One of the more frustrating things about working here is
the language barrier. Khartouli, the
Georgian language, is, as I’ve mentioned before, impossible to master unless
you’re born into it. So we rely heavily
on translators to make ourselves understood.
Unfortunately, while the translators are usually very good in English,
they’re not so good at “militarese.” I’ve
collected some samples of how the path of understanding from military jargon to
English to Khartouli oft-times go astray.
Now I’m not making fun of my translators. They do a lot of very good work, and
translating from English to Khartouli is difficult at best. But it’s worse when the translators don’t
understand the military terms they’re trying to translate. Some of my favorites:
The “commander’s intent” is a short summary of what the
commander wants to achieve in the upcoming mission. We knew there was a problem when the
translator asked if the commanders ever get to work in an office. She was translating “commander’s intent” as “commanders
in tents.”
We taught a map reading class where we talked about the
map being a visual representation of the terrain from “a bird’s eye view.” Later, the translator asked me what we see
when we “look into a bird’s eye.”
Like any organization, we have to be concerned with
budget restrictions. So when we’re
working with the Georgians to design training exercises, we try to avoid “high
overhead exercises.” And, apparently, it’s
a good thing we do this because the Georgians don’t really have a functional
air force. Wait….what?? Yup, “high overhead exercise” was translated
as “exercises conducted in planes.”
The confusion is not always with the spoken word,
either. Once, we asked the translators
to help us with a short summary that explained how aviation units can be found
in brigades, divisions, and corps (a division is 3+ brigades while a corps is
usually 2+ divisions). You can imagine
our amusement at the written translation:
“Attack helicopter battalions are found in brigades, divisions, and in
regiments in a dead body.” “Corps” was,
of course, translated as “corpse.”
These aviation battalions, like all organizations, have “innate
functions.” We quickly realized why
being a pilot is such a popular job here:
these organizations focus on their “intimate functions.” Well, don’t we all?
Sometimes the problem is how we explain English idioms,
especially military jargon. How would
you explain “canned attacks?” While we,
obviously, meant “scripted attacks that follow a strict sequence with little
deviation,” the translators thought we were talking about attacks by tanks and
armored fighting vehicles, “canned” being assumed to mean “metallic.” But not
all exercises are “canned.” Sometimes,
we want the exercises to flow freely along different branches. These exercises, unfortunately, are limited
to simian units within the Georgian Armed Forces because “branches” was
consistently translated as “tree limbs,” as in, “at each decision point along
the route, the unit will decide on a different tree limb.”
I generally don’t get too upset at the mistranslations
because all of my documents are stored on my memory stick. Or, as it’s called here, my “tree branch’s
brain.”
This one is not uncommon in the US military, either: fiscal is always confused with physical and
vice versa. So, the cadets go the gym
for their fiscal training while the budget office sweats through an afternoon
of pushups and sit ups as they prepare for the end of the physical year.
Of course, all of the training occurs “along military
lines.” I do work, after all, in a
military academy. I have the freedom,
though, according to the translators, to work outside of the academy on some
things as “along military lines” has been translated as “adjacent to the army’s
borders.”
Medical training is hard enough in the US, what with the
myriad of medical terms to memorize.
Imagine how hard it is for our poor translators who have to take a
phrase that begins in “medical-ese” down the path through “militarese” to plain
English to Khartouli. It’s pretty easy
to understand why “CPR” comes out as “external lung reanimation” and “evaluate
a casualty” ends up as “estimate why a person is sick.” At least those kinda make sense.
Military commands often confuse the translators, as
well. For example, facing movements such
as left face, right face, and about face don’t have literal translations. Khartouli has its own commands for these
movements. Our translators are not
fluent in either our or Georgia’s military jargon, however, so they do the best
they can. So our lesson plans for facing
movements came out as “do formation things in place without moving.” Huh??
Technical jargon confuses almost everyone, regardless of
native language. If you’re a Spanish
speaker or a French speaker, take on this phrase: “the effect of humidity on a bullet in flight.” How’d you do?
Probably not much better than our translators did: “the movement of lead in the air through damp
and stuffy spaces.”
And my two absolute favorites:
“Fields of fire” is defined as, “the area that can be
reached by ammunition fired from a gun or a group of guns.” As in, the field of fire for a light machine
gun reaches out to 800 meters. You
shouldn’t have any trouble identifying that field of fire. Just look for the smoke. That’s right – “fields of fire” was
transliterated into “burning grasses.”
And the one that still makes me laugh whenever I think
about it: “rear operations,” that is,
operations that occur behind the front lines.
They’re difficult and dangerous.
Know I know why: “rear operations”
apparently means “surgery on one’s backside.”
It makes you really respect those special operations soldiers conducting
such missions. Better them than me.
Thanks for reading.
