Episode 9: Lost in Translation

Sometimes you just don't have the right words, but in a second language that can be a catastrophe! Listen in (and laugh) as Chandra shares her greatest lingual follies as well as her favorite "Chan Select" so far! It is definitely not to be missed!

• This episode's "Chan Select": Cinque Terre, Italy
• Follow or DM on Instagram: @Expatriotical
• Episode Reference: Episode 6: Lending a Helping Hand

"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Transcript

Expatriotical- Episode 9: Lost in Translation

Bienvenue, Benvenuti, and Welcome to Expatriotical, the podcast for expats, travelers, and other adventurous souls. I’m Chandra Alley and after living as an expat with my husband and 4 children in two different countries for almost 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, travelling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures without loosing your own.

Join me, as we dive into the joys and challenges of travel and the expat life in every episode!

Hi everone! Today may prove to be our shortest episode ever, as it mainly focuses on a singular story that my husband, Chris, delights in telling people. Especially people who speak French.

This episode is going to focus on the nuances of language and how things don’t always translate verbatim. In other words, things get “lost in translation”. I learned this concept early on, back when I was seventeen and taking Spanish in high school. I learned for example that you don’t say, “I am 8 years old, Yo soy ocho años.” You say, “I have 8 years. Tengo ocho años.”

And colloquial expressions are also very different. For example in American English we say, “Good luck!” when we want to wish someone well in an endeavor, and the person usually replies, “Thank you!” But in Italian you say “In bocca al lupo.” Which means “into the wolf’s mouth.” And you DO NOT reply “grazie” or “thank you”, but “crepi il lupo” which means loosely “kill the wolf”.

As you can see or hear, these kind of expressions can start to vary dramatically and can even get you in trouble or put you in an awkward situation. I thankfully was told by a dear neighbor when I was trying to describe, in Italian, how excited I was about something and I asked her, do you say, “Sono eccitato, to say I’m excited?” and she blushed slightly and politely giggled and said “No, that would mean you are aroused.” I laughed and said “Ok, that is definitely NOT what I wanted to say!” And from then on made a point to avoid saying that of course.

More recently when talking with a fellow expat here in Paris about being able to do something, I expressed that I wasn’t sure if my schedule would allow for it and the person said, “Ok, well you can just forget or pretend I didn’t ask.” In American English that expression usually means that the person is annoyed, so me thinking that I had offended the person, I started scrambling and tried to say, “Oh no, no, no, I definitely want to do it!” The person, quickly expressed that the intent of the statement was just to say, “no pressure!” Crisis averted!

But the funniest, linguistic pitfall of all for me, comes with quite a story. It all begins in the summer of 2022, when we were staying in the second of 3 temporary accommodations, which came to be known as the Spider House.

It was a lovely apartment, and it was the first time we had ever been able to stay in an actual apartment, by the way, so it had a kitchen and a combo washer and dryer and I was stoked! (Listen to Episode 6, to find out why I was so excited about these small luxuries!) There were three bedrooms for the kids, so Lilliah and Caleb shared a room, and there was a master bedroom with an ensuite bathroom that was located up a tiny spiral staircase. And the bedroom opened to a huge terrace with an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower!

I was pretty star struck, especially when we watched fireworks shoot off of the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day, which is the French equivalent of July 4th and actually held only 10 days later on the 14th of July.

But for Chris, especially, due to the attempted scamming of the property management company for that apartment and the lack of air conditioning during a 40 degree Celsius or 104 degree Fahrenheit heat wave, the shiny star-studded quality of the apartment did not last.

During the first week or so of our stay we also noticed that Carson and Caleb were waking up with what looked like bites on their bodies. And even thought I washed the sheets and everything, the bites kept coming. So we figured there might be a few little spiders around, as the bites did not look like mosquito bites.

Our suspicion of spiders was confirmed late one Sunday morning after I had hopped out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, and went to grab my clothes. As I stepped into the bedroom there was a large gray spider a bit bigger than the size of a quarter (that’s about the size of a 2 Euro coin for my European listeners), and it was on floor. When I saw me it scurried under the bed. I quickly dressed and tried to see if I could see it under the bed, but there gap between the bed and floor was only the width of about 2 fingers. So I tried to lift the bed to move it and discovered that it was quite heavy, as the bed contained hidden storage under the mattress, full of the owner’s family photos, special coffee mugs, and things like. So lifting or moving the bed on my own wasn’t going to happen.

I called for some muscle, and Chris came upstairs and I told him about the “giant” spider. We proceeded to lift the bed at the foot and then that mattress hinge sprung open. Rats! Ok, we decided to lift from the side closest to the bathroom. I know this all sounds desperate, but at this point I was imagining this spider crawling up the bed that night and biting my face or worse, what if my mouth was open and I swallowed it!

These thoughts I could not handle, so we tried again, this time from the side, sweating now as it was afternoon and there was no air conditioning, which is very normal in Paris by the way, and we were lifting this very heavy bed. So on the count of three we lifted. “One, two, three!” Shortly after lift-off the spring opened again, this time digging into the wall and causing at least a 6-inch scratch.

We couldn’t believe it! I felt sick to my stomach. Stupid spider! So, needless to say the hunt was abandoned (though we did throughout our time there kill quite a few of its brothers or sisters- that spider got away), and a scramble ensued to get a hold of the owner commenced.

Thankfully, he was very understanding, we of course said we would pay for everything, but that we just didn’t know who to go to. He gave us the contact info of his handyman and for 60 Euros, the man came out and plastered and painted that awful scratch. He did a great job! It was good as new, almost.

This was where my terrible Lost in Translation story really began.

Fast forward a month or so to when we moved into our current apartment. During the set up of our china cabinet, somehow the gentlemen doing the work lost control and it fell against the door frame leading into our dining room. Scratching the door frame and gouging out paint along the way, until the men got it under control.

Once again, repair work is needed, but thankfully, this time the moving company is going to flip the bill. But wait! This time I know someone who can fix this. So, I dug through our emails and found the number of the handyman who had bailed us out just a month earlier. For reference purposes and to also keep anonymity, let’s call him “Guy”.

Guy, was a slightly portly man in his mid to late 40s, about 2 inches or so shorter than me. He was friendly and seemingly shy, possibly because he spoke not a word of English. I had not yet had one lesson of French and so relied solely on Google Translate to do all of the communicating for me with anyone that spoke French.

I also want to interject here, that none of this description is meant to be disparaging to Guy, but simply to paint a picture of the situation.

Guy came to the apartment and assessed the damage, he explained that he would give me a quote and once that was approved by the moving company, we could schedule the work. It would take 2 days to complete, as there was more damage that had occurred, than at the Spider House. One day to fill the damaged area with plaster and then a different day to sand and paint.

The moving company approved his fee and we scheduled the work. Guy came in the evening both days, which for me was stressful to try to keep my four children, the youngest of which was a very curious and high-spirited 4-year-old, away from Guy while he worked. But thankfully, he did quick work and said he would return in a couple of days after the plaster had dried to finish.

Good to his word, he showed up and began to sand things down, dusting and painting. I was very nervous for the painting part, as I couldn’t imagine that he would be able to match what was already there, with out the right paint reference, but miraculously he did!

As he cleaned and packed up he said to me, via Google translate, I am sure, that if I needed any more work done, please be sure to contact him. I assured him I would.

Over the next several months Guy would occasionally text me and ask if I knew of anyone that needed work done. I would respond, telling him I did not, but if someone asked me I would refer them to him.

Then in December, a leak from the apartment above us caused major water damaged in our kitchen and laundry room. This time the insurance company had specific people they wanted to work on the project and after a few months of drying, the damage was repaired. But then my eye started roaming and I saw other, unrelated cracks in the door frame of the kitchen, which I thought to myself, “Before we move, we will have to get Guy over here to fix that.”

I could not have been more than 2 days later that, Guy texted me and said, “Bonjour, how are you?” Of course that was completely in French, so I opened my Google Translate app and typed, “Hi, I am well thank you. I was actually just thinking of you yesterday.”

This apparently, was my fatal mistake. The text conversation quickly devolved. To the point where I had to remind Guy that I was married. Once Chris came home I immediately showed him the text conversation.

I will keep that all of that text conversation to myself, honestly, to spare Guy, any possible chance of being embarrassed if he ever heard this, but let’s just say I was perplexed as to how things had gotten to that point and Chris thought the whole situation was hilarious. He roared with laughter and though I was happy that he thought it amusing I was still puzzled.

I asked him to share the text conversation with his French colleagues to see if I had said something wrong, and they laughed, saying, the way I had written, “I was thinking of you yesterday.” Did not come off as benignly as I had thought. Ugh, how naïve I was. How embarrassing.

They did say that I had quickly “righted” the conversation so there could be no further possibility of misunderstanding, but the damage had already been done.

I felt terrible and honestly still do feel bad about the whole situation. And so I share this as a cautionary tale. Google Translate and other translation apps are wonderful things, but they can’t convey meaning or intention and they certainly have their limits, so proceed with caution and when in doubt, if you have someone you know who speaks the language you are trying to translate to fluently, have them proofread before you send!

Okay, enough of  the tales and follies of Chandra trying to speak French, let’s move on to this episode’s “Chan Select”.

This is a very broad pick this time, as it is not a specific restaurant or product, but a region. My favorite region in Italy. In fact currently as of the first week of April 2024 when I am recording this, my favorite place in the world… Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre means “five lands”, or maybe a better translation is “five towns” and it is a string of five villages located just south of Genoa on the Italian Riviera, which makes it sound fancy, but really it’s just beautiful. The towns are located inside of a National Park and each town was historically a fishing village and some of them are still not even connected by roads.

Their colorful houses arrayed in yellows, blues, oranges, and pinks perch atop gorgeous cliffs with crystal clear aquamarine waters lying below. Cinque Terre offers two of my favorite things, well three really, the sea, hiking, and Italian food! It truly is paradise for me and my whole family really. The kids love the hiking, which is usually rewarded with a gelato at the end, plus a dip in the refreshing waters of the Ligurian Sea.

As Cinque Terre has become quite popular and we are a large family (so finding a hotel that can handle all of us in two rooms or less for a reasonable price is cumbersome), we never actually have our accommodations in one of the five towns, but just outside. The first year we stayed in Porto Venere, which is to the south and just outside of the official boundaries of the National Park.

It is an enchanting town, but definitely a bit removed, requiring that you take a water taxi to get to the other towns, which was a bit pricey and subject to pretty choppy waters at times, I experienced my first and only so far, bought of sea sickness on one of those taxis. Or you can drive to La Spezia and take a train to the towns, which we also did. The catch is, you have to have a car to stay there, but the views at night of the large cruise ships in the bay heading to port in La Spezia, was wonderful.

The next two times we went to Cinque Terre, we chose to stay north of the park, once in Deiva Marina, that’s d-e-i-v-a Marina, where I saw for the first time in my life, fire flies (and it was magical) and the last time we stayed in Moneglia. That time we had Chris’ sister, Sarah, her husband, Nick, and their four kids with us. We wanted to share this magical place with them and we were able to find a lovely little apartment hotel nestled high on the hill with another beautiful view of the surrounding cliffs or hills that plunged into the water below.

I am happy to report that they all loved it as well and Sarah and I still fantasize about buying a vacation home there. Probably mainly me with that fantasy part more than Sarah, but still it’s nice to dream!

Both Moneglia and Deiva Marina have a train station so accessing, Monterosso, the northern most town in Cinque Terre is at most a 30-minute train ride for just a few euro per person. Each of those towns has it’s own lovely beach area and Moneglia, especially, has beautiful Centro or town center filled with lovely shops, restaurants, and markets. The vibe is relaxed and so are the people.

That whole area truly is a wonder and in my opinion photos, as stunning as they are, don’t do it justice. But something, oddly, that does encapsulate, in a childlike way, the essence and the beauty of the area is the Disney movie Luca. I know that sounds silly, but watch it and you’ll see. It’s exactly how I think of Cinque Terre, minus the sea monsters of course. Though for clarification, the town of Portorosso doesn’t actually exist, but it is based on the village of Vernazza, which is probably my favorite of all of the five towns.

Wow, ok, so this is a super long “Chan Select”, but I couldn’t spare you the details! In fact, if we were together in person, I could honestly gush more about Cinque Terre. I truly love it. There will be a link to the official Cinque Terre website in the show notes if you would like to check out more or feel free to DM me on Instagram at @Expatriotical for any tips or suggestions about going there. Not that I am an expert, but I am happy to make recommendations if I can!

And finally our quote for today comes from a famous Italian expat, Sophia Lauren. Born in Rome and raised by a single mother between there and Naples, Sophia Lauren grew to fame as an actress in the 1950s and was known not only for her talent, but also her beauty. She has lived as an expat in France and currently resides in Switzerland.

Her quote really compliments my earlier story of making a gigantic verbal error. Andin Italian she says, “Gli errori sono parte delle tasse che si pagano per una vita piena.” Which in English translates to, “Mistakes are part of the dues that one pays for a full life.” Isn’t that so true. Painful at times, but true!

That’s it for today my friends! Thank you so much for joining me here today, I hope you have either learned something or at least got a good laugh out of today’s episode.

Before I bid you adieu, I wanted to ask that if you haven’t done so already or if you are a new listener, would you please take a moment to rate and review Expatriotical on your preferred streaming app. That simple kindness will help me, Expatriotical, to popup whenever people search for podcasts related to expatriate life and travel.

Thank SO much for that and for listening! I love that you are here with me on this podcasting journey and I thank you for welcoming me into this part of your journey today! I hope you have a blessed and amazing day everyone!

This is Chandra Alley signing off and reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical!