Lost in translation
For the past four years, I have hosted a number of foreign students who come to Canada to learn English. It's been an interesting journey, and a way to "travel" without spending all the money.
Living with people from other cultures, whose primary languages are not English, who have different ways of doing things, has been interesting on a lot of fronts.
The written messages. It took me a long time to realize that life would be a lot easier if they were released from the agony of taking phone messages. "Please call again and leave a message on the answering machine." is what I recommended they tell people who called for me. Now I just tell my friends to call me on my cell phone.
In the meantime, my friend Valerie was renamed Zalerie, Ballary, and Dalarie. Elaine became Rainy, Edith was Idias or Iedas. Mary morphed into Malanie. I got an invite to a fearfowl party. Another invite read, "Nov 30. She'll play the violin who live in the house opposite to ours. If you want to go. You should buy ticket." Phone numbers would only slightly resemble the real thing, and it would be like a puzzle to try to figure out the mystery name and match with the mystery number.
One day I came home to the following message: "tomorrow for camp at phyfio 5 o'clock." Translation: your 5:00 physio appointment is cancelled."
The one that took the cake was a verbal one. My friend asked me one day if I had seen Helly Poppta. It sounded a lot like helicopter, and try as I might, I could NOT come up with another possibility. The translation? Harry Potter.
When she headed back to Japan, I got her an ice cream cake with "Helly Poppta" written on it. We all got a good laugh out of it.
Lost in translation.
Living with people from other cultures, whose primary languages are not English, who have different ways of doing things, has been interesting on a lot of fronts.
The written messages. It took me a long time to realize that life would be a lot easier if they were released from the agony of taking phone messages. "Please call again and leave a message on the answering machine." is what I recommended they tell people who called for me. Now I just tell my friends to call me on my cell phone.
In the meantime, my friend Valerie was renamed Zalerie, Ballary, and Dalarie. Elaine became Rainy, Edith was Idias or Iedas. Mary morphed into Malanie. I got an invite to a fearfowl party. Another invite read, "Nov 30. She'll play the violin who live in the house opposite to ours. If you want to go. You should buy ticket." Phone numbers would only slightly resemble the real thing, and it would be like a puzzle to try to figure out the mystery name and match with the mystery number.
One day I came home to the following message: "tomorrow for camp at phyfio 5 o'clock." Translation: your 5:00 physio appointment is cancelled."
The one that took the cake was a verbal one. My friend asked me one day if I had seen Helly Poppta. It sounded a lot like helicopter, and try as I might, I could NOT come up with another possibility. The translation? Harry Potter.
When she headed back to Japan, I got her an ice cream cake with "Helly Poppta" written on it. We all got a good laugh out of it.
Lost in translation.
posted by Carlotti at 4:47 AM
4 Comments:
what is with the world? this is an awesome post, and we MUST tell the world!
So very funny!
I find cultural differences to be so interesting.
I have a friend who travels extensively to Asian countries.
On one of his trips he had a cold which caused him to continually blow his nose into a hanky, which he kept in his pocket.
His Asian friend turned to him after a day of this, and shuddering, said to him in disgust, "I just cannot believe that you people collect that stuff!"
Makes me laugh every time I see a hanky.
Judy - www.judyh58.blogspot.com
Hi...I've come over from Judy's blog, my first time here. I got a good chuckle out of this post, as I worked in the schools here in Portland, Oregon, for several years. I seemed to have the ability to understand students who could barely speak English very well and was able to get my thoughts across to them, too, via tons of sign language and slow, slow speaking, ha! I also loved your previous post about how things turned out for the 8 cousins. My Dear Hubby has something like 60 first cousins and it'd sure be interesting to see how they've all turned out. His mom was one of 14 kids, many of them who were born in Saskatchewan! Two of my great-grandmas were Canadian...one from Quebec and one from Nova Scotia. Enjoyed my visit and will be back! Please stop by and say hi when you have a chance...the door's always open! :-)
This kind of reminds me of some of the invented words we have come up with over the years. i.e. Carlotti, Snarf, Safrans...
Great post Carol...you'll find a man one day.
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