into the future
• Why is the banquet colored yellow

Finale

• Repeat of the opener scene: pan down as a trope that cycles from the beginning
• Ian is in Louise’s house!
• The house+baby scenes (which is different from baby nature scenes) is lit orange in the same way as the banquet scene
  • whereas the hospital scene and the house scene were lit blue