Lost in Translation

{So I know you’re expecting another post about Thailand, and that’s coming- tomorrow though, sorry- this was just an aggravating experience today}

Last Spring, HWS required students going abroad to attend orientation meetings to prepare us for our time abroad. During our ‘Passport to Success’ meeting we were told we may encounter language problems in the classroom as English isn’t the students’ native language. One horror story stuck out in my mind: In one girl’s class, a Chinese student wasn’t understanding a specific concept that professor was explaining in English and asked for it to be explained in Cantonese; the professor asked if anybody minded and the girl didn’t raise her hand. As a result, the rest of the semester, the class was taught in Cantonese. ‘Okay, I could handle that,’ I thought to myself after hearing the story, just raise your hand.

If only life was that easy.

I mentioned a while ago that my Media Ethics professor is Chinese and frequently switched between Cantonese and English, and I figured she was doing this to explain the concept in Cantonese for the Chinese students. So along with another international student, Camilla, from Denmark, I sit through the class usually dazing in and out. But over the past month and a half, the classes have gotten worse- as in there’s more and more Cantonese and less and less English. Yesterday, as Camilla and I were leaving the class we just looked at each other and agreed that that class was aggravating, because we didn’t understand much.

Then today, we had tutorial at 8:30 this morning. {I don’t think I’ve explained tutorials—they’re supplemental to the lectures and are mainly for discussions and presentations. For Media Ethics, the tutorial meets every other week for 2 hours.} So I woke up at 7:30, head to the library to do the reading for the tutorial, only to find the library was closed, so I chilled in the 24-hour computer lab until 8:30 (thankfully, turns out I didn’t even need to do the reading because it wasn’t even mentioned in the tutorial).

Class started and two students present on the topic of censorship and press freedom. Their presentation was in English and I had no problem understanding them. It wasn’t until the last 4 or 5 slides when things started to go downhill. They were using a local example and only had a Chinese text of it. The teacher, Lisa, tried to translate it for Camilla and I but then other students were getting confused, so she tried to explain it for them in Cantonese. At this point it was like 9:45am and we decided to take a quick 5-minute break. During the break though we put our chairs in a circle so we could have a discussion.  Haha. Discussion.

For the rest of the class, the professor talked in Cantonese. She translated maybe 3-4 times but as I’ve learned in this class as well as my Non-Fiction Film class, so much gets lost in translation. And then the students would talk and it would be in Cantonese, and then the professor would respond again in Cantonese. At one point the professor turns to Camilla and I and asked what we thought. Um. I have no idea what you’re talking about. “Umm. I’m a little confused in the translation,” Camilla said and I kinda just repeated her question to see if I understood her. And then it was back to Cantonese.

Well, to say the least, Camilla and I were aggravated by 10:30. Since we had another class together at 11:30 we went to the Canteen for breakfast and talked about how we could fix this. We realized the problem was mainly the language and how Lisa wasn’t forcing the students to talk in English, especially since she wasn’t always talking in English- if she’s not, why should they? So we decided to go see her later in the day during her office hours and bring it to her attention and then I was also going to email OMIP (Lingnan’s study abroad office) as well as CGE (HWS’ Center for Global Ed) just to bring it to their attention.

Long story short, Camilla took a water break during our next class and ran into Lisa; apparently Lisa had sent us an email and wanted to get together with us for a chat- we decided to meet once our class was over.

Well during our meeting, we brought up our concern-about the lack of English. And, well, Lisa talked about censorship and press freedom for an hour. That’s right. An hour. Because she thought (or at least I think she thought) we didn’t understand the presentation/topic. So by the end of our meeting we still don’t think she knows how to solve the problem of how to make the kids speak English- her solution is having us come talk with her separately so we get a better understanding of the material (except that’s not the problem). We were still rather aggravated and annoyed by the end of our little chat.

So I’m still going to email OMIP and CGE just so they know; maybe they’ll even bring it to Lisa’s attention/remind her that classes need to be taught in English, because that’s what we were told when we signed up for this program.

So cross your fingers that I don’t have to sit through another class next week of mainly Cantonese!