One must always keep a sense of humor about when dealing with foreign languages. Some offenses are more egregious than others, and this one was harmless, but I got a good chuckle out of it. After submiting a question with an online form to my Swiss insurance company that specializes in health insurance for foreigners the next screen pleasantly informed me:
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Oh, that's funny. Reminds me of our friend's translation difficulty, when she was trying to tell her French hosts that she was full and didn't want anything more to eat at dinner -- and she ended up saying she was pregnant.
I hope you got home safely, dear. I'll call you in the morning - I can't talk when I'm brushing my teeth.
Hmmm, this certainly opens up a host of questions:
(1) Why might she not have returned home safely?
(2) DID she return home safely?
(3) Why a public blog comment instead of a private e-mail?
(4) Why is morning teeth-brushing interruptible for a phone call, but not evening teeth-brushing?
(5) What does this have to do with translation, other than the comment sounds as if something was, indeed, lost in translation?
Personally, I'm inclined to suspect that the answer to (3) and maybe most of the rest is that Someone is tired of the lack of activity on this blog and wanted to stir things up!
I cannot answer for (3), but the others I can before my 8am (on Friday!) class.
(1) I was going home late after wedding planning.
(2) Yes.
(4) I lost my cell phone so Stephan is filling in as my alarm service. It's much nicer, I must admit.
(5) Probably nothing.
In defense of (3), life has been crazy. Add to that problems like loosing my cell phone on the bus, arriving home to a flooded bathroom while my landlady was out of town, doing too much at school, biking twice a week to Germany to teach piano, wedding planning, trying to get enough sleep, etc. and that leaves me with little time to read blogs and no time to think about writing to one. Sorry!
(4) I've given her my alarm clock. The day I posted this Janet rang my intercom right after leaving to ask me to call in the morning, but I was in the middle of brushing my teeth and unable to tell her anything intelligible.
(3) I don't remember. Either the blog was open and my e-mail wasn't, or I just wanted to do something different, or something like what you surmise. At any rate your response got you a nice, concise, one-paragraph summary of all the action over here. I don't think I've rubbed off that much that I'd dare take the credit for conciseness - I think you'll get more detail as soon as life settles down a bit again.
