Lost in Translation

I just got off the phone with a representative from a French furniture company, and afterward, I felt absolutely demoralized.

Okay, “demoralized,” to be sure, is an outsized word for the luxurious task of ordering a new bed. And yet, a bed satisfies a basic human need. And I’m convinced that it is an equally basic human need to be understood.

The call was rife with technological malfunctions and human miscommunication: their website rejected my credit card because of a foreign billing zip code; the sale expired while resolving this issue; the store had suspended shipping because of Covid restrictions. Then, there’s the core issue: I was trying to resolve all of this in French. Quelle horreur.

When we finished the exchange (a bed will be delivered on Friday, I understood, but probably without the mattress), I heard her loudly exclaim her frustration and hang up the phone abruptly.

My mind went back in time to Salute, the beachside restaurant in Key West where I tended bar. With some regularity, Spanish-speaking tourists would arrive and struggle to communicate their requests in English. While I appreciated the opportunity to try out my rusty university Spanish (or beg our Nicaraguan chef to come to the rescue), some of my coworkers found it truly exasperating.

“Why come on vacation to a country if you can’t speak the language?”

They might ask me now: Why move to one?

I remember seeing that same mix of emotions in a diminutive, dark-eyed man ordering a cocktail: his anxious, embarrassed face incongruent with the happy bright patterns of his tropical shirt. It was heartbreaking: a person dressed for a party, standing very alone in a loud bar.

Getting off the phone after ordering the bed, I needed a hug. I found myself wishing for a time machine to go back four years to Salute and hug that man.

Of course, this feeling of being misunderstood is not limited to a literal language barrier. A friend of mine named Dave, a New Englander married to a Swiss-German woman (happily, for nearly 50 years), says that sometimes Andrew and I suffer from the phenomenon of: “Two peoples being separated by a common language.”

In other words, one of us being raised in the American South and the other in Scotland, lead us only to the false impression that we speak the same language.

I would take this identification of misinformation a step further: the language of our families, the particularities of our culture, our childhood traumas and our prior heartbreaks all inform the way we speak and wish to be understood. Our speech is really an amalgam of inside jokes, movie quotes and song lyrics, images that we return to in order to make sense of the world. New friends and romantic partners—whether in Switzerland, Scotland or Tennessee—are tasked with deciphering this, against all odds, a quest rivaled by Nicolas Cage in National Treasure.

I recently came across a great cartoon that speaks to this problem of personal translation:

A Russian nesting doll and a Trojan horse are having a drink together at a bar. At the same time, they say:

“I have something to tell you.”

I didn’t just laugh, but I thought: This is true of every single date. Of every single relationship.

While we walk around, smiling pleasantly, in our well-groomed skin suits, there is a universe of unknown self that we reveal only in parts, and only at moments, to those closest to us. This creates a challenging paradox for those of us seeking close friendship and love.

“True love is born from understanding” is a quote often attributed to the Buddha, and this idea of understanding being equated to love pops up in different iterations in philosophy, theology, poetry and pop music. To be misunderstood is one of the most potent wounds, whether in romatic love or phone conversations with furniture companies.

One of the most difficult moments is when one person says to another:

“I feel like I don’t even know who you are.”

Or, a variation:

“I feel like you don’t even know me.”

These moments can fracture families or couples. These things can also be said between the lines, in conversations with colleagues or familiar servers at restaurants.

“My mayo should always be on the side, Donna—do you even know me?”  

These are moments of isolation, of staring baldly at the exstential truth: We are alone in the world. Maybe this is dramatic, but if you even knew me, you would know I’m dramatic.

While there is truth in the solitary nature of life, this also overlaps another truth: that we are multifaceted and incredibly difficult to know. In fact, we are all Trojan horses or Russian nesting dolls. The cruelty of the statement: I don’t know who you are is that it generally comes at a moment that the beloved has disappointed, acted in an apparently strange, unpredictable or deviant way. There is an implicit accusation.

What it really being said is: I thought you were a certain kind of person (good), but this behavior makes me wonder if you are really another kind of person (bad).

When in reality, the truth is that we are both. We can be mostly loyal, kind partners and also be capable of saying or doing despicable things. We can be mostly good, devoted mothers, and also at moments want to throw our children out the window. We desperately desire to be understood, yet we also want to be known only for our goodness and our worthiness.

This presents a paradox: We want to be known, but we also want to be seen as good.

Yet, we know our own complexity so well. We are familiar with our brilliant disguises and darkest thoughts—how can we insist that others might understand and still love us? We laugh at others when we get off the phone with them; we say we are doing one thing and then do another. Asking to be truly known and still adored is a bit of a tall order isn’t it?

And yet, we easily reduce others to an impression or stereotype. We don’t think twice about simplifying those in our lives to my annoying mother-in-law, that sexist guy in Marketing, the loud drunk neighbor… that American woman that can’t speak French.

We should not expect ourselves to be perfectly decipherable to others, even those of the same mother tongue. We should also not expect to be able to understand, indeed to know, the people that pass in and out of our lives.  

I think that we might find some salve, instead, in knowing and embracing our full selves. Let those around us off the hook when they misunderstand, and instead revel in our vast differences and our unprobed complexities.

The other day, I had what could have been a frustrating encounter, this time, getting a haircut. The stylist spoke little English, and as I stumbled along in French, I believe I told her both to cut off my head and dye my grapes blonde (the difference between les raisins, grapes, and les racines, roots). Yet we laughed a bit, and then an easy silence fell between us.

As she focused on her work, I had the opportunity to be quiet, and essentially alone for a couple of hours. Around us, the salon was alive with chatter in French. It is normally the quintessential place for passing gossip and seeking counsel.

And yet… I felt happy in the solitude. It gave me some time to contemplate this issue of desire to be understood and inevitable misunderstanding. I thought of how much I yearned to chat, and then was grateful for the language barrier that allowed me unspoiled time with myself.

I was reminded of Walt Whitman and his ode to complexity, “Song of Myself”:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Perhaps this is a useful balm when a loved one claims that we are unknown or terribly different than they imagined: to own the difference, the contradiction, the streak of ink they see in the white paint, the minor note in our major melody, the slant rhyme of our personality. It is certainly worth returning to when we feel dismissed on a phone call or lost in a foreign city. Resist allowing your inner voice join in on how strange or idiotic you are. Instead, call on Whitman.

I am large, I contain multitudes.