Babel

The concept of this project stems from the day-to-day life at NYU Shanghai. We live in a multilingual environment: you speak Chinese, I speak English. When we communicate, thoughts in Chinese are processed into English, and English is then processed into Chinese for understanding. Throughout this process, how much of the meaning we long to express is inevitably lost in layer upon layer of translation?

The story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible appears in Genesis 11:1-9 and describes the origin of linguistic division among humans. According to Genesis, the Babel event took place after Noah's flood when all humanity spoke a single language. People settled in the plain of Shinar and decided to build a tower to the heavens. They used fired bricks as stones and bitumen as mortar, aiming to demonstrate their strength and avoid dispersing across the earth. Their motivation was a pursuit of unity and power, but God, disapproving of human arrogance, descended to confuse their language and divide them into different groups. This prevented them from easily understanding one another, and the tower-building project was abandoned. Ultimately, humanity was scattered across the earth and no longer lived in one place. The city was named "Babel," meaning "confusion," symbolizing the division of human language.

The core of this project is not a simple discussion of translation but an attempt to explore the loss and reconstruction of meaning. In the layer-by-layer process of translation, each iteration is deliberately designed to introduce deviations. The differences in understanding between languages are amplified. The translation program not only highlights these misunderstandings but also allows people to experience the asymmetry and distortion of meaning between languages more directly. This exaggerated process emphasizes the gap between language and thought, which are never fully aligned.

Users can manipulate sensors and sliders on a map to select regions and the number of languages they are interested in and input any text in any language into a text box. The machine then translates the input text through each language selected on the map, finally returning the repeatedly translated text to the original input language.

In terms of the project’s functionality, for Version 1.0, I plan to use buttons. This allows me to directly explore the project’s core concept—disparate thinking and meaning loss—to help quickly refine the project’s development direction. I understand the importance of interactivity, but that should be a final step. In Version 2.0, I created a prototype by mounting sensors and the map onto cardboard. This facilitated quick testing of the circuit system and code. Subsequently, in Version 3.0, I spent significant time exploring interactivity. Here, interactivity became an essential tool for expressing the concept rather than a goal itself. I projected the map onto the wall, allowing users a larger range of movement to create a more immersive experience. However, I began to question if this interactivity was beneficial to conveying the core idea of the project.

I hope the educational value of this work outweighs its entertainment value. In this form of interaction, interactivity isn’t limited to pressing buttons or typing on a keyboard but rather involves a subconscious engagement with language and culture. The machine's feedback—particularly unexpected words and structures—encourages users to reconsider the familiar rules of their language and realize that these rules are not universally applicable. The interactivity is not to satisfy the audience’s curiosity or desire for entertainment but to better convey the work's central concept. In my view, the interactivity in this project is not simply about physical movement to obtain sensory feedback but about giving the audience space for reflection, fostering curiosity about linguistic differences. This curiosity may inspire them to pay more attention to the thought processes of speakers of other languages and gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by foreign language users, nurturing a kind of intercultural empathy that is essential within the NYU Shanghai community.

The project still has many shortcomings. In the current version, users still need strong guidelines to operate this system. It is my contention that this area still fails to meet the standards I have set for it. For example, users may not know where the final text output is, or may not know what the map has to do with the python interface. And the slider on the right side lacks intuitive meaning for users. It is difficult for users to understand what the slider does without clear guidance, which affects part of the project's interactive experience. This is not a successful design from an interactivity perspective. In addition, the user usually only inputs some simple words, such as “hello, world”. Such inputs do not show obvious translation differences, and the system is more likely to show language differences when entering more complex sentences. Therefore, in the future, I will consider placing some classic novels or poems next to the keyboard, so that users can excerpt sentences at will. This not only enriches the input content, but also makes it easier for users to experience the subtle changes brought by multi-language conversion. 

This means that there is still a huge amount of rethinking and improvement work to be done on the user interaction experience. I'm still considering and optimizing the placement of the projection device, and I've already tried a number of ways to do this, such as projecting the python interface onto the floor, which allows the user to stand the entire process instead of repeatedly standing up controlling the map and sitting down. Besides that, I'm still considering more ways to make the presentation and interaction process smoother in the future. In further future improvements, I will reduce the physical interaction elements and refine the user interface. Perhaps refining an interactive website or application interface could provide a better interactive experience for this work.

这个项目的概念来自于在NYU上海日复一日的生活。我们生活在一个多语言的环境中。你用中文，我用英语。当我们在沟通时，中文的思考被加工成了英语，而英语又被加工成中文被理解。在这个过程中，又有多少我们所迫切与渴望想要表达的意义，在一层一层转译中，被迫流失？

《圣经》中的巴别塔故事出现在《创世记》第11章1-9节，描述了人类语言分裂的起源。根据《创世记》的记载，巴别塔事件发生在诺亚洪水之后，当时全地的人类都说同一种语言。人们在示拿平原聚居，决定建造一座通天的塔，他们用火烧砖，把砖当石头来用。他们又拿石漆当灰泥。以彰显自己的力量，避免分散在世界各地。人们建造巴别塔的动机在于追求统一和权力，但上帝不希望人类过于自大，因此降临到人间，混乱他们的语言，把人们分成不同的群体，让人们不能再像以往一样轻易地理解对方，建造塔的计划也因此搁置。最终，人类被分散到世界各地，不再聚居一处。这座城市因此被称为“巴别”，意为“混乱”，象征着人类语言的分裂。

这个项目的核心并不是在简单讨论翻译，而是尝试去探讨以及探索意义流失与重构。在文本的一层一层的转译过程中，每一次翻译都是为了有意制造偏差。语言之间的理解的差异被放大了。编写的转译程序不仅让这种误解更加显而易见，让人们更直接地感受到语言之间的不对称性和含义扭曲。这种放大错位的过程能够强调语言和思维之间难以完全一致的那种鸿沟。

用户可以通过操纵地图上的传感器与滑块，选择他们感兴趣的地区与语言数量，并使用任意语言在文本框内输入任意文本。机器将根据用户在地图上选择的语言，依次翻译用户输入的文本。最终，被反复转译的文本又被翻译回用户输入的语言。

关于项目的操作性，在版本1.0中，我计划使用按钮。这允许我直接探索这个项目的核心概念——思维不对等与意义流失，以帮助我快速梳理项目的发展思路。我知道交互性很重要，但这应该是在最后的步骤完成。第版本2.0里，我通过将传感器和地图固定在纸板上制作了prototype。这方便了我快速完成线路系统和代码的测试。随即，在第3.0版本里，我开始花费大量时间探索交互性。在这个作品里，交互性成为了实现这一概念的重要手段，而非目的。我将地图投影到墙面上，允许用户更大范围的移动他们的身体，从而创造出更沉浸式的交互体验。然而，我开始思考，这种交互性是否有利于传达这个作品的核心理念？

我希望这个作品的教育意义大于它的娱乐意义。在这样的交互过程中，交互性并不仅仅局限于打开按钮，按下键盘，而是潜意识地参与到语言和文化之间的探讨中去。机器的反馈结果，尤其是那些乎预料的词汇，句型，会促使用户反思自己所熟悉的语言规则，并意识到这些规则并不是普遍适用的。交互性并不是为了迎合观众的好奇心或娱乐需求，而是为了能够更好地传递作品的核心概念。我认为的交互性，在这个作品中，并不是用户简简单单的身体运动去获得某种感观上的反馈。而是给予他观众思考的空间，培养对语言差异的好奇心。这种好奇心会驱使他们在生活中更多地关注到不同语言使用者的思维差异，也能更好地了解到外语使用者的某种困境，从而在潜意识中培养出一种跨文化的理解和同理心，这是NYU上海社区所需要的。

当前版本中，用户仍然需要强指引来操作这个系统。例如，用户可能无法知道最后的文本输出在哪里。或者，用户不知道地图和python界面有什么关联。这意味着在用户的交互体验上面仍然有海量的工作需要完成。在未来的改进中，我将会减少物理交互部份的元素，转而细化用户操作界面。让用户集中注意力在同一个空间。或许，细化一个网站或应用程序的交互界面可以使该作品拥有更好交互。