Lost in Translation

A side disclaimer before continuing, I have written this blog twice now – this final post and hopefully successful post will be my third attempt. All my writing got deleted in the previous one upon publishing it and I was so discouraged. Being proud of something, only to have it all disappear is extremely painful, especially when you know the second outcome won't be as witty or funny. I still hope this is an enjoyable read. Anyway, that’s all.

It's been a while since my last blog. It's been even longer since my last bus venture - by this I mean, of course I've been riding buses but thankfully nothing too traumatic to report. 

I figured I would stray off the path of the main story once more, and share some funny instances where I've had moments of feeling very lost in translation. If there's one thing living in a foreign country that does not speak your native language has taught me, it's that you are going to look and feel like an idiot at times. Of course this is normal, but feeling like an idiot, embarrassed and hyper-aware that everyone is fixated on you when you are attempting to speak their language that is so alien to you - is something I can never see myself getting used to. I know they say 'never say never' and I also know that when I attempted learning how to drive, I felt that I was never going to get the hang of focusing on pushing foot to the clutch while simultaneously changing gears. (Something you automatics learners will never have to go through ): ) Some things really just seem impossible. However here I am X amount of years later, driving without any problems. Well, I'm not driving now - if I were, this blog would be dedicated to my car trauma rather than the public bus trauma, and I can assure you there would be loads of it. Driving in a country that drives on the opposite side of the road? With their own rules and regulations? With signs in a different language? With drivers that have mastered the skill of controlled chaos? Couldn't ever be me...at least not anytime soon. I'd like to be confident in living for the next few years. I already fear slightly for my life each time the bus driver decides it's a Need for Speed kind of day. Can you imagine how I'd feel driving my car...beside those buses? No. Nope. Let's not go there. A blog idea for another lifetime. 

Anyway, let's get back to today's entry. I figured I wanted to share some funny moments I've experienced this year with my journey of learning how to navigate the Korean language. Now before I start, let me put out a disclaimer. I've been here for 2.5 years now. My Korean is still pretty trash to put it bluntly. I should definitely be a level 2 (there are 6 levels) but here I am a confident level 0.5 LOL. Okay, let me give myself more credit. When I'm alone and converse with myself (yes, we all do it okay), I'm able to say sort-of what I want to. Often times I'll attempt a simple conversation with someone and maybe be met with many limitations, however once I walk away and repeat that same conversation in my head, I find myself being able to say a lot more than I did back in the moment. It's like when you're arguing with someone and it ends poorly because they came out on top and you walk away and immediately think of the most witty and well-thought out thing you could have said instead. It's utterly frustrating that these things just don't come to us in the moment. 

Let me not give myself full credit though. I admit that I could be a lot less lazy than I am when it comes to learning Korean. Unfortunately I have accepted that learning languages is not something that takes a seat on my 'prioritised interests' list. I want to be better at it, but I will admit there are at least five other things I'd rather be doing. Now, that's no excuse. It's still very much doable to learn a language and so...I am trying, believe it or not but my social anxiety and fear of embarrassing myself is so strong, it creates a thick-bricked wall in my head that stops me from putting myself out there more. I will do the essentials but what some people don't seem to understand is that my fear is so bad, I would barely speak my own language to people in my own country. Call me over the phone and if it's an unknown number - you'll never hear the likes of my voice, ever. I'm working on it. Korea has been the perfect place to work on it, but when I come across as disinterested in learning Korean or attempting to speak it, it's definitely mostly stemming from fear - one that I absolutely need to get over and again... I. Am. Working. On. It.

In saying that, there have definitely been moments where I've taken the plunge, swallowed my dignity and just tried in situations where it was needed. So here...allow me to share with you some funny lost in translation moments during some of my interactions I've had in Korea. I'll also flip it a bit as to give credit to the Koreans that go through the same existential crises I do when having to try and speak English to me. Not all of them are exactly misunderstandings, but there's definitely a language-orientated struggle. Without further hesitation, let's get into it.

"I said tomorrow"

I’m going to start you off nice and easy, nothing too difficult to read through. I’m going to ease you into that second-hand embarrassment, don’t you worry. The first instance is about one of my favourite students in grade 5. This story is rather sweet. The reason I adore this student so much is because he’s confident, carefree and unapologetically not shy. Everything I could never ever be. Anyway, Yeongjun (that’s his name) is never afraid to struggle through his sentences in English, and although he’s not the most amazing student in terms of his English capabilities, he never avoids the challenge of communicating with me, which I appreciate so much. The only thing Yeongjun fears in English class is losing a game. The chaos I tell you when he realises he’s out. I’ve never heard more gut-wrenching screams of despair, whilst he proceeds to fall to the floor in dramatic defeat. He loses in defeat whilst I win in amusement.

Anyway...I digress. So outside of the English classroom, I will either cease to exist to Yeongjun or we will make eye contact and some kind of interaction will be attempted. That or he screams for me across the school cafeteria whilst I’m scoffing my face with soup and then that’s lowkey embarrassing and unwanted lol. So outside of class, I usually see him on Thursday’s and when I do, he will always say to me “Tayla Teacher, tomorrow” which I soon learned translated to ‘We have class together, tomorrow.’ It became our little inside joke, only…come Friday and he would be saying the same thing, and I’d have to try and correct him that tomorrow now meant Saturday, and I certainly wasn’t going to be seeing him outside of school hours. Eventually his sentence he would say on Friday expanded to “Teacher, I said yesterday, tomorrow.” Which I understood, but I tried to tell him that he could just say ‘today’ which for some reason he couldn’t grasp quite as well. Anyway, whether it was Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (those are the days I teach at this school) we would always jokingly say ‘tomorrow’ to each other, in knowing amusement.

"Have you experienced a rich man?"

This one is painful to rewrite, because I don’t think I’ll manage to make it quite as funny as I did the first time, but here goes. Every Thursday, I take a two hour Korean class with another girl. We have two Korean teachers – one is a woman and one is a man. Apart from their evident opposite genders, their teaching styles are also very evidently and completely opposite. One speaks clearly, writes clearly and will translate various things into English if they feel it’s necessary. The other mumbles while speaking at the speed of light, writes faster than that and proceeds to lose us mid-conversation whilst their topic of conversation about cabbages changes to that of completing military service in a prison. Yes, I’m sure it’s obvious which is which.

So whilst my female teacher is more gentle in approach and slowly coaxes us into the shallow-end of the swimming pool, my male teacher proceeds to throw us in a river suitable for extreme whitewater rafting.

During class one day, our male teacher was going through new vocabulary words with us. One of the new words of the day was ‘부자’ (buja) which translates to ‘rich man (or person I guess)’ in English. Now as you may or may not know, I’m hesitant when having to speak Korean in class, but sometimes I really say stupid things. The next thing that happened left me bordering beetroot in colour…far beyond the point of turning red, I was now turning purple after this incident. I was writing down the vocabulary words and their translations upon hearing my teacher ask “ 부자 봤어요?” Which I understood as ‘have you experienced a rich man?’ Before any Korean speakers jump the gun, let me defend myself. The word ‘봤어요’ can be the past tense word of ‘to see’ but it can also be used when asking someone if they have experienced something for the first time – this could be going somewhere or eating something etc. However, instead of jumping to the interpretation ‘have you seen a rich man’ my brain instantly went to the more… seemingly lewd meaning. Now let me just say my teacher would NEVER ask such a thing, but I think I was so shocked, all logic went full-force out the window behind me and so I blurted out in a flabbergasted manner, “Have I experienced a rich man??????” Yes, that many question marks would be apparent if the sentence appeared above my head when I asked it. Immediately my teacher, having not processed what I meant, pointed to the word ‘부산’ (Busan the city) on the board and immediately in that moment I realized he asked “부산 가 봤어요?” Which meant ‘have you been to Busan?’ My friend started laughing at my embarrassment, realizing what I thought our teacher was asking, and then I’m pretty sure the realization hit him because at that point, we were all dying of laughter (me mostly of embarrassment).  Needless to say '부자' is definitely a vocabulary word I will never forget...that and I'm pretty sure I remained red for the remainder of that hour.

"I'm sorry."

This one makes me stressed just writing it, but it’s not really about my turmoil this time, but rather that of my co-worker's. This co-worker and I teach grade 6 English together, and what I mean by ‘together’ is he teaches while I stand and make myself look busy. You see, this teacher lacks the capability to co-teach and it’s not due to his level of English. His English is actually quite good, but I’ve had co-teachers with worse English that I’ve actually managed to teach better with or at all. All that Yeongjun (my favourite student) has that I lack, this teacher has everything I lack and more. So whilst I can both empathise and sympathise for the level of stress he feels when he has to interact with me or try and speak English, it borders the point of; he would definitely sweat buckets if this was a cartoon. Simply breathing next to this man drives him to delusional discomfort. You could swear I’m carrying an axe around with me. So by default, he’s always apologizing. What for? Who knows? But if you were a waiter serving him his food, he would definitely say ‘you too’ after you tell him to enjoy the meal. He gives off THAT energy. He’s just extremely awkward, and so am I, make no mistake – but it feels like he’s apologising all the time for ME causing HIS discomfort. ironic, right? To give one example of this, I texted him early one day asking if we had classes. Now usually I would expect to get a text back right before class, which is fine, but no – this man felt I needed to be told right there and right then that we did not have classes that day, as if it was so urgent because he ended up sending weird messages translated in both Korean and English, with one reading something along the lines of ‘this may be difficult for you to understand because I am driving.’ Immediately I was the one feeling terrible because I didn’t expect him to reply while driving. It really could have waited. I then apologized, telling him to drive safely and stop replying.

We then happened to get to work at the same time and I apologized again because I had felt bad, but he cut me off quickly and said “No, I’m sorry.” Like what are you sorry for? I wanted to scream at him. His toxic trait is clearly apologizing too much. I don’t doubt he’s a nice guy – he really does try to be, but he truly makes our relationship dynamic difficult to navigate and so very awkward at times when it clearly doesn’t need to be. Once he told me it was difficult to teach with me, but we hadn’t event taught together. If I apologized for that (which I didn’t because I have dignity) he probably would have ended up saying sorry for that too. I sincerely hope they dump the English teaching job on someone else next year because one more year with me and I’m pretty sure he'd risk having heart failure.

"Poop, poop, POOP!"

Okay, hold on tight for this last one, it gets pretty rough. May the second-hand embarrassment be with you. Before I start, let me give you a brief Korean pronunciation lesson.

So in my Korean classes, we’re obviously learning Korean grammar and such, so I’ve come to learn that the word for ‘verb’ is 동사’ (dong-sa). Simple enough, right? Well, the word for poop is ‘똥’ (ddong). Now before we continue, all you native English speakers take the words ‘dong’ and ‘ddong’ and just try and make them sound different without doubling the sound of 'd', I’ll wait…

It’s a true skill, one I clearly haven’t mastered let alone slightly grasped with my pinky. So now you can see where this is going I’m sure. I’ve planted the seed of foreshadowing so you can pre-laugh at my demise. Korea may have the smallest alphabet but if you think ㄷ ㄸ ㅅ ㅆ ㄱ ㄲ ㅈ ㅉ ㅂㅃ sound the same as their duplicated double counterparts, you’re sorely mistaken. You have to somehow emphasise the urgency in how you say the double consonant ones in order to pronounce them correctly – get it wrong and you’re saying a different word entirely – verb and poop being the perfect example.

The Korean alphabet, for anyone curious

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s paint the scene. I was teaching a grade 5 class and they’re learning present continuous verbs (ending in -ing) but they weren’t quite grasping the fact that they had to give verb examples for the sentence I gave them. I primarily speak English to my Korean students in class, but sometimes if I’m able, I’ll throw in some Korean if it helps them understand a bit better. I don’t have a co-teacher for some of these classes, so I’m left to fend and translate for myself. Anyway, I was confident that I knew the word for ‘verb’ in Korean and so I told them to use a 'dong-sa.' They were pretty confused and continued to use adjectives and any word that pretty much wasn’t a verb. So, I tried again and said “dong-sa.” Some of them kind of looked a bit startled but STILL they weren’t getting it. I decided to be confident and shouted “dong-sa, dong-sa! DONG-SA!” Over and over again I said it until one student burst out laughing. I started laughing with her because I probably sounded like an idiot (Oh, Tayla you have no idea my child). Eventually I apologized because I knew it was probably because I sounded funny when speaking Korean – valid because I do. Eventually I got up and wrote it on the board for them to see and as if a realization hit, the laughing student went ‘ahhhhhhh’ as if she had this big revelation. I can’t say they did any better at giving me verbs, but at least they understood what I wanted.

Later that evening, a rude realization slapped me smack-bang in my head (metaphorically of course) and drove its way inside my head into the forefront of my brain. YOU WERE SAYING POOP!, it screamed.

Ah yes, what a rude realization indeed. I had been so urgent in getting my point across, I was putting so much emphasis all over that word like we do in English, to the point where I’m pretty sure I was just saying poop.

Poop! Poop! Poop! I must’ve sounded crazy. I’m beginning to understand all the reactions now – the laughing, the shocked looks, the confused looks. Pretty sure there were some mortified looks too. What’s even worse is that ‘똥을 싸야 하다” (ddong(eul) ssaya hada)  translates to ‘I have to poop’ in English. So, take dongsa (meaning verb) and ddongssa (practically meaning ‘I have to poop') and you can see where someone who doesn’t speak Korean can completely mix them up. I was literally telling my students that I had to poop, loudly and enthusiastically I might add. God couldn’t have chosen a better time to take me off this earth in that moment, but I suppose that’s why he gave me grace by sparing me of that realization in the moment it was happening. Nope, just me being a happy-go-lucking screaming at my students that I have to shit. Telling your students of your earnest need to use the bathroom and do a number two is definitely something you never expect or hope to happen in your lifetime but looking back at it – I’m really glad it did because I can’t think of a more amusing story to share than that in this current moment. Incidents like these end up being more funny than they do traumatic, and it’s worth it at the end of the day if it means I get to have a couple of  ㅋㅋㅋ moments.

(ㅋㅋㅋ = laughing in Korean)

Me realizing what I really said to a classroom full of students

Anyway, those are some cute and not so cute moments I've had lost in translation during my time here in Korea. For sure, there will be many more and for sure there have been others - that thankfully my brain has completely blocked out or deleted. There is only so much room in my brain for such events and I'm thankful I haven't had any more come sky-rocketing to the forefront in hope that they shoot me dead from re-surfaced embarrassment.

At least I'm being kept on my toes, that's for sure - if not in the bus, then on foot. 

Until the next stop,

Bus Blog Driver Tay