Saturday, February 08, 2003

It's All Greek To Me!


There was another memorable test I took in college. I'm lousy with foreign languages. I would love to become fluent in Spanish or Greek or whatever, but I can't seem to make the final leap into actual understanding. I took three years of Spanish in High School, and I learned the structure of the language quite well. But when I read or hear it, the language still makes very little sense. I have to struggle through it.

Well, when I got to college I was determined to take Latin. I thought it was dumb that Latin wasn't taught in High School. So I was going to get into the Latin course and learn it all. But at Western, starting Latin was only offered every other year, and my schedule didn't allow for it. I had to take the other language they offered, or none at all. So I took Greek.

I did awful. I stuck with it for three years, but I didn't do well at all. I think the teacher and my fellow students were amazed at my stubborness. I passed, but barely. I seem to recall going to pass/fail at some point so it wouldn't continue to drag down my GPA.

Anyway, there was a test in this class, I honestly don't recall what year, that made me laugh for ages afterwards. I guess I stuck with the class because it was so much fun... Toonces the Driving Cat would sometimes show up on the tests or in homework. So "expect the unexpected" was a sometimes mantra for the class.

The first rule of translation is that it must make sense. Most people don't write stuff that doesn't make sense, so when you translate, you work on the theory that the piece you are translating made sense in the original language. Thus, when a test was to translate a few paragraphs, I could usually make sure I was doing it right by whether or not it made sense.

On this particular test, I had no trouble with the first sentence: "Mareen walks down the road." No problem. "Mareen is going to the well." Easy-peasy. "Mareen sees the women gathered at the well." Cruising along, I am. "The women look up at Mareen." Ok. "The women start screaming." Um, huh? At this point, I stop and re-read and re-check, but I'm pretty sure that's what it says. The women start screaming. Ok, next sentence: "The women are looking past Mareen." Um... "Mareen turns around." Right... "There are wolves behind Mareen" Ok, that makes sense!

Of course, now I'm curious. Mareen is the character we've been following in the book for some time. I don't recall her ever having been menaced by wolves before. So I continue: "Mareen turns around and around." Huh? Why would she turn around again? I would think she would run. Man, I'm going to fail this test! Next sentence: "She becomes amazing." Huh? Wait... there's another word there... she becomes amazing woman... "She becomes Wonder Woman"!!! Wahoo! Another hurtle passed! Next sentence: "She defeats the wolves. The women are happy." End of translation.

Of course, now I worry that Mareen showed off her secret identity to the women at the well... And, for the record, I believe I actually passed that particular test (which had more questions than that one translation).

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