Letting go; easy to say...

Thu Aug 7 19:27:20 PDT 2003

G'day Chris

today you wrote:

Once when I was facilitating a group of First Nations people from all over
British Columbia and we were doing action planning, I invited the group to
"come forward to the centre of the circle, grab five dots and indicate where
your passion lay." 

Two older women from the Carrier Nation started laughing.  In the Carrier
language "do't" (which sounds very much like "dot") is a very rude term for
female anatomy.  They had a moment of thrilling confusion until they figured
out what I REALLY meant! 

Chris 

Man you have some great stories; this is priceless!!! You could've had some
real super passionate people on your hands there!

My workmates and I had an Open Space workshop last week facilitated by
Daniel Lebel. Did we get passionate when it came to convergence. Freedom
shock divided the group. Those in shock were not going to give up their
total belief that they had no power to effect change except through the
usual closed space channels.  Others of us, and I was a participant, were
exasperated with their lack of responsiveness. Eventually after a bit of
hollering someone announced they were going to champion an issue. The
champions grabbed their issues and convened meetings,  the rest formed a
circle and championed freedom shock, and the whole futility of the exercise
because nothing was going to change!

It was a sobering experience for me, and a good reminder of the amazing
transformation that is required of our organisations and systems if they are
ever going to be open space!

I was reading some old university notes about soft systems methodology.
Heck open space can do in three days what an encyclopedic dissertation and
months of meetings could never do.  The key seems to be this letting go
thing.  Which while easily said is probably the greatest lesson I have
learned in my short life.

Not to say I have "arrived" yet. It took some pretty major life threatening
convincing before I could accept life on life's terms and then let my
version of reality go. It's a daily journey. Write now I'm letting go the
fear of writing my personal thoughts in a public domain.

I'd be keen to hear what the rest of you think?

All the Best
Mike Copeland

---
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Bowen Island, BC, Canada
http://www.chriscorrigan.com <http://www.chriscorrigan.com> 
chris at chriscorrigan.com <mailto:chris at chriscorrigan.com> 
(604) 947-9236

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Lucy Geão
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 7:43 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Res: Languages and Translations (was: Languages in Europe...)

Joelle, artur (and all too)

do not be worried,  the word "paper" has differents meanings as artur showed
but "role" is used so frequently that I am almost sure that the brazilian
people attending the event understood the confusion between  what the
translator did and what you was really intending to say and , possibly,
smiled. 

lucy

-------Mensagem original-------

De: OSLIST <mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU> 
Data: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 19:48:30
Para: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU <mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>

Assunto: Languages and Translations (was: Languages in Europe...)

Hi Joelle and Lucy (and all)

Joelle wrote:

>Artur-- (...)
>I was quite interested to observe that the Brazilians listed only roles of
>family and relationships. I suspect, that this is because family and
>interpersonal relationships are far more important in Latin cultures. But
>I also wonder
>if the word which was used to translate "roles," (I think something like
>"rolas," ) might have a more-specific meaning in Portugese, so the
>response might
>have been shaped by the word that was used. What do you think?

And Lucy replyied:

>joelle, the translation is really an important detail in any place of the
>word. really the bad translation of "role" transformed a word that means
>"paper" or "part of" (he plays the part of the monster) into a swearword
>used for some cheap persons speaking about penis. complicated, you see?

This is really an amazing story about languages and translations. May I use
that story for other purposes and quote you both?

I would like to add some comments:

1. I have decided to wait for an eventual answer from Lucy, as I had the
idea that "rola" could have in Brasil this slang meaning, but I was not
sure. "rola" is indeed a white bird (turtle-dove, says my Dictionary) that
is used in slang Portugues to refer only to "female brests", but I was
almost sure of once hearing it in Brasil with the meaning Lucy clarified.

2. This contains other lessons. Translators are often not very good,
especially if they don't know the subject they are trying to traslate. And
I have noticed often that, in such cases, they don't say "I can't translate
that". They will chose - especially in oral translation" - a "similar
word". In this case with devastating effects... I suposed that the
Brasilians, confused, tryed to give an answer... as they could... So, I
suspect your conclusion, was not necessarily correct, Joelle.

3. But even if the translator knows the meaning of the word he/she can
often do a "correct
word-translation" that is still useless. "Role" translates into Portugues,
as Lucy pointed out, as "papél", plural "papéis" (the Spanish "papeles").
The point is that "papel" also means "paper", like in "a sheet of paper". I
wonder what the Brasilians would answer to this possibility, namely if they
were low class and never heard of "papeis" in this sense....

4. Contextual translation, done by someone that knows the subject, would
understant the what should be translated was not "roles" but "social roles"
giving "papéis sociais" that can not, of course, be confused with sheets of
papers.

5. Now imagine what would happen if this was a conversation between an Arab
and a Juif mediated by an American President, with the help of a translator
without an "absolutely perfect knowledge" of BOTH languages. Terrible, I
suspect.

6. My conclusion - if you era "broadcasting" or publishing a book, good
traslations can be useful
(like in the Brasilian translation of the User's Guide).. But to mediate
"conversations", translations are NEVER a replacement for bi-linguism.

7: I think that people giving training in a foreign language in a different
country, when that training must be mediated by a translater, must always
ask very seriously what are the qualifications of the translator in the
subject of the training and not only the "translation qualification" in
other subjects.

8. I am sure that I could do a good translation of English to Portuguese in
subjects like management or information systems. But I am affraid to
confess, Joelle, that I would be unable to transslate one of your poems, as
I don't understand poetry in English. And I could very well think that a
turtle-dove was a turtle of some special species...

Regards

Artur

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU <mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU> 
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
<mailto:oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,> 
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
<http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html> 
.

____________________________________________________
 <http://www.incredimail.com/redir.asp?ad_id=322&lang=22>   IncrediMail - O
mundo do correio eletrônico finalmente desenvolveu-se -
<http://www.incredimail.com/redir.asp?ad_id=322&lang=22> Clique aqui
* * ==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe,
unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of
oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: 
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html * *
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe,
unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of
oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: 

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

##############################################
This e-mail (and attachments) is confidential
and may be legally privileged.
##############################################

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20030808/17429186/attachment-0015.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 494 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20030808/17429186/attachment-0015.gif>