Lost in Mistranslation

In the cookie-cutter suburbs of Texas, with little to do, with less to see, though I can hear the occasional music of rolling Rs, and I might walk downtown during the festivals of Día de los Muertos or Cinco de Mayo, the scent of fresh-made tortillas swirling about the streets… I am, ultimately, only an observer. I was raised here a fifth-generation immigrant—that is to say, somebody whose ancestry stopped mattering some distant branch ago on the family tree; I am just “American,” a default. I feel untethered. There is no distant country I can travel to whose
people would mistake me for one of their own, and never, here in America, do I walk the streets with the fear that I don’t belong. My circumstances are such that English was the only language I’d ever known, ever had to know, so the challenges of growing up a non-native speaker of a
nation’s predominant language were lost on me for the longest time.

Sure, in my part of Texas there is a considerable cultural influence from Mexico, and of all schools I attended, their student populations hovered around 40% Hispanic. As such, there were bits of Spanish I’d picked up casually, like when I was little and trying my best to speak with a friend’s parents. But that wasn’t for the need to fit in or the expectation that I assimilate into another culture. That was language free of social implication, language for its most natural purpose. And I would realize that this learning process, stripped of those pressures, truly is rewarding.

So when it came time for me to take a foreign language in my second year of college, I was very much looking forward to starting that process from the beginning. I decided on French, of which I had no idea whatsoever about fundamentally—and I was excited by that. Students of my class were of a similar mindset, and after all, French hasn’t much practical application in Texas, so all of us were motivated to be learning a language for the sake of learning a language.

What I most loved about the school’s program was its involvement of French TAs, or teaching assistants: exchange students from France who were invested in our improvement, particularly in our speaking. Every week, half of our section would meet with a dedicated TA and practice our speaking with her (whom I will refer to as Mia).

Mia was from the south of France, so more down-to-earth than her Parisian counterparts of the department, and majoring in philosophy. She spoke with the unaffected accent of the Mediterranean, away from the more austere pronunciations of Paris, and her style reflected that:
flowy, colorful dresses with her hair kept neatly to stop at the shoulder. Over the two semesters we shared, our class had gotten to know a lot about Mia, as she was an especially forthcoming, kind person who took as much an interest in getting to know us as we did her. That made it all
the more hurtful when something I said to her, in French, was misinterpreted as an insult.

Several times per semester, we had an oral exam with Mia, where she would ask us questions in her language and we would respond. It was my second semester of these classes when one day she had asked me a question as innocuous as any other, and I gave my answer in predictably imperfect French. Whatever the question was, or my intended answer, I do not know. But what I had actually pronounced differed so drastically from my intention, and it obviously upset her. We suffered an uncomfortable moment together, her collecting herself and me trying to catch what had even happened. I realized, doing my best to read her shielded eyes that my
bastardized attempt at French had done some terrible wrong.

Mia was perfectly understanding. Obviously, she said, I hadn’t meant to say anything offensive, but my mispronunciation of whatever word had completely changed the meaning of my sentence. All the same, those words had truly hurt her feelings, and I sensed they may have represented an awful thought somebody suggested to her seriously in the past.

I’ve thought more about the experience in the year or so since. I cannot help but let these things live with me, but I’m thankful for it; this mistake taught me about a reality I’d never faced in my youth. No doubt, anyone immigrating to the United States speaking less than perfect English, or speaking none at all, could share a similar story to mine. But for this possibility of inadvertently upsetting anybody you could be communicating with on a daily basis, whether at the store or at work, to linger in your mind… I feel very lucky not to face that, to say nothing of
the implications this could have in dealing with police or public officials.

My experience isn’t to do with the language I’ve known my entire life, but it has nonetheless defined my relationship with English as I grow older. It was as invaluable to me as my most formative years were important to my language development, of learning to speak my first words or how to recite the alphabet. Perhaps our American institutions are becoming more empathetic to the plight of non-native English speakers, and our education system has improved to some extent in this area (but is that saying much?). Though there is a responsibility we all have to take on to acknowledge and empathize with these voices. Yet you cannot immerse yourself in a feeling you don’t even know is there; for too long, I didn’t.