Dual Identities

Language shapes identity: everyone knows that, in theory. Anyone who has studied a foreign language knows that exact equivalents do not exist for every word. Translation cannot be perfect: something is always lost. So what happens when people, used to one linguistic identity, have to translate themselves into a new language? Mary Besemeres and Anna Wierzbicka have assembled twelve witnesses to give personal accounts. All are academics or writers who possess the intellectual resources to make sense of what they have encountered, while at the same time registering the dislocations they have experienced. All write English fluently: they are not concerned with the difficulties of learning English but of being themselves in Australian English. Some make the comment that they are perfectly comfortable writing academic English while still finding the small transactions of daily life a challenge.