Could anyone deliver me from the sheer
affliction of having to write my master’s thesis in Portuguese? I couldn’t
avoid letting this cry of desperation go, today. Really, what’s the point of returning
to my mother language after having read countless books in English, after
having built an entire intellectual roadmap in English, after having actually
thought the whole thing in English? As I write it a question constantly assails
my mind: how the hell I’m I supposed to
write this in Portuguese?! It tortures me to be constrained into constantly
translating myself back into my native language, so much more as I never really
believed in translation in the first place. There’s an Italian aphorism for
this, traduttore, traditore, meaning
that to translate is to betray. So why am I being compelled to constantly betray myself as I try to
render in my native tongue something that originally came to my mind in my
second language?
As I feel the pangs of acculturation
I reach the inevitable conclusion that bilingualism is in fact little more than
a fallacy. There’s no such thing as bilingualism, as you can’t say something in
two languages simultaneously. Anatomically speaking, having two tongues would
be a serious malformation indeed. You may speak several languages, each one at
a time, you may even think that you value all of them equally, but eventually
some favoured one will emerge. Some language will conquer your mind and your
heart. My heart is still divided, but my mind has utterly surrendered to the
incredible plasticity, elasticity and versatility of the English language.
