Lost in Translation

Misunderstandings are part of the travel landscape

Joking that I am a deviate. “Déviation” in French means “detour.” [All photos by the author]

Unless you travel only to countries where the locals speak your language, you are bound to run into situations where visitors and natives experience difficulties in understanding each other. And, as my second anecdote demonstrates, this can also happen in countries where you [supposedly] speak the same language.

Japan, 1982

Host family for two nights during my first trip to Japan

It was not only my first trip to Japan, but the first time I had traveled overseas. I was 35 years old, doing my best to try to learn some Japanese phrases from a little book that had been given out on my flight to Tokyo. I found everything to be new, different, invigorating, and fascinating.

Five years before this trip, I had joined an international organization called Servas, founded shortly after World War II as a means of spreading peace via two-night home visits when people traveled to different countries and had firsthand experiences while lodging in the homes of generous locals.

Before this trip, as a host to foreign visitors during five years, I had spent many days showing dozens of people around my community, as well as countless evenings cooking, chatting, and dining with my visitors.

The time had come for me to see what it was like to be on the other side of the host/traveler equation.

By the visit I made to the family in the photo above, I had been in Japan for a couple of weeks and had stayed with a few other host families. [Honestly, I forget the name of the town where this happened, as well as the names of the members of the family.]

I had corresponded with the son of the family [standing in the center of the photo], who was able to communicate in English. But when I arrived at the home, he was not around, which left me in the care of his kind, friendly, and non-English-speaking parents.

Thus, I was obliged to wait for several hours, all the while trying to make small talk with his mother. Calling it “small talk” is being generous. It was miniscule talk, as I was limited to the contents of my little phrase book, in which I was obliged to look up phrases to pronounce. But when it came to understanding my host’s mother, there was no way for me to figure out what she was saying. All I could do was smile and nod my head.

Shortly before my arrival, I had caught a cold, which led to my having a runny nose that needed regular attention by dabbing it with a handkerchief.

As I labored to communicate with my host’s mother, uttering random non-sequitor sentences that I had found in the phrase book — I like Japan, I am a teacher, I live in San Francisco, Sushi is delicious — I could see that as she spoke to me, she regularly touched her right forefinger to the right side of her nose. The only conclusion that I could draw from this gesture is that she was recognizing the fact that my nose was running.

Scrambling to look inside my phrasebook, I found the section devoted to explaining ailments to a doctor, and came upon a useful one: I have a cold. Thus, every time she spoke while putting her forefinger to her nose, I responded with, Yes, I have a cold.

Weeks later, as I continued my journey in other parts of the country, I learned what it meant when a Japanese person spoke while using a finger to touch the side of their nose. It has the same meaning as somebody in the USA using a finger to point to their chest while speaking. The person is saying, “I” or “me.”

Thus, weeks after the fact, and many miles away, I experienced what I came to call retroactive embarrassment. What a dolt I was! Every time this woman took the opportunity to tell me something about herself, I told her, Yes, I have a cold.

England, 1985

Yorkshire during my visit: on the left are two other teachers who were in the Rudolf Steiner class with me, along with their spouses; on the right are David, the teacher, and his family.

Shortly after that visit to Japan as a Servas traveler, I was a Servas host to a British couple named David and Joyce. David was a specialist in the teaching methods of the late Rudolf Steiner, who founded the first Waldorf School, several of which continue to flourish nowadays in the USA.

During the time of that visit, I was teaching kindergarten. It struck me that I could greatly benefit from learning about Steiner and the Waldorf School methods, so I arranged to take a one-week class from David at his place near Bradford, in West Yorkshire.

On that ten-week trip, my most common travel method was by hitchhiking, which afforded me numerous opportunities to stand in the rain while waiting for rides. Then, once I got a lift, I had conversations with the kind people who helped me get to my destinations.

On my way to visit David and Joyce in Yorkshire, the driver who picked me up asked me what I was going to be doing in that part of the country. I told him that I was going to be taking a class about Rudolf Steiner and the Waldorf Schools.

His response surprised me: “Well, then, you must be something of an expert about those schools,” to which I explained, No, not really. I don’t know anything about those schools. That’s why I’m taking this class.

He was dumbfounded, wanting to know how I could possibly take a class on a subject I knew nothing about. In return, I struggled to explain that that is exactly why I was taking this class: to learn about topics they know nothing about.

We went round and round, explaining that each other’s understanding of the situation did not make any sense.

Eventually, we reached an understanding, when we came to the realization that while in the USA, when you take a class, you are the student in the position of learning, whereas in the UK, when you take a class, you are the professor in the position of teaching.

I guess that’s part of the reason why the USA and the UK are sometimes referred to as two countries divided by the same language.

Nepal, 2006

Apil in the Pokhara cyber cafe where we met

My trip to India and Nepal took place before I began traveling with my own laptop, which meant that I needed to make frequent visits to cyber cafes so that I communicate by email. I found one such place shortly after I arrived in Pokhara after having been in Kathmandu.

The guys at this combination cyber cafe/travel agency were a friendly lot, helpful in transferring my photos onto a CD, as well as uploading them to the photo sharing website that I use.

When one of the guys, Apil (sounds like “appeal”), heard that I was from the United States, he excitedly told me, “My uncle ness beel.”

I didn’t quite know what he meant by that. I told Apil that I understood that he was talking about his uncle, but his uncle WHAT, exactly?

“Ness beel,” he repeated, emphasizing the “beel,” and using the internationally renowned method of saying it slower and louder. Because that’s what always gets the point across, isn’t it?

I couldn’t tell if it was the verb or the object of the sentence that was missing, but all I could do was stand there, look puzzled, and shake my head to let him know that I didn’t get what he was trying to say.

Round and round we went:

“My uncle.”

Yes, your uncle.

“Ness beel.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you mean by “ness beel.”

After trying this a few times, Apil eventually offered some additional information when he said, “My uncle ness beel ten see you say.”

Believe it or not, this additional utterance — “ten see you say” — offered me the crucial information that helped to crack the code! I can explain:

By that point, I had been traveling in India and Nepal for more than three months. During that time, I had had many conversations with locals whom I had heard pronounce our the three-syllable “U S A” as the two-syllable “you say.”

Okay, then: we’re getting somewhere! Apil is telling me something that involves the U S A!

Working backwards from what I now knew “you say” to mean “U S A,” I was able to figure out that “ten see,” must mean “Tennessee,” which then led me to realizing that “ness beel” must be Nashville.

Having figured it out, I excitedly proclaimed, Oh! I get it! Your uncle lives in Nashville, Tennessee, USA!

To which Apil beamed broadly, “Yes! My uncle ness beel ten see you say!”