A Quiet (ish) Birthday!

Pause For Thought with Martin Saunders, author, screenwriter and magazine editor

The world has never been smaller. Advances in technology mean you can do business in Tokyo while sitting by a pool in… well, Doncaster.

Yet while in some ways we’re all much closer together, the beautiful thing is that we’re all still different. Each nation has its own ways of doing things; each culture has its own quirks and distinctives. Which means that sometimes, just as Bill Murray discovered in the Oscar-winning movie of the same name… things can often get Lost in Translation.

Chinese cinemas are a great example of this. Sometimes, when they import Western films, their efforts at translating the titles go hilariously awry. Take for example the Tom Cruise classic Risky Business, which when released in China was renamed ‘Just Send Him To University Unqualified!’ Or the touching family film Free Willy, which became ‘A Very Powerful Whale Runs To Heaven’. Or my personal favourite, classic Brit-flick The Full Monty, which in China was given the intriguing new title… ‘Six Naked Pigs.’

Of course, mistranslations of film titles are more to do with differences in language than cultural ignorance. Yet a lot of misunderstandings happen because people simply don’t listen properly to each other.

I presume that’s why the baristas in my coffee shop can never get my name right; they’re so rushed dealing with the queue, they’ve no time to really care what my name is. So Martin walks off with a coffee labeled Marlon, Marvin or more worryingly, Mandy, and their effort to make me feel welcomed backfires.

When some people approach religion, it’s easy for them to feel a little like that coffee shop barista. They can catch a snatched message, struggle to understand it properly, then rush on with whatever is impending. So they come away with a misunderstanding or an incomplete picture; that God is full of wrath; that the Bible is anti-women. Part of the idea gets through, but the true meaning becomes lost in the rush.

As I seek to understand God and other people better, I’ve found the secret to be in two principles which blend into one: slowing down, and really listening. The pace of modern life means we’re bound to mistranslate one another; through slowing down to listen we gain a better chance of hearing correctly.

And in the coffee shop, it’s also helpful to enunciate.