"I Miss You" Doesn't Mean the Same

by Thalyta Borges

You get in and out of a car while you get on and off a bus. Sweetmeats are candies and sweetbreads are not sweet and have meat. Does it make sense? English is a crazy language. Why do they call it eggplant if there is no egg in a eggplant, or why a wise man is the opposite of a wise guy? Once we get used to this language we understand it, but still, some words just don’t make any sense and that what has been lost for me. I miss my language. Sometimes I get myself thinking while the world is turning around that if I were a polyglot I could say “I miss you” in Spanish, Italian, English, Chinese, French or even Greek, but because I’m Brazilian, and my first language is Portuguese, no matter how many languages I speak, deep down words will never have the same meaning.

First of all, learning a new language is the same as re-learning to think. Yes! Everything changes or almost everything. I had to learn that I have a silver car, not a car silver. The structure of sentences changes. Adjectives go before the noun, but sometimes they go after, depending on which language you are learning. A singular subject takes singular verb, and a plural subject takes a plural verb, but sometimes it is confusing. While in other languages, there are over 1000 irregular verbs, and they have different form for each pronoun. I remember how I learned the English alphabet when I was over eighteen years old. I felt like baby, learning that A, B, C song and singing as I was a little girl in kindergarden. Although I think for babies it is easier because they are learning something for the first time, but what about adults that already learned their native language completely.

We actually can translate words, but the meaning of words and phrases can be lost through the translation. For example, in Portuguese we say Eu amo você, and it literally means I love you. Even though the translations seem to be very simple because eu means I, amo means love and você means you. When we say it in a second language to someone, it doesn’t really have the same meaning. We usually tend to use our native language to declare our strong feelings or when we are desperate. I’m pretty sure most of the time bilingual people count money, pray, or even make love in their first language. I have particular example of a word that there is no translation for in English. This word is Saudade, in portuguese Saudade is a nostalgic souvenir, and at the same time, soft, of people or things that are far away from you accompanied by a desire to see them again. In other words, it is a feeling that a time in the past was good and now you miss it. I don’t miss speaking portuguese because I have a couple of Brazilian friends around Chicago, or I can just call home and talk in portuguese. What I’m saying is that my words are being lost in translation, and I will never be able to find them in United States.

My sense of belonging has also gotten lost. I used to think that one day I could be, at least, a fake “American” by living here for many years, but I realized that I can’t. I will never be able to feel comfortable here. I thought that it would be easy to immerse myself in this culture, what I love, or in this language. I must confess that I get frustrated with the language, specifically English. The order of sentences doesn’t make sense sometimes, and some words don’t make sense at all. I would never guess that sweetmeats are candies, and it was odd to learn that I park my car in a driveway and while I go to school I drive on a parkway. On the other hand, portuguese are so perfect and exclusive. Words make sense; we don’t just take two single words and make one unrelated to those two, and we do have name for things, a real name that makes sense.

Words are being lost! I’m getting lost. I really miss “my words” and expressing myself. I know I will never be able to express my feelings to my american friends and speakers. And no matter which part of the world we are in, I believe that one simple “I miss you” or whatever words we can say this phrase in an other language will never have the same strength and meaning as my own word. Maybe those words are not enough to express my feelings about how much I really miss someone or a lot other things in my native country. That is why I have more saudade because I have the right word to use.

Lost in Translation - EVERYONE WANTS TO BE FOUND

(A book by Bill Murray & Scarlett Johasson)