Monday, September 10, 2007

Loose Translation

Today I went down to Milpitas to bring my Grandparents to a doctor's appointment. After the appointment, we had lunch at a new dim sum/Chinese restaurant.

As we were eating the owner came around and chatted a bit with my Grandma and Grandpa.

It's funny - I don't understand a lick of Chinese, but I can usually tell what's going on based on the context.

Today's conversation went along the lines of:

"This is my Granddaughter. She came all the way down from San Francisco to help us today. She's very helpful. She doesn't speak Chinese at all. Neither does her Mother (our daughter). Things were different back then. When you moved to the United States, everyone was supposed to speak English."

I'm not kidding. I actually asked my Grandma afterwards if I got the gist of the conversation right, and she said I did!

It's funny what you can figure out by paying attention to the context of a situation. I've been doing this my whole life, so I think I must be pretty good at it by now.

"Chinese in context".
It's almost as good as speaking Chinese!
(although I'm sure my Grandparents would disagree!)

No comments: