In The Big City the official language is English. It is fair to say that not everybody is completely up to speed with his or her mastery of the language.
For example, just about every day I get my lunch from the same deli. I go there for several reasons
1. It is not McDonalds. I love the food at McDonalds, but I have recently decided I want to live beyond the age of 50. To do that I need to reduce the amount of fat in my diet.
2. This deli has a wide variety of options for lunch.
3. I don’t have to walk more than 30 feet out of the building.
4. The cashier is cute.
Almost every day I get the same thing for lunch, a sandwich in a "wrap". This comes with a complimentary glass of lemonade. They can afford to give away the lemonade, as they do not use more than a couple of lemons to produce hundreds of glasses of this stuff.
When I order the sandwich the guy behind the counter always asks me a question. I have no idea what he is saying. I don’t even know what language he is speaking. However, after a couple of weeks of patronizing this establishment I determined he was asking me if I would like a pickle with my sandwich. How do I know this? Because when I say yes I get a pickle. When I say no I do not get a pickle. This is how I am learning other languages. I still have no idea how to say what he is saying, but at least we have learned to communicate with each other.
I told you that story so that I can tell you this story.
Part of my job is providing information to community groups regarding student financial aid. I usually give these presentations to parents and students at high schools. Today is Sunday. I have agreed to speak to the "Polish Student Association in New York". The location of my presentation is the Polish Consulate to the United States. Today I went to Poland.
I had never given a presentation to a group using an interpreter before this. The exception is when I gave a presentation using a sign language interpreter. That was different though, as that interpreter was quiet. When I arrived I was introduced to my interpreter, Derrick. Derrick explained that he has been in the United States for 14 years, so there might be some Polish words he doesn’t know. I told him that I would be speaking in Lithuanian. He didn’t think that was funny.
The beginning of the presentation didn’t go so well. We hadn’t decided how we were going to do this. Does he translate as I’m speaking or does he wait until I’m done with a thought and then translate? After a couple of minutes we got into a groove. I think it went well. However, I learned something from the experience.
My humor doesn’t translate well into Polish.
I told a joke. Derrick translated. Nobody laughed. I turned to Derrick and asked, "Did you translate the joke?" He said yes. I asked, "Why isn’t anybody laughing". He said, because it wasn’t funny". I took that as a bad sign. From that point on I edited out most of my jokes. The presentation went surprisingly quickly.
It seems Derrick added a lot to my presentation. I would have a one or two sentence thought. His translation would take several paragraphs. I was told later by a member of the audience that Derrick had been expanding on what I was saying.
I recently finished updating a chapter in a financial aid training manual on public speaking. It didn’t occur to me to address the issue of working with a translator. If I had thought of it, I would have included some of the following:
1. Don’t make fun of the translator. You have no control over what he or she is telling the audience.
2. ……
Actually, I just have that one suggestion at this point.
