Ralph Oswick: Sloshed in translation
It’s almost time to start thinking about travel, and dare I say it, holidays. My particular fave destination has dropped its quarantine regulations, so give or take a variant or two, it’s a spring break for me and my pals.
I can order a few beers in practically every country in the world (and have done so, he brags), but we have come a cropper with our conversational skills.
When I toured Germany with the Natural Theatre Company, we often found it was easier for the waiting staff in a restaurant if we ordered in clearly enunciated English.
However, this seemed to upset a vegetarian amongst us, and he expressed his utmost disgust that we hadn’t even bothered to use the lingo.
Spotting the word ‘kase’ on the menu, he translated this correctly as ‘cheese.’ However, this referred to leberkase, which is a gargantuan slice of particularly greasy fried liver pate.
Unlike us, he didn’t find it at all funny when this was slapped down in front of him, accompanied by a plate of dark bread and dripping!
I will skip over the occasion when my companion asked for a driving licence salad in Barcelona, and move on to the time it was pointed out to me by a British Council officer that for the first two weeks of the tour I had been asking the audience to hand in the gifts they had brought for the wedding scene in the play.
Gift in German is apparently ‘poison.’ No wonder they all looked a bit puzzled.
Only after I reluctantly and with difficulty changed to ‘hochzeitsgeschenke’ did the chocolates and flowers start rolling in. Along with gift wrapped chunks of the Berlin wall and even a dinner service.
It was great fun sharing it all out in the dressing room after the show!
Once, when staying in the Seychelles, where the main language is Creole, my swimming shorts split (too much curried fruit bat?) so I wandered down to the village shop.
Do you have a needle and thread, I asked? Certainly sir, came the answer in perfect English, ham or cheese? I never quite got to the bottom of that!
Nor the mystery of the missing gin in Nevis, West Indies (my aforementioned fave destination), where a lot of people converse in a kind of rapid-fire patois.
Standing in the booze aisle in a large supermarket, I was faced, not surprisingly, with row upon row of rum varieties.
But my mission on behalf of my chums was to stock up on gin.
A look of puzzlement crossed the face of the youth who was filling shelves with yet more rum. Gin, he replied slowly? Yes, you know, gin as in gin and tonic?
He led me along to the manager’s desk. I repeated my request. The two of them conferred incomprehensibly for a bit and then said manager led me briskly to the detergent and disinfectant aisle.
I mean, I’ve sunk some cheap gut rot in my time, but I draw the line at Jeye’s Fluid!