Lost in Translation

Everyday, words are used to convey messages to people and these words, when used in the proper order and and context, give meaning. Sometimes though, people make intellectual mistakes, through ignorance or by the simple reason of using the wrong word. I myself seem to have these moments more often than I should, if I were to be honest with myself. I can't seem to process the words I want to speak with the words that I actually speak. Most of the time, I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, without filtering the words and sometimes without even trying to be politically correct, and most commonly, without even realizing that I haven't explained myself all that well.

One of these moments happened to me last week. I was hanging out with some of my friends, one of which happens to be gay. I can't exactly remember what the conversation was about, but I remember saying something to the effect of Conan O'Brien joining Twitter, and how surprised I was that he gained over 100,000 followers in the first three days since he first joined in comparison to Craig Ferguson, the host of the Late Late Show on CBS, who has been on Twitter for about three weeks and only has about 120,000 followers. I assumed that I had said that I was impressed with how popular Conan was and how people were still rallying behind him, even though he's not on tv anymore. Apparently, my friends were convinced that I had said that Craig was more popular, even though he clearly isn't (although he is my favorite) and that I was bashing Conan or something. I guess that I wasn't able to explain myself properly and that caused my friends to misunderstand me.

Another way I have made an intellectual mistake when I have tried to communicate is through the differences in dialect. I was with one of friends from El Salvador and with Spanish, there are many words that have different meaning in different countries. One of these words is fresa. Fresa in Spanish, means strawberry, but the slang meaning differs a great deal. In Mexico, fresa is used to describe a preppy, often daft and silly girl, but in El Salvador, fresa is like fairy, a negative term that is used in reference to gay men. I said that even though my cousin was a fresa, she wasn't that bad. My friend, who happens to be gay, took offense to that and I couldn't understand why. Luckily, one of my friends happened to have lived in Mexico City for a couple of years and understood what I meant and explained. It's amazing how one word can create so much conflict and confusion. That one word changed the entire meaning of what I was trying to say and this can create a lot of trouble in situations that can be more serious than the one I experienced.

Thes experiences that I had, although not very significant, shows that misunderstandings can happen between people of the same age, socioeconomic group and educational quality, and can obviously happen across different generations, cultures and nations, and continents. Although people may understand the words that people are saying, the meaning can get lost. Different people may not understand the context of the words and people can sometimes misuse words altogether, or forget to add words, or simply don't think things through, and this can create messages that are understood incorrectly and when this happens, conflicts may arise.