Saying what you see

[Cat*]

My mother tongue is English, but Ive spent most of my adult life in Portuguese-speaking countries and am fluent in Portuguese. I have been interested in tarot now for over 25 years. However, all my tarot studying has been in English. [...] Funny, but I never think of the cards or their images in Portuguese. Just the way my brain is. It has become set into this way of processing information.

Only recently have I begun reading for friends, and 99% of the time I have to do readings in Portuguese. There is nothing in Portuguese which I cannot express, but somehow, I find it incredibly difficult doing readings in another language, when I have processed everything in English. I really feel like Im translating (something I never feel Im doing in my day to day life) and the stuff doesn´t come out well.

The long and short of it is that the images have gone into my "English" subconscious and struggle to some out in another language. Plus it is connected to what you call the "image side of the brain". There is a lot in that...

I absolutely know what you mean! My problem is the same, only the other way round. My first language is German and I have lived in Germany for all of my life. But there still are a few topics where my "native" language is English because I learned about them in English first. I often have a hard time talking about these things in German (it's much easier the other way round).

When I got back into tarot about two years ago, I had a little basic knowledge of card titles and a few book meanings in German, but I had never done any readings in German. I started lurking here on AT and did all of my first readings for myself or in the Reading Exchanges here in English. My chaotic notes are mostly in English and only sometimes in German. At some point I realized that I felt extremely wrong and awkward when I tried to read in German. I practiced a little, and now I'm fairly bi-lingual with tarot.

Only sometimes I feel that neither language is the right one to express what the cards say. It's like there's an area in my brain for "tarot language" with information in either English or German. The problem is that many things are there in only one language (mostly English). That's when it gets awkward to read in German, and I really have to translate things into my native language (that suddenly feels very foreign to me)...

I'm an odd case of a bi-lingual person, it seems!

 

[Le Fanu]

Only sometimes I feel that neither language is the right one to express what the cards say.

Probably true!

Even so, I always feel also that my readings for others in Portuguese are too simplistic, lack the nuances which I know I would get "coming through" if it was in the language Id processed the whole thing in the first place! Yet if Im talking about Art or a film or a book or any other "dense" subject, words don´t fail me. But in tarot they do.

I did a reading recently in English and I noticed how it flowed differently.

 

[tarotcardrose]

Yes

I have that same problem. It is like a brain fart. I am very literate (an English graduate) and fumble with finding the words to put to the Tarot, that I actually stutter. I think it does have a lot to do with the brain perhaps. Cards speak in symbols. There are times that I know EXACTLY what the cards are saying, but when I try to explain it I garble it up and sound like I am fumbling for words.

 

[Seafra]

There are times when the language of tarot is so difficult for me I'd just as soon put the ideas across in interpretive dance. That would at least be comical. I also suffer from aphasia so I've blamed that for the language blockage -- classic case of displacement -- but my attempts to translate the more spiritual ideas into 'layman's' speak are actually therapeutic (maybe). Thanks Grizabella for starting this thread. It is comforting knowing I'm not alone.

 

[re-pete-a]

Havn't read all the posts , but the problem found is that the intellect is way too slow to describe a pictured feeling.
So finding discriptions requires a pause in the flow, until the words are found that fit the mood and FEEL of the picture.

NO G'bella, your not losin' it, your getting faster in the intuitive broadcasts.

 

[Grizabella]

It seems that I know the message of the cards in an instant from the pictures, but to actually verbally read the cards for someone, you have to go into another mode and try to begin from the beginning and string it all together. There's this little gremlin on my shoulder that gives a rebellious kick and says, "what the hell, you already know what it says, why bother going around the long way putting words to it?" so I get stymied for a little bit. Much less now than I used to, though.

I used to be afraid that, since I knew things in such a flash, that if I took "the long way around" to put it into words, I'd lose the message, but that never happens. Now I just take it for granted that not only will I be able to relay the message, I'll probably even get added information along the way.

 

[re-pete-a]

Thats the way G'bella.
There's no moss on you yet.

 

[BrightEye]

Only recently have I begun reading for friends, and 99% of the time I have to do readings in Portuguese. There is nothing in Portuguese which I cannot express, but somehow, I find it incredibly difficult doing readings in another language, when I have processed everything in English. I really feel like Im translating (something I never feel Im doing in my day to day life) and the stuff doesn´t come out well.

Same for me but the other way round. I'm more comfortable reading in English than in my own mother tongue, for the reasons you outlined.

 

[Le Fanu]

What is also true, I think , is that for those of us who read for ourselves, we are so used to processing the information in an instant and not really having to articulate it. We read in symbols, process in symbols and the information goes right back into the brain, in symbols. I don´t know about anyone else, but when I read for myself, I can process the information much faster simply by dint of not having to then reformulate that into words. But I know what the cards are telling me and where Im going...

 

[floracove]

For me, it's trying to figure out how to say what I see without sounding offensive. I worry about hurting people's feelings, but that's just how I am, unless I get angry and then, well, it just comes out. (but this doesn't happen while reading the cards for someone.)

I've learned however, that I should just say what I see, cause it may seem like it could be taken wrong, but when I do just spout it out, they know exactly what I mean.

So, for me, it is just better to say it like I see it, rather than trying to pussyfoot around the brier patch.