Lost in translation

They speak English here, right? No problem.  Here is the thing, translating South African English to Minnesotan English has had some humps.

When a notice said “the meeting will be held at St. Paul’s Klinskool,”  I naturally thought it was a school called St. Paul’s that I was looking for.  Google thought so too!  So I drive off to this meeting, end up driving through a Missionvale Township (fine, but Google maps certainly can’t help me here).. After a failed attempt asking for directions at the police station, I end up at a garage.  I get directed take a left after the hilly curve.  I take said left onto a dirt road, which turned into a muddy road, which turned into a marsh, which my little blue matchbox car did not venture.  People have come out of their shacks to see what this car is doing; even the goats are gazing at me…. Somehow, I make it there.  Turns out Klinskool is not a long word for school, it is a region.  And this region was nowhere near where google thought, and even farther from the goat infested mud marsh..

Today, I was in a meeting with my core team planning for an event.  We were bouncing ideas off of each other about metaphors of light and reflection.  Candles, cell phones cameras, and mirrors were brought up.  We carried on and people talked of torches.  I’m desperately trying to be a good listener, and validate all of these ideas that people are having…. But torches.. What is this..1600? I’m not trying to burn the building down by passing out torches to a bunch of 14 and 15 year olds…. Turns out torches are what we call flash lights.. Wheooo. Gave me a fright.

Likewise, the punctuation mark which goes at the end of a sentence, we call a period, does not have the same name here.  I am going through one of my students writing, telling him that he is not using periods in the right places.  I said that a period tells us when we should pause, and take a breath before continuing on.  He looked very uncomfortable.  Turns out that this dot is called a full-stop….. Who knew.. I will not be making that awkward moment happen again.

I still am quite terrible at anything click related.  I apparently use a whole lot of unnecessary throat action when pronouncing an Afrikaans word.  And "yabo" is not the same as "ya bro".....

 

Anyway, this kind of encounter comes up every day.  Keeps me on my toes.