Dictionary Dangers

[Don Boose]

In MIKBEW’s thread showing his magnificent model of Notre Dame Cathedral, I commented on the flying buttresses, to which a certain superannuated Navy Captain and Troll weighed in with, “Ah yes, the little known Boeing B-17.5 Flying Buttress!”

This brought back memories of an incident that revealed to me the dangers of using a foreign language dictionary.

In 1971, having completed the Korean course at the Defense Language Institute, I was sent to a school at Fort Bragg prior to deploying to Korea for an assignment with the Unconventional Warfare detachment of the United Nations Command Headquarters.

My table-mate was a Korean Air Force major. His English was much better than my Korean, but we both found it useful to have a buddy with whom to practice our respective newly-acquired foreign languages.

One day he asked me to look over the script of a briefing he was going to give. All of it was understandable to me except for a reference to “near empty buttress operations."

He said that he had used a Korean-English dictionary to translate the phrase from his original Korean, using the first definition for each of the words.

After a little discussion conducted in a mixture of English and Korean, it dawned on me what he meant.

Major Kim had, in fact, translated each of the words in kakkaun kongchung chiwon chakchŏn (“close air support operations”) absolutely correctly.

Don

[THE DC]

I had a similar situation, of which the details I shant share in this forum, save to save that the encounter resulted in my receiving a sharp slap to the face!. It did involve a miscommunication involving a word similar to "buttress."

I too learned the value of being careful using language I did not fully understastand when in a foreign culture.

I'll learn the language before I go back to Mississippi.


The DC

[Ashrunner]

One of the things I enjoyed during my military career was learning about people in the various parts of the world I lived. I would always try to learn the customs and language of where I was assigned.

When I was in Italy, after my first trip to the newspaper printing plant, I told our office secretary that she didn't need to accompany me there to translate, as I felt I could muddle my way through it until I learned Italian. A few months later, an accident in Greece involving the Aviano Folk Singing Group cause a rather humorous incident at the plant.

I heard about the accident in my office on base and had gotten briefed on the details. However, even though the accident had occurred the day before, word of the accident was just getting to the civilian population of northeastern Italy. That morning, when I arrived at the plant in the city of Pordenone, near Aviano, people there wanted to know more about the accident.

I had only been in Italy for a few months and knew Italian, and no one in the plant spoke English, I began using my limited Italian to convey what I knew. I was able to pass on that two members of the group had been killed and nine others injured (these numbers may be wrong, as this did happen in 1976). As I spoke, the group around me got larger and larger until the entire plant was surrounding me listening to the conversation. At one point, the owner of the plant asked me when the accident happen. I knew enough Italian to understand what he asked, but not enough to tell him the accident happened yesterday.

So I paused for a moment trying to think of the Italian word for yesterday. When I couldn't, I looked at him and said, "...giorno prima oggi." Literally translated, what I said was, "Day before today." Everyone around me immediately got a puzzled look on their face for about 10 seconds. Then, like a flock of birds taking off at the same time, laughter broke out as they realized what I was trying to say.

The owner, who was still laughing, look at me and said, "Larry...il giorno prima dell'oggi è ieri," which means, "The 'day before today' is yesterday (ieri)." I learned a new Italian word that day, and even with limited Italian, found out I could converse with almost anyone. I never forgot the Italian word for yesterday and still smile when I think of "ieri." By the way, it is pronounced "yair - e" with a long "e" sound at the end.

[Yu Gyokubun]

Lately I am aware of a big difference between Japanese and English. Especially in colloquialism, expression of same idea or thought differs in each language. Taking an example, in English they say “I couldn’t be more serious” but if we translate the same Japanese phrase into English literally, it will be “ I am big serious”
This kind of translation would not be problematic I guess but when it comes to the case Don-sama cited it will be beyond comprehension and that would always happen in word by word translation.
By the way, what I am concerned the most, as a non-native speaker of English, in using English isn’t about the case like Ashrunner mentioned which causes laughter and remains forever as a good memory but about insulting others by writing wrong expression unknowingly.
Once I received e-mail from a native speaker of English. The e-mail started ‘Sorry to bother you sending e-mail…..’ and in the reply e-mail I wrote ‘I don’t bother your e-mail’. Fortunately, he was a nice guy and gave me an advice that in that case I should write ‘Your e-mail doesn’t bother me’ adding explanation.

[Don Boose]

Great stories, Ash! I truly envy your ability to pick up languages.

You are always so friendly and courteous, Yu, that I am sure any errors you made would be quickly forgiven. I only wish I had the ability to communicate in Japanese one fourth as well as you write in English.

Ash's story about "ieri" reminds that when I was struggling with Korean at Yonsei University in Seoul back in the mid-1970s, the Korean students had a coffeehouse hangout named "Yesterday." You can imagine the scrambled conversation that ensued when one of them asked me, "Would you like to join us at the coffeehouse yesterday?"

We also had some "who's on first?" type dialogues when people came to our house and asked us the name of our cute little cat, whose name was Koyangi, which means "cat."

Translated from Korean: "That's a cute cat. What's his name"

"Cat."

"Well, yes. It's a cat, but what's it's name?"

Don

P.S.

Yu-sama: "Who's on first?" refers to a famous comedy dialogue between two American comedians of some 60-70 years ago named Abbott and Costello. YOu may have heard of them. The comedy routine involved a baseball team with players names "Who," "What," and "I don't know." The fun begins when Costello asks, "Who's on first?"

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow's name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing...

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.

Abbott: That's the man's name.

Costello: That's who's name?

Abbott: Yes.

[rickstef]

Third base !!

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor4.shtml

[Don Boose]

I Don't Know.

[Yu Gyokubun]

Don-sama,
Thank you for adding explanation about Abbott and Costello's commedy which I didn't know. I love this kind of commedy and added this simple comic backchat to my file of jokes. When I learn jokes and like during conversation with foreign business associates I make it a point to write it down for future usage.
On reflection, this one I can use only where baseball is popular though

[CharlieC]

Originally Posted by YuG

On reflection, this one I can use only where baseball is popular though

It works in most English speaking countries - Australia doesn't do much baseball but the joke is understood and appreciated. The "who's on first" dialogue is up there with the best comedy from the US.

Regards,

Charlie

[ccoyle]

I spent a year in West Germany as an exchange student. My first week in country, host mom serves roast beef for dinner. She asks me, "Magst du das?" (Do you like that?) I wasn't familiar with the second person of the verb "to like" (magst), I only knew the second person of "to make" (machst) -- they're homonyms. I could only stare blankly, wondering why this woman is asking me if I made the roast when clearly I didn't. Confusing! :o