Translation

I spend a lot of my time laughing over the Thai to English translations that I see every day yet now I'm beginning to wonder if a culture or a nations way of thinking can ever be translated into another language.  I started thinking about this after noticing that the refrain I heard on my way out of the office door to teach was, "have fun." Whenever I'm heading to class nearly every teacher I pass says this to me.  In the U.S. I'm used to hearing and saying something more along the lines of "good luck," or "I'm sorry."  Going to the library at school, heading to class, going to study -- the parting words were always one of those two phrases.  The difference between "I'm sorry" and "have fun" has caught my ear.  Are our sentiments towards obligation so different?  

By my students I have twice been seriously affected by the way they speak and what they say.  On Monday two students barreled into my classroom laughing and making fun of one another.  The boy rushed over to me, "Can I say this? Is it ok to say 'Sa has a foreign husband.'?" "Yes I said. You can definitely say Sa has a foreign husband."  I turned to Sa.  "Do you have a foreign husband?" "Yes," she said, "from Arizona." "Does he live in Thailand?" I asked.  "He passed away a long time ago," she replied.  I was speechless.  Sa is 24 years old.  The fact that she is a widow so young and a widow who could tell me about her husbands death between smiles and studies absolutely floored me.  

Today a similar situation occurred.  A girl, Noi, in my class had been absent for all of last week. Today she came to my office to get the materials she had missed.  "I'm sorry I was not here," she said, "My father was dying."  I stared at her.  "It's ok Ajarn," she said comforting me more than I could possibly comfort her.  "He is no more."  From their she took out her notebook and dutifully copied the vocabulary words on transportation and restaurants that I had prepared for the week her eyes never leaving her paper.  There is so much that I wish I could have said but I know that there are some gaps in the culture that translation will never fill.  And so I dictated, and answered Noi's questions on how to get from here to there.