This sort of situation is under emotional truth. As you already know, this truth is different for every person because emotions involved are affected by different experiences. This extract is correct when two person lives are considered. But, what if, there is another form of life in this planet that has gone through the exact same experience as you have. This can happen all the time. For example, people can have the same injury at the same time. This assumption is incorrect because different people have different personalities, and experiences to cope with the pain. As you can see in the statement, every person could perceive this sentence differently; depending on the people’s experiences he could make an assumption that this sentence doesn’t affect him so he has no emotion. However, true for one person is different to another. Ayer, for example, quoted ‘It is in fact a logical construction out of the sense experiences which constitute the actual and possible sense history of a self’ (Magill p2131). Since there are no exact the same people in the world, verbal discussions are very sensitive to defects of language and therefore the emotional truth expressed id highly obscure by language. That is why we sometimes see some people shout their point of view more clearly.
Another kind of truth is scientific truth. Ayer calls ‘The strong theory can be used. If a sentence has no meaning it couldn’t be true, and a sentence has meaning, if it is verifiable empirically’ (Magill p2128). Scientific truths should be difficult to understand. In scientific truth there has to be consideration that language has a big role in our knowledge of science. Problems arise come from this such, as expression of feeling is not dealt in science. For example you will have no problem understanding a quadratic formula because only numbers are used. However some sentences in science are not provable because of the present sate of science. Because we have to use words in science, which makes us consider that there is an impossibility to obscure a scientific truth, but language is bewitched in this case it is small.
Going back to prove my introduction about how language can’t be translated precisely because there will be an element lost. Last year in English class we read two novels by German authors that have been translated into English. For example we read ‘Cat and Mouse’. Because I had an older version of the novel at home and a newer version of the book received from the school I could see that there are differences in the language. One reason for this is that two different translators translated it in two different times and this making many different phrases between the books. This is making it hard sometimes for me to follow because the older book had a completely different translation and this shows how language in which something is expressed can obscure the truth. It is translated from German to English which means that the translation hinder our ability to see the truth.
In my household we speak Dutch more than we speak English as my family and I come from the Netherlands. When friends of mine come over and visit sometimes hears us speak Dutch and they wonder what we are talking about. This happens and then I will need to translate which is hard to explain to people that don’t know the culture because there are sometimes in one language it has a totally different concept meaning if you translate it. In my head I understand the comment fully but when I have to translate I will have to be missing some phrases out to make my friend understand it. For example when I hear a joke from my parents in Dutch I laugh to it, but when I translate it to English there isn’t as big of an affect as in Dutch. This holds true. This is because there is no exact equivalent in another language and again coming back some words have different connotations that can’t always be expressed in another language.
A part of many languages is the evolution of the words in them and this happens constantly. A problem arises in this is that when you have an evolved English word such as ‘cribs’ (which is a house) to mean something else then that same word cannot be translated to other languages such as German or French or Spanish. This is the same through translating novels from language to language. This is called slang (teenager talk). Slang is made up of phrases that change with time (illustrated before). If an author uses slang in his novel then when translated it at the date it is published the translation will be different to someone translating it in the future because slang has changed over time. This means that once the text is translator later than the published day we won’t be able to know the real meaning behind the phrase because slang changes over time which means it might have a different meaning in the future or time it is translated.
In conclusion the truth raises questions. Can we ever know the actual truth in any object or emotion we experience? I have written this question because I find that this is very unrealistic that we will have a worldwide language. If this is going to be achieved then maybe we might be able to learn full truth without having any uncertainties. But otherwise we will always be limited to knowledge about truth. And also I find that language can obscure what we think of as true, in the present time. However, depending on the level to which language is necessary for each kind of truth, they will be affected to different extents.
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Bibliography
Magill, N. Frank. World Philosophy - Essay Reviews of 225 Major Works, Volume 4. New York, Englewood Cliffs: Salem Press, 1961.
Edwards, Paul. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 1. New York: Macmill Publishing Co. Inc & The Free Press, 1972.
