Lost In Translations

One particularly humorous benefit of living abroad is the inevitable encounter with English mistranslations. Delightful, quirky, sometimes even scary, these offbeat misnomers are literally everywhere. My favorites include “Carribean Pirat” (on a T-shirt), “South Beach Saveguard” (on another T-shirt), and “Melissa Love Pirates” (on a brazen storefront).

Is anyone sensing a high-seas conspiracy here?

Now, please don’t think I’m being ethnocentrically superior; if you saw the way a confused KFC executive tried to translate “finger-licken’ good” into Portuguese, you would understand. At best the motto turns out to be funny, at worst, it’s highly offensive to any person who happens by.

You see, all these things stem from the misguided notion that one language is translatable into another. It’s not, and don’t let a bad foreign language teacher tell you otherwise. Words are not concrete things, they all have different shades and weights and social contexts and it’s silly to think that would carry across to a different language. One society has 20 different words for snow, and other has 20 different words for sand. How could they possibly correspond?

Now, I am reasonably intelligent person, I read more then anyone I know, and my test scores claim that I have a decent vocabulary. All of which means precisely nothing in Portuguese. I can’t even order a cheeseburger without getting a laugh or a funny look from the waiter (I still haven’t decided which is worse) and all because I’m stuck on the useless idea of “translation”.

Someone once told me that humility it thinking of yourself as one human being, no more and no less. And that charity is extending that same courtesy to everyone else in the world.

As a naive adolescent, I assumed that the notion of charity was the hard part because, let’s be honest here, what teenager doesn’t have a god complex? But now I realize that humility is, by far, the tougher course. Because now I’m humiliated in a thousand little ways every day by not even being able to communicate the most basic and simplest of my desires to the people around me. And even though I am learning, it is still frustrating to watch a fully functional human being in one society, devolve into little more than a child in another.

So, then, My New Year’s Resolution: I will be one who is hard-working at learning a new language, yet one who has a sense of humor when it does not always work out. I will be one who is ambitious about joining in a conversation, yet one who graceful when the conversation is not fully understood.

But above all, I will be one. No more, no less.

Christmas in Brazil

We can't say this about many things, but Christmas in Brazil is exactly like Christmas in the States. Yep, right down to the charming reindeer, the obsession with non-existent snow, the fat Santa, and the extreme shopping binges. Honestly, it makes me feel right at home. Some of the words are different, of course. For instance, Santa Claus is Papai Noel, Happy Holidays is Boas Festas, and Merry Christmas is Feliz Natal (though the Feliz Navidad song is still wildly popular). Below are just a couple of our favorite Christmas pics from around Brazil. Enjoy!

Belo Horizonte, Praca da Liberdade

The World's Largest Floating Christmas Tree, Lagoa, Rio de Janeiro

Welcome to Belo Horizonte!

After a 7 hour bus ride from Rio, Matt and I arrived in Belo Horizonte, the third largest city in Brazil. This city is nestled in the mountains, creating a cooler climate then Rio, despite being closer to the equator. So far, we're really enjoying this place. The city seems to be a lot more mellow, a lot safer, and a lot less crowded. I'm sure it will be a great two months. Check out our apartment tour by Matt below.

The Botanical Gardens

On another blessedly sunny day, we decided to visit the Jardim Botanico of Rio de Janeiro, which is a beautiful, well-appreciated oasis in this bustling city. Originally began in 1808 in order to determine which plant species would acclimate to Brazil, the gardens are now open to the public. Wandering through this park is a bit like walking through tropical rain forest, complete with waterfalls and wildlife (no monkeys though!). In the picture below, you can even see the iconic Christ statue that looms over Rio.

The rest of our pictures from the gardens can be seen here.

An American in Rio

And lo, on the seventh day the rain abated and the plagues were healed, and joyous mirth was beheld by all.

Okay, not quite that pretentious, but the ghastly weather and illnesses that have plagued us for the past week have been almost biblical in their proportions.

But, today we felt better and the sun was shining, so we did what any red-blooded American yuppie couple would do to celebrate: we high-tailed it to the nearest mall.

Anyone who has traveled to another country before has probably realized that American culture is never too far away, whether you want it to be or not. And this is particularly noticeable in Rio de Janeiro’s malls. American music, from Snoop Dogg to Taylor Swift, blares from every storefront, usually with all the lyrics fully intact. American authors line the bookshelves in every store, both in the native language and in English. American restaurants are among the most plentiful and popular in these malls, including, but not limited to: Pizza Hut, Subway, Outback, McDonald’s, Applebees, and T.G.I.F’s.

My favorite moment from the day was when we eagerly approached Burger King, thoughts of Double Whoppers dancing in our heads. Waiting in line, we were approached by well-coiffed women styled all in black who inputted our orders on Blackberries (BLACKBERRIES!), and then ushered us to a cashier to pay. From there we were immediately whisked to where our food was waiting and then motioned on to yet a second station where we were given our drinks. Trying to be fair (and trying not to laugh at the utter hilariousness of Blackberries being utilized at a Burger King), I said that at least that was the quickest I had ever received my fast food. At which point Matt commented, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” and left the table to speak with someone, because they had gotten his order wrong.

I’m not one to get all up in arms about globalization. Like everything else, it has its good points and it’s bad points. And unfortunately, as an American living abroad, I am selfishly delighted by the rampant spread of our culture, because it means that I can always get a little slice of home whenever I need it. But as I stared up at the 50-foot plaster replica of the Statue of Liberty that graced the front of one of Rio’s malls, I thought to myself: Perhaps this is too much.

Because, really, I will never know what it is like to be completely separated from my culture. I will dabble, I will play, I will pretend. But I won’t ever suffer that final isolation, to immerse myself in another land, with no hint of my own in sight.

I think I might be missing out on something.

But I won’t ever really know, will I?