Translation, please

Originally released for publication April 6, 2005
(c) 2005 by Steve Martaindale

My wife and I recently joined another dozen or so people in a weekly Spanish class. It’s been a lot of fun and our instructor really knows his stuff. I assume that’s true since he can talk and talk without me understanding hardly anything.

Languages other than English have always given me trouble. I actually took Spanish for one semester in the eighth grade, a time when, in my corner of Texas, Spanish was still a foreign language. From those 18 weeks, I retained a concept of pronunciation, the numbers and how to ask the time. “Que hora es?” could be handy if you’re ever stranded in a Spanish-speaking land without a watch and are a stickler about taking your medicine on time.

In college, I signed up for German, partly to be different and partly because I had already performed miserably at learning Spanish.

Out of 15 students, I was one of only two who had not (a) lived in Germany, (b) taken up to four years of German in high school and/or (c) taken and failed this class previously. After six days that included considerable studying on my part, I was so far lost in the Black Forest that it wasn’t funny. I dropped the class and found a major in which I could pursue a bachelor of science and avoid foreign languages altogether.

LANGUAGES EXPERT?

It has occurred to me, however, that few husbands in happy, long-term marriages can actually be said to be monolingual. No, I am fluent in Wifespeak.

Take, for instance, when the love of my life is dealing with an extremely hectic day at work. She calls for a few words of encouragement and asks, “Will you be in charge of dinner tonight?”

Such a question likely means different things among different people who think they all speak the same language. In our particular situation, however, it can loosely be translated as, “Will you take me to the pizza place for dinner?”

As in any language, you must be on the lookout for subtle things that can affect the meaning. For example, it changes things if the question is, “Will you be in charge of cooking dinner tonight?”

That means she is not interested in going out and is really asking, “Will you have pizza delivered tonight?” In another use, which is really too technical to explain with just the written word, it can be translated as, “Will you be in charge of cooking a frozen pizza tonight?”

While we’re complicating things, there are numerous nuances that must be factored into translating Wifespeak. Maybe she says something like, “I would really like a nice dinner tonight. Will you take care of it?” That means she would like to go out to dinner but prefers something other than pizza or a hamburger.

The best way to handle that, especially considering that she’s had a tough day at work, is to get into the car and head toward her favorite restaurant. En route, you must tune your Wifespeak ear to pick up any hints like, “Are you thinking about fish?” or “We haven’t eaten at Juan’s recently” or “We never have tried out that new place, have we?”

It should be obvious by now that Wifespeak is predominantly a one-way language. Even the most successful husbands never attempt to speak it, only to understand it. (Of course, they will speak it when relating stories to their buddies but not in actual attempts at conversation.)

Wifespeak is also a living language, meaning that it is subject to change, as “gay” in English once primarily meant a happy state of mind. Some call it the prerogative clause, but it is true that what means “stop” today can mean “go” next week.

C’est la vie.
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(c) 2005 by Steve Martaindale