Arrival's Dr. Louise Banks: Translation Personified

“Language is the foundation of civilization. It’s the glue that holds a people together.” —Dr. Louise Banks, Arrival

In this post, I discuss the meaning of the word translation and show how the movie Arrival (one of my all-time favorites) uses the protagonist, Dr. Louise Banks, as a vehicle to visually show the process of translation.

In the film Arrival, twelve alien spacecraft arrive and hover just above the ground in different nations around the globe. As the world's governments struggle to understand what this signifies, renowned linguistics professor Dr. Louise Banks is drafted by the United States military intelligence to communicate to the aliens in order to ascertain their purpose on Earth.

In other words, Dr. Banks must translate their language into English.

The high stakes involved beg the question, what does a successful “translation” event look like? The history of the word offers some clues. It is derived from two Latin words, trans, meaning “across,” and the past form latum of the verb ferre, “to bear”. The combination of this etymology is to “bear across” or “bring over” which invokes the imagery that a translator is someone who “carries [something] across [some obstacle]” (Bellos 29). Modern English has filled in the blanks to this ancient metaphor to establish that it is, in fact, meaning that a translator brings across a language barrier (Bellos 33).

As Dr. Banks progresses in her efforts to “carry over” the aliens’ meaning to the human race, she concurrently undergoes an unusual physiological transformation where she increasingly perceives time as the aliens do—in a circular manner.

Her cognitive metamorphosis is at once an allegory for the process of “translation” and an ode to the magic of language and human communication.

When Dr. Banks first encounters the two aliens in their spacecraft, an imposing glass wall—symbolically representing the “language barrier”—separates her and her colleagues from the aliens.

The aliens are shrouded in mysterious white smoke, with only the lower halves of their massive bodies revealed through the glass. The sounds they issue are unearthly and impossible to translate homophonically. Even the gravity in their ship violates our natural laws. All of these details combine to signal that the interlingual divide at this point could not be any more vast and daunting.

Dr. Banks has yet to step into the actual translation process—of understanding—these creatures. They are “others.” However, the aliens are not the only “others” with whom Dr. Banks must contend. The military brass, government leaders, and even her trusted physicist partner, Dr. Ian Donnelly, all speak “other” languages of sorts and discount her worldview.

Indeed, Dr. Donnelly flatly tells her that her book’s central claim that “language is the foundation of civilization” is wrong. From his perspective, it is science. It is readily apparent that Dr. Banks must cross multiple language barriers and perspectives to succeed in her mission.

At this point in the story, Dr. Banks’ human cognition is fully intact—she experiences time linearly. This fact represents that she is still firmly planted in the earthly world and has yet to embark on her interspecies translation journey.

As Dr. Banks engages with the aliens and increasingly understands their language, she experiences sporadic flash-forwards of her own life that feature her future daughter.

The frequency of these episodes coincides with the progress she is making in deciphering the aliens’ logographic, nonlinear orthography. The film conveys her progress through a rapid montage of scenes of her interacting with the aliens and building out an increasingly sophisticated—but not yet complete—alien lexicon. In parallel, her flashforwards likewise become more sophisticated and intricate, but she does not yet grasp the full meaning of their significance.

Dr. Banks has established the very beginnings of communication, even naming the visitors after the famed comedians Abbott and Costello, which has the effect of “humanizing” them and diminishing their “otherness.” However, she is still a long way from truly understanding them and their purpose on Earth, and her confusion over who the child is that permeates her thoughts symbolizes this.

All this changes when the aliens move to accelerate the translation process as communication breaks down in other parts of the world and global war looms. They invite Dr. Banks to their side of the glass chamber, where she stands with them surrounded by their white smoke.

The etymology of our word “understand” helps to explain the significance of this scene. It is derived from the Old English word “understandan” which means to "stand in the midst of."

Dr. Banks has crossed the language barrier to stand in the misty midst of the aliens’ world, and she now understands their meaning. Hence, her cognitive transformation becomes complete, and she now sees her “whole life from start to finish,” just as the aliens do. Indeed, as we witness Dr. Banks’ life flash before her eyes and the recognition of her daughter wash over her face, she declares, “I can read it. I know what it is.”

Her shift symbolically embodies a successful translation—the aliens’ meaning can now be carried over to humankind.

Like all science fiction, Arrival not only speculates about the future but posits thought-provoking ideas that are relevant to us today.

The movie seeks to communicate the larger themes of language as the lynchpin to our collective humanity, essential to our connectedness.

The film’s endeavor is aided by the etymological roots of our word for “translation,” which offers tangible imagery to physically convey what is usually an internal arrival at meaning. Dr. Banks’ cognitive alchemy serves as a metaphor for the extraordinary magic that occurs when we take a risk, make ourselves vulnerable, and seek to understand others.

As Abbott and Costello wisely tell the humans, language “is a gift.”

Work Cited:

Bellos, David. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translations and the Meaning of Everything. Faber & Faber, 2011.