Lost In Translation

We’ve been in Bulgaria since Sunday and I have spent a lot of time listening to other people’s conversations.

I don’t think it’s considered eaves dropping if you can’t understand what they’re saying.

As a child I lived in Bulgaria and spoke the language fluently. Now, as an adult, I can politely order coffee.

It can be frustrating not being able to understand what’s being said around me but in some ways it is relaxing. For the most part, once people find out you don’t know the language, they will leave you alone. For an introvert, this is a gift. Of course there are those people who will continue to speak to you as if you were either lying about not speaking the language or else will catch on if they just keep badgering you.

I’ve begun to piece together certain words from my incomplete knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet. I can make out “hotel” and “café” and “cucumber” (the later because it is a staple in the Bulgarian diet and one of the few words I remember from my childhood here). 

Now, visiting relatives in towns outside of the capital of Sofia, I am able to practice my Armenian and I find that it comes much more readily than I had expected. I think it has to do with the fact that I’ve spent several days in relative silence and now that I have the opportunity to express myself, my mind is much more willing to call upon the words that are stored somewhere in the recesses of my brain.

That being said, there are some words which just don’t translate.

I sat today at lunch, stuffing my face with dolma (grape leaves, tomatoes and peppers stuffed with meat and rice) and listened to my mother talk to one of our elderly female relatives in Armenian. She was talking about a friend and the conversation translates roughly into this: 

Tanti: “Your friend is a woman?”

Mom: “A man.”

Tanti: “Is he married?”

Mom: “He’s…happy.”

It takes me a few seconds to process what’s been said before I start laughing into my dolma. Tanti is staring blankly at my mother who is looking at me half smiling and shrugging,

“I don’t know what the word is.”

I’m still giggling to myself as I think about the train of thought that brought us to this incomplete translation. Once I regain control I turn to Tanti,

“He likes men…I don’t think the word exists in Armenian”.

Tanti shakes her head “No, I don’t think it does…”

I still find this exchange amusing, although the reality is there is a somewhat depressing underlying message.

Language is influenced by many things, most especially by the culture of the people who speak it; so if a word does not exist, it is because there is no use for it.

With that in mind, what does it say about Armenian culture that we don’t have a word that describes people who are gay? Not only is homosexuality not accepted as a fact of life rather than a choice, it is not acknowledged as a state of being at all. How better to deny a person the freedom to be who they are then by denying them the language with which to express it?

I like to play devil’s advocate with myself when writing and that makes it very difficult to make my point sometimes. As I wrote the previous paragraph, the following thought occurred to me: I suppose the argument could be made that we don’t really need language to label people based off of their sexual orientation and maybe it’s more progressive to avoid it altogether. Maybe if everyone did away with these labels we’d all be more accepting of one another and you could describe a person based off of their character rather than who they prefer to sleep with.

However, I think that I could count the number of openly gay Armenians I’ve met on one hand, and I’m inclined to believe it’s because our culture and elders tend to discourage it. Then again, I haven’t really grown up with a lot of Armenians in my life, so maybe I just am ignorant and uniformed.

I’m sure that in the past few decades a word has come about for gay. I’m sure that this younger generation of Armenians is more progressive than the previous generations and more accepting of homosexuality, among other things. 

I was reminded of a YouTube skit called Lousine Lesbian Matchmaker to the Straights.  You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR9Ox3W9Gd4

Lousine comes out to her mother and as her mother tells her, it may take 100 years for Armenians to “understand this thinking”. I hope it doesn’t take quite so long.