Lost In Translation
In the summer of 2006 I visited France for the first time. I took a two week intensive French course with my sister and two cousins in Besançon (eastern France). The rest of our time was spent exploring Paris (love at first sight, but anyone who knows me can tell you that). One of the sights we visited was the Cité des Sciences at the Parc de la Villette. Lonely Planet said it was a must-see and, being a 17 year old naïve traveler, who was I to argue? At this museum there was a planetarium to which we excitedly purchased admission. We sat down in our seats and got ready for the show.
When the show began my first thought was "oh crap, it's in French!" I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but I guess I just imagined it would be just liked it was at the Hayden Planetarium back home, my only frame of reference for planetariums. In retrospect it seems silly that I would be surprised that the show was in French but something that happened to me this week makes me realize how far I've come with my studies in French.
On Wednesday night a bunch of us from the foyer went to see a play put on by an amateur group because one of our friends was in it. I really enjoyed it but a funny thing happened during the play. At some point about 15 minutes into the whole thing I realized that I had not been phased by the fact that it was in French. I was just following the story and paying as much attention as I would have were it in English. There was no extra effort on my part to understand what was being said. After the play had ended everyone was talking about it and they turned to me and said "how was it? Did you have trouble understanding everything?" There were of course some thing that I had not understood, but I just used my imagination to fill in the blanks.
Ever since most of the English girls left it's often been just me and the Frenchies at dinner/hanging around the foyer and I am completely unphased by the fact that these conversations are always in French. What's even nicer is that some of my (French) friends told me that when I speak it's just as if any French person were speaking to them and that they don't change the way they speak just so that I can understand. I thought that was really sweet of them to say. When I watch French TV or movies it's almost like when I watch stuff in English. Obviously there will always be some things that I don't understand, but I think I've come a long way from the naïve girl in the planetarium quand même!
In other news....
A few weeks ago in Spain, Vicky and I stumbled upon a fairly recent episode of "Lost" dubbed into Spanish. I cannot stress how much we love that show and how happy we were to see it on Spanish TV. The episode focused on the Korean couple's flashbacks so many of the exchanges were in Korean with Spanish subtitles. Vicky, being Korean-American, had no trouble understanding the Koreans speaking. I read the Spanish subtitles with ease. Then when they would flash back to the island the people would be speaking in Spanish to each other. Everytime this happened either Vicky or myself would comment about how we weren't expecting them to speak in Spanish. We were too used to hearing them in English for the Spanish to be natural but when they had spoken in Korean and it was subtitled in Spanish this was more familiar/less surprising to us.
Vicky's one of the few people (if not the only person) who can identify with the issues of growing up speaking one language with your parents, speaking/learning English at school and then learning French. It gets a little confusing after a while - as evidenced by the fact that I recently gave some poor Dominican tourists in Paris directions in a stunning/unintelligible (?) combination of Spanish and French!
When the show began my first thought was "oh crap, it's in French!" I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but I guess I just imagined it would be just liked it was at the Hayden Planetarium back home, my only frame of reference for planetariums. In retrospect it seems silly that I would be surprised that the show was in French but something that happened to me this week makes me realize how far I've come with my studies in French.
On Wednesday night a bunch of us from the foyer went to see a play put on by an amateur group because one of our friends was in it. I really enjoyed it but a funny thing happened during the play. At some point about 15 minutes into the whole thing I realized that I had not been phased by the fact that it was in French. I was just following the story and paying as much attention as I would have were it in English. There was no extra effort on my part to understand what was being said. After the play had ended everyone was talking about it and they turned to me and said "how was it? Did you have trouble understanding everything?" There were of course some thing that I had not understood, but I just used my imagination to fill in the blanks.
Ever since most of the English girls left it's often been just me and the Frenchies at dinner/hanging around the foyer and I am completely unphased by the fact that these conversations are always in French. What's even nicer is that some of my (French) friends told me that when I speak it's just as if any French person were speaking to them and that they don't change the way they speak just so that I can understand. I thought that was really sweet of them to say. When I watch French TV or movies it's almost like when I watch stuff in English. Obviously there will always be some things that I don't understand, but I think I've come a long way from the naïve girl in the planetarium quand même!
In other news....
A few weeks ago in Spain, Vicky and I stumbled upon a fairly recent episode of "Lost" dubbed into Spanish. I cannot stress how much we love that show and how happy we were to see it on Spanish TV. The episode focused on the Korean couple's flashbacks so many of the exchanges were in Korean with Spanish subtitles. Vicky, being Korean-American, had no trouble understanding the Koreans speaking. I read the Spanish subtitles with ease. Then when they would flash back to the island the people would be speaking in Spanish to each other. Everytime this happened either Vicky or myself would comment about how we weren't expecting them to speak in Spanish. We were too used to hearing them in English for the Spanish to be natural but when they had spoken in Korean and it was subtitled in Spanish this was more familiar/less surprising to us.
Vicky's one of the few people (if not the only person) who can identify with the issues of growing up speaking one language with your parents, speaking/learning English at school and then learning French. It gets a little confusing after a while - as evidenced by the fact that I recently gave some poor Dominican tourists in Paris directions in a stunning/unintelligible (?) combination of Spanish and French!
posted by Laura at 11:44 PM
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