The little travelers all attended a French Immersion School during our time in Canada. This meant that by the time the eldest little traveler was in Grade 1 all classes were spoken in only French. Homework was excruciating for G and I, we were both non speakers and struggled to help out. By the time she hit Grade 3 we were well and truly out of our depth. We sat through quite a few school concerts bursting with pride while being completely clueless as to what was actually going on. As parents tend to do, we envisaged that this would all make sense when she arrive home at the age of 25 and told us about her new role as the Head of the United Nations.
When we moved to Houston, we returned to an English speaking environment but kept our fingers crossed that she'd retain some of what she'd learnt. Now that we're in Doha, she's back studying French as a subject and doing well. In our parent/teacher conference the French teacher made the observation that perhaps she was sometimes a little over confident in her memory. "She knows the words but it's remembering their order and sometimes she switches them around".
Anyone who's attempted learning a language can identify with this. A little bit of knowledge followed by a dollop of confidence can be a recipe for a large serve of embarrassment.
I went back to an old haunt today. An institution for expat women in Jakarta, a place on Kemang Raya called Mil and Mat that has been in Jakarta for years. No appointment needed, its a no fuss express pedicure, manicure haven. They also do the most amazing cream bath, which is kind of a deluxe hair wash followed by an extended head massage that makes its way to your shoulders. It is heaven.
Mil and Mat hasn't changed an inch. The tiny supermarket down the road is now a three story shopping centre but Mil and Mat has exactly the same decor, same sinks, same staff and dare I say it, the same magazines. As I laid back at the basin to have my hair washed the very gorgeous Pon (yes, that was her name) smiled and said a few words that I recalled as "you have a lot of hair". I nodded in agreement and said "yes, yes, everyone says that".
She had actually told me I was very beautiful.
I am now dying with embarrassment. Can you imagine. You are very beautiful. Yes, that's right, yes I am very beautiful.
I didn't work it out until I was half way home and saw a sign for shampoo and realized I'd got the words for hair and beautiful a little mixed up. All I wanted to do was go back and tell her that no, I didn't think I was beautiful, not at all - I just thought I had a lot of hair.
G gave up on learning Bahasa Indonesia after we'd been living here for about a year. It was after we'd hit the streets looking for outdoor furniture. He instructed the driver, a man who took him to work every day and was fast becoming a friend, that he'd like to stop by the side of the road and purchase some small children. I can still picture the look of horror on both the driver's face and G's after I managed to interpret where it had all gone terribly wrong.
The sooner someone invents the language chip that we can just slot in behind our ears and magically communicate the better.
How about you? Ever been lost in translation?
well, just in our home we speak english to each other while im italian and P. is polish....we stick to speak our natonal language to our daughter (following the method one parent one language) but she hears us speaking english between us..inthis mess, it feels perfectly normal from the inside, it is so many years that we have conversations and laughs about fake friends, how to translate in other languages way of saying and jokes that make sense in our one...and being among expats from different countries, as we have english as the common language to understand each other, we just internalize it making some kind of "international english" in which we get much less lost than probably native would do, as they dont need to use so often the describing way of speaking,cause they know all the words..a good advise to communicate better in a foreign language is to remember that u can draw with the words what you want to say, and drawing is universally understood!
ReplyDelete(with all the efforts that everywhere parents do to learn english and to make their kids learn english, I always tend to forget that native english speakers are not so motivated for working survival reasons to learn foreign languages as all the non native english speakers are!)
My husband's best friend and his wife are moving here to live with us..in our house..from Syria in 3 weeks. I sense a lot of "lost in translation" coming our way as they struggle with English and I'm still attempting to learn Arabic. I can hardly wait for them to get here. I will have 3 personal Arabic tutors living with me. I'm hoping it will be fun rather than embarrassing since we all understand the struggle we will be having. Hopefully in the next year I will become passably fluent in Arabic before we head over near you to live.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC have asked experts to review predictions for 100 years from now. One that they think is very likely is that there will only be 3 languages spoken around the world - English, Spanish and Mandarin. I think that would be desperately sad, though there may be fewer opportunities for being 'lost in translation'.
ReplyDeleteI remember years ago, my mother arguing with a French waitress that she wanted 'fresh' milk in her tea (rather than sterilised milk). The argument went on for a good few minutes. When the confused waitress eventually returned with the tea, my mother was given exactly what she had asked for - tea with strawberry milk in it!!! I remember the red face but not whether she drank it!!
Sad to say, I still know so little Korean that there's not yet the opportunity for misunderstandings - although I have learned to ask, quite competently, how much something costs, I still can't get the numbers as fast as I'd like, which leads to me never understanding the answers...I really shouldn't ask in Korean anymore! Of course, in my job as a German teacher, I run across this sort of thing all the time with my students. I'm just about to start teaching English at a German kindergarten in Seoul; the children have a variety of native languages, so I'm expecting some good stories!
ReplyDeleteOh yes...these are the moments that make us laugh hysterically! When my hubby was first learning Mandarin, he told his friends he liked 'little girls' rather than he liked how is girl, (me - his wife) was short. You can imagine the conversation was slightly awkward after that! Tonal language are easy to do this type of thing with since the same word, pronounced five different ways has five or more different meanings!
ReplyDeleteI lived and worked in Tokyo in my 20's and did once announce to a pardonably startled caller that my boss wasn't available because he was on fire - as opposed to in a meeting - after that incident I stopped trying to be helpful on the phone answering front
ReplyDeletevery very funny. This happens to me all the time and sadly, the best way to learn a language is to try try try try and try to speak it and we are all bound to make mistakes. Some delivery men couldn't find our house the other day and called us for directions, I couldn't remember the word for wife so told them I was my husband's husband!! Also had a Spanish lesson this week when we were using the reflexive verbs (verbs are a nightmare in Spanish with different ones for every person!). Anyway we were talking about the difference between "I wash myself" and "you wash me" and I know that in conversation with someone I am bound to say I would like you to bathe me, as opposed to I like to have a bath. I am a teacher and as I socialise with preants of my own children (who may also be parents of children whom I will eventually teach) this could be an embarrassing scenario. Finally, once worked with a delightful Swiss man who thought we were teasing him and said "you're pulling my feet". last one, my friend Diane is American and would not believe us when we told her that a Bristish Z is promounced Zed as opposed to zee, so not necessarily just a language issue...
ReplyDeleteMy mum and aunt have heaps of these when they were learning english.
ReplyDeleteMy mum once called up the entire list of tuckshop mums one by one and asked them to "sweep" with her on Wednesday, instead of "swap" with her because she couldn't make her rostered day. She was upset when they all said no.
My favourite is witnessing my aunt hand a tissue to her son and command "here, blow up your nose."
ROFL! Oh your poor hubby!!!!
ReplyDeleteMy mother is forever falling into Dutch even though we live in France! It can leave a baffled look on the faces of those she is talking to!
My sister in law's father is Spanish and he often gets lost in translation. In our first real conversation he said 'congratulations on your divorce" instead of "I'm sorry to hear about your divorce" but he recovered nicely from that situtation by saying "bring your face over here" to his wife to explain what he meant to me!
ReplyDeleteBring your face over here now gets used a lot in my house!
Thank You..I'm done cleaning up my spit out coffee off my keyboard and screen now.
ReplyDeleteMy hubby's primary language is Arabic and after 8 yrs I've given up trying to correct him when he asks me where I want him to "bark" the car at the mall. Now that I'm taking Arabic classes there are several things that are so different that I'm struggling with Arabic and saying their words wrong. I know for a fact that I mispronounced a word thereby swearing at my husband. Thank goodness he loves me.
I was talking to my husband's aunt about us spending Christmas in a cabin in Lapland. At that time I was still a beginner in speaking Finnish, but I still tried to communicate to her in it. She was asking me about the loo there (vessa), since it was a small basic cabin without running water or electricity and I got overconfident about my knowledge and happily explained to her, that we're taking three big canisters of "vessa" with us, so no need to worry about it. After a few weird looks from her we both cracked up when I realised that I mixed up the words for the loo and water (vesi).
ReplyDeleteHilarious. A few years ago, when we were still new to the Italian language, my husband sent someone an e-mail that read, 'Buon Ano'. What he thought was happy new year... turns out year is anno and your rear end is ano. We've laughed about that for years.
ReplyDelete