Lost in translation

Oct 06, 2024

To learn to speak a language, you have to make a lot of mistakes. This has always been my downfall. As a bit of a perfectionist, I was always terrified of making a mistake, so I tried to avoid speaking in language classes.

The Camino has given me the courage to make MANY mistakes. I’ve ended up speaking a lot of Spanish here - either because folks don’t speak English or, once I give any indication of knowing Spanish, people will only speak to me in Spanish.

At the start of the Camino, I would apologize for my bad Spanish, but learned pretty quickly that people were uninterested in my apologies. The attitude seemed to be “yeah I know you’re bad at Spanish that’s perfectly obvious but we are able to communicate well enough so why are you wasting your time apologizing?!” The permission to be imperfect has been so freeing.

I’ve noticed that English is less common among older folks and in rural areas. A pilgrim from Valencia explained - when he was in school, they weren’t really taught English but starting the generation after his, it became much more widely taught. He was a persimmon farmer - it took some googling for us to figure out what the translation for “caqui” was - and while the farm had been in his family for generations, he was planning to sell it when he retired. Weirdly there weren’t many Spanish speaking people in the hostel that night, so he was delighted to talk with me, tell me about his family and the persimmon market, and gently correct my vocabulary.

I’ve learned a lot of vocabulary on this trip - for doing laundry, reserving a hotel room, navigating the post office. I’m very present and in the moment when communicating in Spanish - mostly because I am concentrating but also because I only remember how to conjugate in the present tense.

While I’ve been speaking more Spanish than normal, a German woman I had dinner with the other night told me this is the most she’s ever spoken English. It make sense - English does seem to be the common language among pilgrims.

It’s fun to hear how people from all over the world speak English. A Hungarian kid we met on the 2nd night has become WhatsApp penpals with Andy and sends updates every day that sound like tone poems:

The way is so hard. I’m feeling myself like a snail.

I hope you had a great day, mine exactly not. The rain and wind make harder the road so much.

It’s beautiful how much we can all communicate on the Camino - through language, patience, gestures, generosity, laughter, and, when all else fails, google translate.

But there are exceptions. I saw this English version of a menu:

The Spanish version had unfamiliar vocabulary and using my phone to translate was totally unhelpful. There was something weirdly comforting about this strange translation that had obviously been done by a computer. Technology can help up to a point, but culture and context still matter - humanity still matters! - for translation.

I had bad internet when I made my last post so couldn’t include the pictures I wanted to. Here they are…

Pilgrim vending machine (a bit hard to see but lots of stuff for blisters)