How Raising a Multilingual Tot Helped Me Write a Multicultural Novel

When my son was three years old, he expressed that his heart had been wounded, and the reasons behind this feeling were many - from a friend not wanting to be his best friend to accidentally losing his artwork. At that tender age, these events seemed significant to him. However, even without the context of his age, his reactions were not exaggerated; he was genuinely translating, or rather, "word-for-word" understanding.

Mandarin, the language we spoke at home, uses a direct translation approach. For instance, "sad" in Mandarin is created by combining the characters for "wound" (伤) and "heart" (心). As a child of English speakers, I had been unaware of the intricacies of my first language until my son's birth. I had chosen to raise him bilingual, driven by the desire to give him a connection to his heritage.

I believed that Mandarin would be advantageous for his future while also ensuring he didn't miss out on a vital cultural link. Though I spoke, read, and conversed in English, I hadn't practiced Mandarin in years. Every conversation with my son required a translation, a process that solidified my understanding of the complexities of language translation.

This experience mirrored the task of writing my novel, where I had to decide whether to translate words or meanings directly in Chinese characters. My English language, with its vast synonyms, allows for nuanced expressions. In contrast, Chinese's use of Hanzi characters combined with existing meanings to form new words gives it a spare yet conceptually rich quality.

By writing my novel in English, I could easily translate Chinese words into English. However, when it came to certain phrases, direct translation yielded more poetic meaning. For instance, instead of translating a character's name into Chinese, I chose to retain her name as Pearl. However, some translations proved challenging due to the context in which they would be read.

My own writing once faced criticism for over-exaggerating and stereotyping characters. Drawing from this experience, I was cautious not to caricature my Chinese characters, ensuring their speech preserved the essence of their cultural background. The act of learning a new language is not just about acquiring vocabulary, grammar, and syntax; it is also about embracing a different perspective on thinking and understanding.

This realization was particularly poignant as my son began to navigate the world through two languages. As I wrote my novel, I grappled with the challenge of translating words and meanings while avoiding stereotypes and cultural misconceptions.