So Much Is Lost In Translation
So Much Lost in Translation
I. Lost in Translation
There is so much lost in translation,
a slew of misinformation,
when shopping local stores
lost on all shopping floors
never finding missing equation.
I could have worked for the CIA,
great government job with decent pay,
there is no translating,
my gibberish is grating,
I have no idea what people say!
The one thing gathered from teaching,
I feel this is not overreaching,
I should have learned Spanish,
barriers to vanish,
my teaching could have been for reaching.
I took adult classes in Hebrew
a change of pace to learn something new
I even made flash cards
to add to my discards
had to drop this course after a few.
After spending some time in Asia,
I suffer from language amnesia,
thought I learned one word here
or another word there
the language I learned was fantasia.
Those years of University French
I still feel like I’m stuck on the bench
to point out ne parl par
instead of where’s the car?
my tongue twists like a turn of a torque wrench.
A problem with not knowing languages,
my French is a mouth full of lozenges,
whats worse is my German,
an attempt at Russian,
each word to cause a trained ear anguish.
My apologies to the whole world
how your languages come out all gnarled,
I want to be worldly
and come off as friendly,
till language ignorance is unfurled.
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Nicely penned verse, Jamie, and I like the humor attached to a difficult subject: languages. I always had trouble learning new languages and wish I could be fluent in French, Spanish, and a few others. I enjoyed your poem. Well done.
Nicely penned. Languages can help us communicate but it is difficult learning to be fluent in more than one and we often become like a traveling UN picking up a bit here and a bit there. I took French in high school and still know a few words here and there, then came Spanish which is now mixed in with the French and tried to learn German three times. The two languages I am fluent in are English and Latvian.
Thank you Phyllis and Rasma for stopping by and reading about my struggles with language. I think some of us just have more skill in languages then others and I am not one of the skillful ones. Jamie