Any given term in one language has the potential to become, legitimately, a range of other terms in translation, depending on context, intention, and a host of other factors. This is exactly how a translator deals with the ambiguity that is inherent in every word and particularly challenging when moving between languages.

But she argues that in context the term could have a number of meanings, “weapon” being only one. When Banks translates one of the alien symbols as “offer weapon,” the world goes into a panic. What Arrival gets-far better than the Chiang story does-is that translation is about context. Reading the story provides an interesting perspective on the film’s origins, but the story’s intellectual and political ambitions are far more limited. And Arrival is an incredible translation, which takes a short story written in 2000 and adapts, expands, and reinvents it to make a statement that is profoundly and presciently about where we are now in 2017. Part of what Arrival’s cinematic translation of the Chiang story does is introduce translation. Banks are “linguist” and “linguistics” the word “translate” never appears in the story. Words Without Borders (WWB): What did Arrival get so right about being a translator?Įsther Allen: In “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, on which Arrival is based, the words associated with Dr. We asked three top translators to watch Arrival and to give us their two cents (via email) on the linguacentric feature: Hillary Gulley, translator from the Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, and instructor at CUNY-Queens College Esther Allen, translator from the Spanish, French, and Portuguese and associate professor at CUNY Graduate Center and Baruch College and Will Evans, translator from the Russian, president at Cinestate, founder of Deep Vellum Publishing, and cofounder of Deep Vellum Books. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is sent to the frontlines to attempt to communicate with the mysterious “Heptapods”-to find out what they want and why they’ve come. As the world descends into utter chaos, linguistics professor Dr. Indeed, when an ominously oblong spacecraft touches down on Earth, translation proves to be humanity’s only hope. Translation took to the big screen this year in the Academy Award-winning film, Arrival. Esther Allen, Will Evans, and Hillary Gulley.

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