Posts Tagged ‘chinese’

hmm.. right. So I sort of abandoned this blog. I think the fact I just began and thus no real readers was a bit of a problem. But I gotta start somewhere, right? So I shall keep writing.

The other reason I’ve neglected was more legit. I’ve been traveling. In May, I went back to Taiwan for a visit and in June a good friend from the U.S. came for a visit here au Cameroun. And over these two trips, I had quite a few realizations about my linguistic ability.

En route to Taiwan, I had a layover in Paris. I was quite nervous about what the Parisians were going to think of my Cameroonian French. Parisians don’t exactly have the best reputation for being kind souls. And to my surprise, they didn’t look at me like I was from Mars. In fact, I even got stopped by a camera crew to do an interview on my Cameroonian shoe fashion! I wonder if that ever got aired. One of the more amusing things that happened to me as of late.

Then I was in Taiwan surrounded between English, Chinese, Mandarin, and Hakka for about 3 weeks. There were times when I thought that seeing an ultra sound of my brain at that moment in time would be really interesting. I was probably thinking in English about something irrelevant while my parents are talking to their friends in a mix of Chinese and Taiwanese. And then one thought that crossed my mind often was, “what if one day I bring home some American guy who can only speak English to this family gathering?” He would freak out.

Weeks later, my friend came to visit. Just as I am writing this, it occurred to me that between her and me, we covered almost the entire circumference of the globe, with the exception of crossing the Pacific Ocean. Anyway, beside the point. Megan is a great friend from my high school years. A true American, who only speaks English, but bless her heart, she tries. I gladly put on the translator hat. And this is when I realize I am really quite bad at being real time translator. I get very lazy and forget to translate a lot of things.

When we are with my French friends or Cameroonians, I try my best to translate French into English. And when we were with my Chinese friends, I attempted to not have her feel left out and translate as much Chinese as I could into English. It is absolutely one thing to be able to communicate in a language, and another to have to switch/translate between languages. There are so many nuances to a language that are very difficult to capture unless you know it.

Translation comes with practice. Lately, I have  new found respect for people who does it for a living. It’s quite an intricate job. I am exploring options on career other than translators with my language abilities, but perhaps I should look into it…?

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Ever been in a conversation where everyone is speaking a language you don’t quite understand or completely clueless about? That’s me from the very beginning of life. Well, I suppose that’s everyone. But for as long as I remembered, I’ve found myself time and again in such situations. Frankly, I love it.

It began with the family from my father’s side who speak Hakka, a traditional Chinese dialect. Hakka is less prevelant on the island of Taiwan than the more popular Taiwanese or the official language of Mandarin Chinese. I was fortunate to have grown up in a family where many languages were thrown arond at all times. Besides the holidays, I am seldom around the Hakka-speaking family, thus never quite learned the language. Now living in Cameroon, when villagers speak their local languages, I am reminded of holidays spent in the Hakka speaking village in Taiwan.

Besides the Hakka family, I have a blond-hair, blue-eyed American uncle who paid yearly visits to Taiwan. While always amazed at my parents’ ability to communicate with my uncle in English, I had absolutely no idea what was being said. Yet somehow always conveyed perfectly that I would like my uncle to take me in his suitcase back to the USA and go see Winne-the-Pooh.

Fast forward to 1998 when I suddenly find myself in a classic suburb of USA during first day of sixth grade, knowing only maybe 60% of what is being said to me. Nothing to help a kid learn language when you throw them in a setting where he/she is the only person not speaking the language. No one wants to be the “weirdo” in 6th grade, so one learns at lightening speed.

During time in university, I traveled to cities were German/French/Italian were spoken and understood very little of it. However, knowing English helped me saved a group of Chinese tourists who were utterly lost while waiting for a night bus in Venice. They approached me with somewhat atrocious English, so I helped them out by throwing them the Chinese rope. So they could breathe comfortably and not drown.

Fast forward again to 2008 when I somehow ended up in Cameroon, West Africa with the Peace Corps, sitting in the living room of my temporary host family, understand maybe 10% of what is being said. They gave me strange food to eat, but it was easier to just eat it than use French to figure out what the heck it was. Just as I am grasping Cameroonian French, I get sent to a small village that happened to have French students from France doing their internships. I have lunch with them, and their French is something like a different language than Cameroonian French. Whoa! Once again, smile and nod. And of course it’s always a pleasure when village mamas approach me speaking in Batié trying to tell me something, and I seek frantically at any kid around who can translate it in French for me!

And this is where I am today. I continue to embrace all the situations where I understand nothing of what is being said. Being a polyglot makes me a curious wanderlust, always seeking for the next time I can understand absolutely nothing and be wildly amazed. Searching for the next stop around the world, one language at a time.

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