Language
I have been studying Japanese for four years. Whenever I mention this, people's eyes light up in excitement, and they immediately demand, "Say something in Japanese!" And suddenly my mind blanks. I can think of absolutely no sentence to say to them, aside from the reflex response of "Omae no haha" (your mom). If they don't ask me to translate a specific sentence, I usually I ask them for a sentence in English and do my best to translate. For some reason, people hear, "I'm studying Japanese" as "I'm fluent in Japanese." Despite my homestay in Japan, there are still some more complex words that I'm missing and don't allow me to translate some of the sentences I'm given, such as the phrase "nuclear warfare."
One night last month, however, I had an epiphany. I had always understood that people were trusting me to actually translate whatever sentence I gave them correctly. To see it in action, however, I suddenly got it for the first time. I was working at my school's Middle Eastern bazaar/event, writing names in Arabic (I'm studying Arabic, too). The person would fill out her name in English on a card, and I would write it out in Arabic before passing it on to Hebrew. One girl wandered away as the guy writing Hebrew was working on her card. He left the card on the table and went on break.
The head of the "Get your name written in different languages!" table came over, looked, and the card, and snatched it off the table with a panicked expression. "What?" I asked. "We're going to have to get this girl a new card."
"Why?"
He paused, shifting from foot to foot. "It's wrong."
"No, seriously, there must be something else."
Finally, after a bunch of back and forth conversation similar to above, he finally blurted, "The Hebrew, it says 'shithead', not her name." And he crumpled the card with finality.
I pursed my lips, reminding myself that this was funny in the same way that watching a skateboarder fall off his board when trying to jump a curb is funny. In other words, funny as it was, I really shouldn't laugh so the unhappy party could retain some kind of dignity. The table head seemed almost beside himself at allowing this to happen. I wondered how many other people gotten vulgarities scrawled on their cards and walked away, showing their friends, not knowing the difference. And I wondered what harm it really did, as long as no one ever found out. The kids were happy, the juvenile, Hebrew-writing kid was happy, and (most importantly) I was happy.
If I really wanted to, I could just respond with 'your mom,' and tell him I had just said that I like cheesecake. Most people don't delve into the semantics, "Well which word means what?" He probably wouldn't remember the sentence, and everyone would walk away satisfied. There's a certain kind of power in that. Thankfully, I, like Spiderman, will endeavor to use my powers for good.
One night last month, however, I had an epiphany. I had always understood that people were trusting me to actually translate whatever sentence I gave them correctly. To see it in action, however, I suddenly got it for the first time. I was working at my school's Middle Eastern bazaar/event, writing names in Arabic (I'm studying Arabic, too). The person would fill out her name in English on a card, and I would write it out in Arabic before passing it on to Hebrew. One girl wandered away as the guy writing Hebrew was working on her card. He left the card on the table and went on break.
The head of the "Get your name written in different languages!" table came over, looked, and the card, and snatched it off the table with a panicked expression. "What?" I asked. "We're going to have to get this girl a new card."
"Why?"
He paused, shifting from foot to foot. "It's wrong."
"No, seriously, there must be something else."
Finally, after a bunch of back and forth conversation similar to above, he finally blurted, "The Hebrew, it says 'shithead', not her name." And he crumpled the card with finality.
I pursed my lips, reminding myself that this was funny in the same way that watching a skateboarder fall off his board when trying to jump a curb is funny. In other words, funny as it was, I really shouldn't laugh so the unhappy party could retain some kind of dignity. The table head seemed almost beside himself at allowing this to happen. I wondered how many other people gotten vulgarities scrawled on their cards and walked away, showing their friends, not knowing the difference. And I wondered what harm it really did, as long as no one ever found out. The kids were happy, the juvenile, Hebrew-writing kid was happy, and (most importantly) I was happy.
If I really wanted to, I could just respond with 'your mom,' and tell him I had just said that I like cheesecake. Most people don't delve into the semantics, "Well which word means what?" He probably wouldn't remember the sentence, and everyone would walk away satisfied. There's a certain kind of power in that. Thankfully, I, like Spiderman, will endeavor to use my powers for good.
posted by Meredith at 8:55 AM
3 Comments:
This reminds me of the anecdotes that every tattoo parlour has; where they write "slut" or "exit only" in chinese.
Brilliant.
-Joe
My Japanese host mother was completely baffled by the character tattoos, even the ones that didn't say something embarrassing. She would look at me very earnestly and ask, "But why would you want a tattoo that says 'water'?"
When people ask me to say something in a foreign language, I usually just say the word for "something." But that's inevitably too short a response to satisfy them. *sighs*
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