In nowadays Kazakhstan, a strange state of things arises regarding how one should assess the situation in which Kazakh, as a state language, finds itself. On the one hand, it is claimed that its attractiveness and competitiveness are rapidly increasing, that speaking it is becoming ‘fashionable’ and relevant among young people, and that proficiency in it is becoming an indispensable factor in the professional growth and personal success of citizens. According to President Tokayev,  “all this clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of state policy in this very sensitive and politically important area”. 

On the other hand, the observers has expressed and continues to express the opinion that modern Kazakh is less in demand and in a position significantly worse than even during the Soviet era, when the percentage of ethnic Kazakh population in the republic was half its current level, the country lacked full state independence, and Kazakh did not enjoy the status of a state language. On one point, however, clarification is needed here. Kazakh was designated a state language in 1989, just two years before the collapse of the USSR. What is the explanation for this apparent contradiction?

The problem with Kazakhstan’s State language seems to lie not only in the fact that almost all the official or socioeconomic information is translated from Russian into Kazakh. It also appears to stem from the insufficient understanding of the source language by those who produce these translations and those who verify their authenticity with the original and sign them into official use. Here is what Nazgul Kozhabek, a linguist, said about this issue: “In Kazakhstan, there are few people with good knowledge of Russian… There’s a ten-step instruction posted by the door of every institution: “What to do in case of an earthquake?”. It’s terrifying. Anyone who reads it [in Kazakh] will die a horrible death. Because in Kazakh… if someone who doesn’t understand Russian reads it, he’ll be left under the rubble”. Hence, one may conclude that the issue goes beyond simple translation – it is a problem of poor proficiency in the source language (Russian) by those who translate and those who verify the texts, and sign them into official use. That in turn means as long as translators struggle to truly understand the source text’s logic, the state language will remain a shadow of the original rather than a functional, independent tool.

It isn’t a wonder at all that, given the reality that this situation has been going on for decades, the language is now rapidly losing its original qualities. It isn’t a wonder at all that, given the reality that this situation has been going on for decades, the language is now rapidly losing its original qualities. It is the logical, albeit dramatic, result of systemic linguistic erosion. When a language exists primarily as a ‘shadow’ of another for decades, the damage becomes structural rather than just stylistic.

Kazakh is an agglutinative language with a specific word order (usually ending with the verb). Constant translation from Russian (an inflected language) forces Kazakh into a Russian ‘skeleton’. Over time, people stop using natural Kazakh phrasing because the translated ‘clunky’ version becomes the new official standard.

 When you translate literally, you lose the metaphors, proverbs, and cultural nuances that give a language its soul. The language becomes ‘sterile’ – functional for filling out a form, but hollow for expressing complex original thought. Words start to take on the meanings of their Russian ‘counterparts’........

© Eurasia Review