When I saw language being used as a conflict, I was instantly drawn into every scene Galacta Excite did. Do you remember a time where the fact that language was a problem made the situation you were in even more intense?

Eric's mom tells a story of a Polish man and a Japanese woman who were engaged to be married, but neither of them spoke each other's language. They hardly ever spoke to each other.

Can you imagine?

-- Anonymous, April 07, 1999

Answers

With the Latino Comedy Project, we've talked a lot about these very same barriers. There's always the question of "are there people in the audience that aren't going to get the jokes because it's in Spanish?" We try really hard to make it contextual without parroting, which is annoying. There are clever ways of repeating what you said without actually repeating it, translated. Rupert Reyes, who wrote Petra's Pecado, is particularly good at this -- and with his writing, which tends to have vivid warm characters and a good heart -- the audience falls so in love with the characters that they will go that extra mile to try to cross the language gap. I think that's important -- funny is funny, as the Galavision show says -- and all it takes is a little patience on the part of writers to figure out how to work around language barriers and use them to your advantage. (for evidence of this, the Spanish word for "boogeyman" is "coo-cooey" Now TELL ME that "Coo-cooey" isn't funnier than "boogeyman." Say it out loud: "Oh no! It's the coo-cooey!")

ALso have to mention that I wouldn't have found Life is Beautiful as good if it had been dubbed in English...

o.

-- Anonymous, April 07, 1999

Isn't that some kind of male fantasy? Being married to someone who can't speak to you?

-- Anonymous, April 07, 1999

When I was studying in England I met a girl from France and one from Slovakia, and neither spoke language well (probably as well as the Japanese troupe), but I have to say it was a very great experience to know them.

Because we who speak the same language take the words for granted, not thinking much about the *ideas* behind them. When you don't know the words for all the ideas, or someone else doesn't know, you have to try to convey the idea behind the word, and that's why it's so intense, I think. But then, it's a good intense because you really are actually communicating *better* because it's all about ideas, not just the words assigned to communicate them more quickly.

The polish man and the japanese woman. I think that was actually a joke about 2 people walking into a bar, right?

:)

-- Anonymous, April 07, 1999

My grandfather and my grandmother had an arranged marriage (I'm Chinese). My grandfather was highly educated, even spent some time studying the US. My grandmother was the daughter of a farmer. She grew up on the farm and never had any education. When they were married, they hardly spoke to each other. Not because of a language barrier but because of an education barrier. My grandfather couldn't talk to her about politics or books or anything he really cared about because my grandmother couldn't even read.

When the communist revolution occured in China, my grandfather sent my grandmother and her two children (my father and my aunt) to Taiwan. He said he'd come for them someday. He never did.

Language is just one way we communicate with each other. Like you said, pamie, in your entry, there are other ways to communicate. There must have been a deep bond between that Polish man and Japanese woman, something beyond language. Even though my grandfather and grandmother both spoke the same language, they couldn't communicate. I guess language isn't enough sometimes.

-- Anonymous, April 07, 1999

When I was in London, I saw a production in which English was the primary language except for one of the actors who was a spaniard 9Not the character, but the actor). He said most of his lines in spanish, but it was impossible to misunderstand him, and it didn't disrupt the scene. Actually, it was a great focusing device, because i realized i was paying so much attention to his unbelievably funny body language and expressive face. His physical presence was so expressive, and the language diffrence added something that made it hard to see how an english-speaker could have played the part. I'm guessing the theater group (Theater de Complicite, in London) builds up their plays through improv, because it was so organic and flowed so naturally.

-- Anonymous, April 08, 1999

I lived for a time in Belgium and Holland, and learned to speak Dutch and Flemish, which is essentially a dialect of Dutch spoken only in the northern part of Belgium. Flemish is then broken down into regional dialects which are more difficult to understand.

I had been in Gent, Belgium only a couple months, and had only a small grasp of the language. I was riding my bike on a path through a park, when I was stopped by an old man out walking his little dog, who had been stopped by a tourist family from Holland. The Dutch father was trying to ask for directions to a downtown landmark, but the two were unable to understand each other. Confused, they looked to me, an American girl to translate from the 'gentse' to the dutch, and back. I simply repeated each sentence, more or less exactly as the speaker had spoken it, with a slightly different accent. Everything was soon clear as day, and the old man was free to continue his stroll with his dog, and the family was off, eager to find their castle.

I don't know what prevented them from understanding each other, although there are certain bias' between the two countries-the Dutch tell Belgian jokes like we used to have Pollock jokes.

I think language can be used as a barrier if we want to build a barrier, but it can also be overcome if we want to understand each other.

-- Anonymous, April 08, 1999