A literal understanding of reality leaves much unsaid. Without someone to present, transpose, translate, explain, we are often like a blind person faced with reality.
Much of life pass us by because we don't have the means to understand what we see. Foreign languages are just one example, the world of Mathematics, Science, Music, Art, the Sky, the Earth, spheres of knowledge known and unknown that no one can exhaust in a myriad of lifetimes. Our response is one of humility and openness to the mystery of life. We need teachers to introduce us to the beauty, truth, goodness, and oneness of existence.
However, in any translation from one medium to another, we do have lacuna and this is often bluntly expressed: translators are traitors. We can readily see that translating from one language to another much will be lost. We should be thankful for the many teachers that enable us to remove the veil over so much of life. Remembering always that discernment on our part is always required for we have mistakes and deliberate false transmissions.
A college professor writes in a diocesan bulletin about his discovery of how persons can translate a written piece of music into symbols that can speak to a blind person. And this for him almost miraculously.
Persons who know how to translate ordinary characters into the Braille system, using the tactile sense, open up to the blind the most complicated pieces of music. Notes, scales, dynamics of the music, can be put on paper so the blind can read it; the special signs of music number over 200 and can be transmitted with just six dots on raised paper.
Ten pages of a musical score will take a transmitter two weeks of work; one can imagine the work involved. Completed the proofreader goes to the piano to see if the translation is true to the sheet music. It's a difficult task to give the blind the tools to perform the most difficult music.
We also need help to access much of the knowledge that humanity has become familiar with over the centuries. Thankfully, it's possible but would it not be a great gift if those who were transmitting the wisdom of humanity would do it with the same kind of devotion as the those who work in transposing print to braille. Computers can translate as we know but not like a devoted person motivated with skill and love.
