As the translation of the last text was so much fun, I decided to translate another text from Russian to English by way of German. Thanks a lot to CocoPop for coming up with this awesome idea and also for providing those texts. This time, I noticed that DeepL's translation wasn't as good as I was used to, so I sometimes had to second guess what the original meaning was. Luckily this was pretty easy due to the context provided.
Oh, That Mercedes!
In the 1980s, I worked as an interpreter in the World Trade Center in New Orleans. We had interpreters in our department who basically worked with all world languages. We interpreters were assisted by our secretary, Mercedes, who had recently moved from Mexico to the US. She took her work seriously: She made and served us coffee, knew how all of us took our coffee, made copies, typed and organized translations, did several post office runs a day (the internet didn’t exist back then) and wouldn't let anybody disturb us while we were working.
Mercedes had a great sense of humor and we always enjoyed talking to her during the breaks from our complicated work. Her only disadvantage was that her English wasn't only bad but her pronunciation was horrible. So we would have to ask her several times in a conversation to repeat words. But she wasn't offended when we giggled because we understood what she wanted to say. She knew that her English wasn’t good and knew how to laugh at herself. Needless to say, we appreciated her helpfulness and whenever we needed her help, we were always thankful for her wonderful attitude.
Here’s an interesting little factoid: Spanish speakers struggle to pronounce combinations of s + a consonant at the beginning of English words because in Spanish there’s always the auxiliary vowel e- in front of such words, for example: eSPaña (spain), eSCuela (school), eSFera (sphere), eSCándalo (scandal). Well, old habits die hard.
We also had a Russian translator called Svetlana who worked in our department. One day, I walked into the office where Mercedes greeted me with a smile and this time, with some interesting news:
“Svetlana is teaching me Russian,” she told me in Spanish.
“No way! That’s great!” I said and couldn’t help but giggle and think: “Why Russian? Put all your energy into English!” 😅
At that moment, Svetlana walked toward us and handed Mercedes a folder. Mercedes took the folder, grinned and proudly said,
“Espaciba, Esvetlana!” 😂
(Thank you in Russian is spasiba.)
Photo of Mercedes with CocoPop
\\ Sources
- Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians on Pixabay
As a Spanish speaker myself, this text reminds me of my high school times. My schoolmates permanently pronounced these kind of words wrong. I'd not classify this as being a struggle per se, it's more of an impulse or inertia. Like CocoPop writes in his text, it's sort of an old habit. I personally find a different instance of Spaniards' mispronunciation unbearable — it drives me nuts! —, and that is pronouncing H like the Spanish J or German CH or Dutch G. So for example when someone'd say after eschool I go jjjjome and later we'll watch Dr. JJJJouse. Shivers.
When I was studying in Spain, I had a professor who would always say "on-estate". It took me quite a while until I figured out that he wanted to say "on-state". To date, I'm still not sure if that word even exists in English. He was referring to the period in the PWM when the power is turned on.
Linda, another great translation... and the coolest thing is the places where you use my exact original words, like "No way! That's great!".
Linda, tal vez tu profesor estaba intentando preguntarte si estabas en estado 😅
¿Qué significa en estado?
embarazada
Hahaha CocoPop eh xD
😭
Huh?
crying-laughing
¡Creo que no! xD
Ah, I just see the "crying" emoji, not the 😂. I thought I might have said something wrong, that's why I ask. All right then.
Nope, you're good. Those were tears of laughter))
Haha Eduard :D. Just tried to imagine that "H" pronunciation ^^. Yes i get why it drives you nuts :). Interesting story again thanks for that! ;)
This story never gets old 😂 Mercedes married an American and had a baby she named Christian Steven, which she pronounced eSteven, of course 😅
So you're also saying "Christian eSteve" could phonetically be mistaken for "Christiane Steve"? (Christiane is a woman's name in Germany)
I guess it could 😂
Jello gang! I'm Espanish, so I'm pretty espontaneous and free-espirited. We Espaniards may not pronounce English correctly, but jonestly, that's one of the many things that makes us soooo sexy. Besides, no one rolles the "r" like we do - we rrrrrrock! Don't you think so, Eduard, joney? 😂 By the way, Linda, you did a espectacular job.
@Coral Ajajajaja that's jilarious! By the way, the "h" in "honestly" is silent.
I know, JG, but whenever I see some "H", I say "jjjjjjjj". You know, force of jabit... Thank you for letting me know anyway.
BTW, JG, your * jilarious* sounded very sexy. Congrats!
Coral snapped! 😂
That man in the photo must be Gino D'Acampo's twin. https://youtu.be/A-RfHC91Ewc
Hahaha I see the resemblance
I love seeing this story float back up to the surface here. It never gets old (unlike me! Oh, to be that young again!) Great job, Linda!
Thank you, @CocoPop 😊 I really like the story and the way it is written. I also enjoyed the process of translating.
Unfortunately, this was the last time the story floated back up to the top of the feed as this feature is limited to three times per post. But I was thinking about reviving @edufuga's approach of making an audio version of the text.
Great idea. I think it'd also be cool to see your native German version of it 😉
@CocoPop, You mean, now that two years have passed and I forgot DeepL's output, I should translate it back to German?
Hahahaha, yeah! Or you can go by the English translation.
@CocoPop, es ist vollbracht: https://journaly.com/post/35889