A 500-year-old mistake that persists
The Pandora Box was never a box but a jar. No less than the great Scholar Erasmus made a trivial mistake when he translated the mythological story from Greek to Latin. This is of course an innocuous mistake that leaves the spirit of the story intact.
So, why am I mentioning it here?
It is fascinating to imagine that the mistranslation becomes more pervasive than its original. I would love to hear from you if the translation of this famous expression in your own mother tongue is anything other than a box!
A 60-year-old mistake that persists
There is another language mistake that demonstrates the power of language; this time it was a more recent translation from a Chinese dialect to English. In 1956, the North American president, John F. Kennedy, turned a language mistake into a famous and powerful statement. He incorrectly stated that the word CRISIS in Chinese is composed of two components: one meaning DANGER and the other OPPORTUNITY. I have lost count of how many keynote speeches, TED talks, websites and motivational speakers that have made use of this powerful and wishful mistranslation. No word in any other Chinese dialect represents these two concepts combined. Here I am making use of this idea to make sense of the transformations in education at large and in this school in particular.
This week, for instance, the ‘danger’ of missing our cherished Winter Carnival brought together teachers and students—facilitated by the student council— to conceive a very innovative online version using the Minecraft platform. This has allowed some of our students who are working behind the scenes to demonstrate diligence, extraordinary skills and depth of knowledge. Their ingenious collective creation will not only recreate the joy and the fun of the event but also an additional opportunity to enlarge our community of students as—for the first time—the festivities will be open to students from both ISL London and ISL Qatar.
In Italian Pandora's is a vase, or a vessel.
Whole School Student Support Coordinator EAL/SEN, MA, BA Hons, PGCE, CELTACambridge, Waldorf Cert+ Dipl, Forest School, Early years
4 年In German it is also a box (Pandoras Schachtel)
Curriculum Leader at St Dominic’s Int School / PHD st at FLUL
4 年In Portuguese, it is a box!