Lost in Translation
My back was still hurting this morning, and so I decided to take a sickie, stay at home, and finally watch Lost in Translation, which I have been meaning to watch since it first came out on DVD (which I think was about two years ago).
Hmmmm. I think I liked it, but I'm not sure. I either liked it, or thought it was a bit pointless. I still haven't decided.
However, regardless of how much I did or didn't like it, it did serve to remind me of the time I spent in Hong Kong over Christmas and New Year 1998-9. It's the only time that I have felt entirely linguistically excluded while travelling. I had naively believed everyone would speak English, and so ended up doing no preparation and arrived with no appropriate Chinese phrases at all. It led to a kind of strange isolation, which at first was intimidating and then later became somehow liberating. I liked the feeling of being apart in the city, being lifted above the hum of conversation into the peculiar 'silence' of incomprehension.
I sometimes wonder if that's one of the reasons I feel so comfortable when I travel. Even in countries where I speak a spattering of the language, I still enjoy the verbal challenge, the new feeling of the sounds on my tongue as I try to make conversation. It makes communication seem so much more significant. We all live in such a clamour of background noise and chatter that we forget how lucky we are to be able to connect with each other so easily, and we become increasingly unaware of body language and facial expressions. We're so busy hearing that we don't see as much. I can clearly remember the faces of a lot of the people I have met with whom I have no common language except raised eyebrows, shrugs and smiles. I can rarely picture the faces of English-speakers I converse with.
Anyway, it's a scattered kind of thought I've been having. Blame the painkillers. But I like it, nonetheless.
Hmmmm. I think I liked it, but I'm not sure. I either liked it, or thought it was a bit pointless. I still haven't decided.
However, regardless of how much I did or didn't like it, it did serve to remind me of the time I spent in Hong Kong over Christmas and New Year 1998-9. It's the only time that I have felt entirely linguistically excluded while travelling. I had naively believed everyone would speak English, and so ended up doing no preparation and arrived with no appropriate Chinese phrases at all. It led to a kind of strange isolation, which at first was intimidating and then later became somehow liberating. I liked the feeling of being apart in the city, being lifted above the hum of conversation into the peculiar 'silence' of incomprehension.
I sometimes wonder if that's one of the reasons I feel so comfortable when I travel. Even in countries where I speak a spattering of the language, I still enjoy the verbal challenge, the new feeling of the sounds on my tongue as I try to make conversation. It makes communication seem so much more significant. We all live in such a clamour of background noise and chatter that we forget how lucky we are to be able to connect with each other so easily, and we become increasingly unaware of body language and facial expressions. We're so busy hearing that we don't see as much. I can clearly remember the faces of a lot of the people I have met with whom I have no common language except raised eyebrows, shrugs and smiles. I can rarely picture the faces of English-speakers I converse with.
Anyway, it's a scattered kind of thought I've been having. Blame the painkillers. But I like it, nonetheless.
posted by Mookmoo at 4:51 pm
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