I think there is a movie with the same title…

Being a speaker of at least 6 languages (with varying fluency…), I had always thought that translating anything from those languages would have been a piece of cake. There have been some hitches along the way, but I don’t think I am that bad at translating be it from, Chinese, Malay or Japanese to English. Naturally, that made me think that I wouldn’t have much of a problem when I had to translate back to the aforementioned languages…

I must say that my Chinese isn’t exactly superb, I learnt how to listen and speak from watching TVB dramas, so I guess that says a lot doesn’t it? Though I can manage a decent conversation, and translate what I want to say, but reading and writing, poses a huge difficulty for me, as I wasn’t really Chinese educated, though now I am trying to pick it up, bits and pieces, here and there.

With China opening up, I guess it is a little sad to say that my Cantonese is much better than my mandarin, that sometimes when watching television, I have no idea what they are saying and am forced to revert to the subtitles, I noticed however, that I do not face such difficulties when watching Cantonese dramas…

I remember at one point though, in high school my teacher thought I was actually from a Chinese school, cause of the way I spoke my mandarin. (Personally to me, it wasn’t that fabulous, but to make her think that I am from a Chinese school… how did I speak mandarin then??) She even tutored me in Chinese, and showed the utmost surprise when I insisted she speak in English…

Those were the days; I still vividly remember her expression back then. But upon entering college, everyone around me spoke English; hence my mandarin and Cantonese were thus forced to take a back seat, though lately I have been trying to use them as frequently as possible… I’ve even been learning how to read and write, though I prefer the traditional writing… (let’s not speak about speaking Hakka, I admit I suck in that dialect…)

About my Japanese, this… well, what can I say? I practically self studied the damn language. I’m still bad at forming grammatically correct sentences, but I guess it really is a slow path learning Japanese by yourself, but with the help of some online translators, in translating the kanji, I can decently manage to translate some Japanese, so I guess I’m not that bad in this department, thought translating from English to Japanese would, ultimately take a lot of effort on my part. Though I know the words, structuring it into a proper sentence is a challenge for me…

Now, on to Malay, as a Malaysian, and having studied Malay all the way from primary school to secondary and well scoring distinctions in it, that would naturally make some people think that I am proficient in the language, but I beg to differ. I hardly used the language, either read or written since I left high school… 5 years ago, and I hardly speak Malay.

I still remember the time, when I was young, due to my love for the sun, I was exceptionally tanned, plus my proficiency in the language, it really made people scratch their heads as to my race.

Well, all I can say is that, translating from English to Malay is no mean feat. I had to do it with a dictionary to boot. Malay being my national language, I smugly thought that I wouldn’t have a problem translating from English to Malay (as compared to the other languages mentioned above…) but I was proven wrong.

Excuses are, maybe it’s because I haven’t used it for so long, cause after that my work did speed up. But hey, it really did make me realise, it is really harder to translate from English to whatever language, well for me that is.(I don’t know about the other geniuses out there…) Translating is not an easy job, you understand what it means, but how do you convey the message to a third party who isn’t proficient in the language? That is the hard part. I faced that many a time, I know the meaning, but how do I express it in English??

Hats of to the translators…

don't ask me, my chinese is crap...

-Oracl3-