Reading a couple short bios on Trinh T. Minh-ha, I was excited for the opportunity to listen to such an amazing and powerful Asian-American women talk about her experiences that merge together so well with the theme of “translation” we have been looking at from all angles over the course of the semester. Her career has seemed to emphasize “translation through silence”, and as this is a type of translation we haven’t talked about, I eagerly desired to hear what she had to say.

     At the Silence and Translation Symposium, I had the opportunity to hear Trinh speak about her tumultuous past as a young child in Vietnam during a time of incredible political instability and how, as an adult, her past has influenced the way she approaches creative works. She stressed the fact that “Silence communicates meaning, Silence speaks” and led with stories from her childhood, where during the time of the Vietnam War, “Silence in the night took an uneasy presence.”  Previously asking the panel audience whether or not “Silence is translatable,” these stories of her past answered that question for me.

     After the panel ended and throughout the week, I wondered how silence is translatable. To her, it was the fact that during her time in Vietnam, silence was translated into a feeling of uneasiness. As the “calm before the storm,” the halt of the loud sounds of bombs dropping and guns firing only lasted so long. However, how is silence translated in my own life? Similarly, it can also be that uneasy calmness, where nothing is said before you take a test, or before screaming and yelling ensues from an altercation. Yet, it can also translate into some of the happiest feelings one can feel. That silence accompanied by two lovers looking into each other’s eyes, or even that feeling of ecstatic happiness, where all you can do is sit and smile. Thus though there isn’t only one way to translate silence, in my opinion its importance should not be overlooked.