Lost in Translation
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Mark Twain, 1904
Poor Britney Spears.
She was distraught to learn that her Japanese tattoo, which she had hoped said,
"mysterious," instead means simply, "strange." That is not quite the message
she wanted permanently etched on her hip bone.
I sympathize. Words are tricky, especially across cultures. Clear communication
is never easy.
Mark Twain knew something about this and said, "The difference between the
almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - it's the
difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." (The above photo was
taken here a hundred years ago, in 1904, when Twain was living near Florence
with his wife, shortly before she died.)
Beware of shortcuts which promise to make communication easy. For example,
computers and internet sites can now translate anything for us, you might
think. Why struggle to learn another language?
You can have fun seeing how well it works. Use a computer to translate
a message into another language and then back into English. I tried this joke:
Man to waiter: "What is escargots?"
Waiter: "Those are snails. Do you want some?"
"No, thank you. I prefer fast food."
The Italian version, translated back into English, read:
Man to the waiter, "than what is escargots?"
The waiter, "those is snails. Wished some?
"not, thanks. I prefer the alimony to fast preparation."
Jokes do seem to loose something. Consider: "I need to lose weight. My
waistline got to forty before I did." Translated into Spanish and back into
English, it became: "I need to lose the weight. My waistline obtained to forty
before it did it."
"There once was a fat lady who had so many double chins she needed a bookmarker
to find her mouth" became, in Japanese: "As for one time her Bookmarker there
was a woman of the fat quality which needed that her mouth is found and had
such many double jaws."
I thought you could use that smile today, and a reminder not to trust too much
in easy translations.
But even within the same language and culture, as a colleague here likes to
say, "Communication is not difficult. It is impossible." Ask anyone who is
married or lives or works with another human being.
We all want to understand and to be understood, but ours is a desperate world
full of many personalities, cultures and languages. It has always been so.
God did not trust in mere human words to communicate his love. He sent himself.
Jesus is his message, his word. Not paper and ink. Flesh and blood.
He lived among us, and his message of love and sacrifice still translates
clearly into every language.
Gary Williams
Florence Bible School
Italy