Abstract:

Folktales, myths, and stories transform as they move between cultures. These changes have been attributed to transmission pressures (e.g., memorability, Norenzayan et al, 2006; inductive priors, Griffiths et al, 2008). However, in naturalistic data, transmission is often confounded with differences in linguistic or cultural context, making it difficult to isolate transmission pressures. Here, we leveraged an unusual incident in which a story published in American English was translated into Russian, then French, and then — due to a misunderstanding — back into American English (Geballe, 2020). This ‘translation cycle’ offers a natural experiment in which effects of translation-and-transmission are isolated from contextual changes, since the cycle began and ended in the same linguistic-cultural context. We transformed each story into a high-dimensional trajectory through a multilingual semantic space. While the trajectory was preserved throughout the cycle, each translation slightly distorted the shape. The final English version was more similar to the Russian and French than to the original English, despite both English versions sharing the same language and publication location. Thus, when fidelity is emphasized — as with literary translation — cultural transmission can preserve complex meanings while introducing incremental changes. Literary translation thus offers new insights into change and stability during cultural evolution.

Speaker's social media:

Twitter: @ellscain, @TylerMarghetis Bluesky: @ellscain.bsky.social, @tylermarghetis.bsky.social