Interlingual Fun!

No, not French kissing—I’m talking about the kind of the enjoyment of seeing how things translate, or fail to do so. Yes, this is something I consider fun. To wit:

Chinese uses the same word for alligator and crocodile, and another word for both hawk and eagle. I don’t mind that so much because I can’t tell these animals apart myself, but it also uses the same word for rat and mouse, which has been a barrier to my expressing myself on more than one occasion, not to mention an insult to mice.

It also uses the same word for burp and hiccup! I mean, give me a break! These are very different things, people!

In a translation class I teach I had students translate some pages from the children’s book, “Captain Underpants” and I discovered that there is no standard Chinese word for plunger, despite the fact that they do commonly exist here.

Often, students’ use of dictionaries make for odd word choices, such as in this letter to NBA star Allen Iverson:

“You can hegemonic your team to the playoffs.”

But other times it can turn a perfectly logical thought into a piece of poetry that twists the mind, as in this wonderful sentence:

“If the stream of the people are expression of surprise or doubt as to the quality of adjective, the line will be very, very long.”

A friend of mine told an anecdote about a very pragmatic interpretor who was assisting a foreign guest speak at a meeting. The foreign man told a joke, which the interpretor "translated" as, "He told a joke, laugh.” Everyone laughed, accoordingly.

The guest speaker may have marveled at how concise and effective the translation was. The interpreter made everyone look good in that scenario.