Skrivanek Blog

The history of how scripts and alphabets emerge, evolve and disappear through history, is built on the changing tides of commerce, cultural dominance and religion. Two generations of a people who do not write their language in its original script will render that script endangered, and very nearly dead.

Inspired by Omniglot.com (an online encyclopedia of languages and alphabets), Tim Brookes founded the Endangered Alphabets Project in order to support “endangered, minority and indigenous cultures by using their writing systems to create art.” He speaks of writing systems as having three parts, reflecting different aspects of the human mind:

1. the phonetic element of sound

2. the semantic aspect which gives it meaning within a language

3. the graphic ingredient of its curves and lines.

Histories and cultural aesthetics are contained in scripts, and likewise lost when they are. Wars that lead to the conquering of one people by another have led to banishment of entire cultures, including their languages and scripts. Governments impose one language over another for such reasons as control, unity, and the puncturing of a minority’s vitality. Phoenician leadership in global trade 1000 years BC spread their writing system all over the region, extinguishing others over time as they were not used. The dying off of small populations with their own scripts and languages has led Tim Brookes on quests to far corners of the Earth to find the remaining individuals who still carry the irreplaceable knowledge.

In the case of American Latin alphabet cursive, the extinction of knowledge currently taking place is led by public schools that have ceased to teach the subject. The decision seems to be occurring without thought or planning, a default option ‘chosen’ because the subject is declared irrelevant and a waste of education funds in an era when keyboard communication dominates most activities.

But close-up, firsthand, here in the 21st century, we can see that the real losses incurred when knowledge of a script dies (and thus eventually the script itself), are numerous, and varied in nature. Here’s a big one: there are countless American documents written in script that look as foreign as hieroglyphics to contemporary sixth graders who have not learned that native script. As adults, these young Americans will not be able to decipher even the personal missives of their grandparents – they are being cut off from connection as they are cut off from the knowledge of their civilization’s script. Is this really healthy for a free and literate society?

Beyond that incomprehensibility of existing documents, there are other losses when the learning and use of a script is withdrawn from its people. According to Psychology Today, training children to write their alphabet with their hands is a commitment to developing their capacity for acquiring knowledge. A “reading circuit” of linked sections of the brain activated by reading is not activated by keyboarding. After receiving letter instruction, a group of pre-literate 5-year-olds in an Indiana University study received brain scans that showed enhanced neural activity that was more “adult-like” than those of children who merely looked at letters. Cursive writing teaches the brain to integrate visual and tactile information, paving the neural pathways that facilitate fine motor dexterity.

The passion for languages runs deep at Skrivanek, for so many reasons. You’ll find our language service team members to be interested in every aspect of your translation needs.

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There are experts employed by global companies like Microsoft, whose job descriptions might read something like: examination of everything going on at every level in every country where we sell products.

Beyond adaption to such elements as foreign currencies, time zones, and programming requirements, and beyond translation of languages, culturalization is the process of deep-level product adaptation to the huge variety of people globally who will use it. Sensitive and subtle issues unique to a country’s current political and social climate can figure prominently in the reception of marketing in a country. Historical circumstances that still prompt emotional responses and geopolitical boundary disagreements that were never satisfactorily resolved – such issues can lurk potently just below the surface of a people’s consciousness.

Imagine a start-up in Eastern Europe deciding to play on the vast geography of the US by using both Union and Confederate flags in marketing graphics. Not every entrepreneur in every country knows American Civil war history and how its symbols can still sizzle and divide neighbors. And, likewise, American knowledge of almost all foreign cultural, political and historical issues is most often limited to a handful of fairly superficial ideas. Experts are required to safely and successfully navigate touchy details at the heart of a culture or country. And such details can be brought to mind for a country’s natives by background music, color schemes, hand gestures… the list of potentially volatile elements is long.

Current developments within a specific people’s behavior are also important to study. As an example, for the Chinese version of Draw a Stickman, the game developers observed and incorporated the fact that Chinese players generally prefer more detailed and explicit instructions. This company also modified the game’s online social integration tools to link to the preferred social media platforms in China. There is no globally uniform strategy for any aspect of communication.

The world of ideas that your product presents may be a fiction conjured from what appears to you to be ‘nothing’. But if it hints at the sovereignty of one people over another, it will be deemed unacceptable in the offended nation. Games that do not show Taiwan as part of China, for instance, are banned there. What is known as the Sea of Japan in Japan is called the East Sea in Korea – clearly that’s a detail one would want to get right or avoid altogether.

Digging into cultural knowledge from the start is the best policy your company can adopt. The geo-cultural experts say they are most often called in when a problem has already arisen. But if you build content from the start with awareness of, and advice about, every market you hope to reach, your core communication can be clean of misguided mistakes. Skrivanek’s approach to serving our global clients has prioritized this practice from the start. We employ the expertise of our native linguists and subject experts in the countries where you need culturalization assistance, and welcome the opportunity to optimize your connections there.

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