"Smile" vs. "Poop!" - guy

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"Smile" vs. "Poop!"<br>Or, On The Art of Auto-Translation

Guy<br>May 18, 2025

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Something I care a lot about is translation.<br>If I want to convey something to you, and all I have are words, and you speak a different language, how can I do it? I can attempt to match my words to your words, but the way our different languages’ words carve up the world might not even have a 1-to-1 mapping! This means there might be tons of overflow: maybe one word in my language is two in yours, or is only “kinda” like this other word in yours, or maybe it’s “untranslatable” and there’s no words for it, or maybe it’s only half of a word in yours: can’t use it to say what I mean without also smuggling in something I don’t.<br>I think of language-as-translation as tightening the screws on a board. You don’t tighten one screw fully and then the next one fully and so on. You tighten each a little bit, in sequence, and each ends up tightening the other. As with screws, so with words: each one ‘tightens’ the space of what can be meant a little bit, until the message can be pinned down.<br>Part of why I care about this is because of consent, especially around transformative experiences.<br>For example, think of Awakening, as in Buddhist Enlightenment. (See what I did there? Three screws.)<br>I am not enlightened. I’m pre-enlightenment. But I’ve intuited enough about it to lead me to believe that no one can meaningfully consent to it because no one can meaningfully understand it without going through it. That is, there can be no “pre-Enlightenment” translation of what it is like such that you could make a meaningfully informed decision to consent to it, or not.<br>A bit like becoming a Vampire. Modern consent-sensitive Dracula hands you a flyer: pros, cons, immortal nightlife; and offers to bite you. Can you consent in an informed way? I’d say no: you can never know what it’s like to be a Vampire prior to your own vampirism, at which point it’s too late. As with vampirism, so with Enlightenment.<br>I don’t know any vampires, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Enlightened people express this very frustration. As if they were always speaking underwater, perennially misunderstood. Some translations may be structurally impossible.<br>Now if translation were only a problem for Enlightened people and Vampire I’d feel pretty good.<br>But I don’t think that’s the case. I think failures of translation happen all the time, and especially between people using the same language.<br>Me, for example: I’ve been tripping over myself for years now trying to explain a specific linguistic trap. But I think that, 5 years in, the picture above helped me finally nail it.

Look at the picture above. Now back to me. On the left the kid is doing a cringe-like attempt at smiling. In the second one, he’s smiling. The dad, who’s taking the picture, wanted him to smile. His first instruction—a direct instruction—failed to generate the mental image that would lead to the outcome desired. The second succeeded. Maybe this is why Zen masters use sticks.<br>“Do or do not, there is no try”, wrong master. Anyways, the point is this: the kid can smile. But he can’t smile on command. Upon hearing “Smile” he tries to smile. And he succeeds at that: the pictures are great because they're both pictures of success: the first the success of the kid—at Trying—, the second the success of the father—at translating. “Poop!”<br>If the kid was still a kid, but less of a kid, upon hearing “Smile!” he would reflexively, even maybe unconsciously, think “Poop!”, and end up smiling as a consequence. An extra move has to be performed: a translation from the intention of the father, that the kid evidently wants to follow, to what will actually generate the outcome the father desires.<br>The father, probably more experienced, hears “Smile!” and thinks whatever the adult equivalent of “Poop!” is, or, better yet, just smiles. Maybe for him there is no extra step needed anymore, maybe it’s just Intention → Outcome. “Smile” → Smile. But for the kid there must be, translation is necessary:<br>Intention (“Smile!”) --> (Translation: “Poop!”) - -> Outcome (smile).<br>Now, someone needs to do this translation work. In this case the father did it, brilliantly. In the future, hopefully, the kid can internalise it, through the normal social learning of watching his father say “Poop!”, and grow up to be a very normal and well socialised adult.

I said above the father needs no extra steps. But is that true? Maybe it’s true for smiling in a picture. But is it true of everything? Can the father intend to Make More Money—to choose a random common problem—and just start immediately taking actions likely, in expectation, to make him more money? Maybe he can. But lots of people cannot. The same way the kid succeeds at visibly trying to smile they’ll succeed at visibly trying to make more money. “I really need to get my shit together”. No one other than themselves even needs to see it for it...