Monday, October 12, 2009

lost in rooskeey

I would like to talk about my translator for a minute. She is young, energetic, and tres, tres helpful. A real girl Friday.
Except when she interchanges Russian & English in her translations.
It was Monday morning and we are in the hospital doing rounds on the patients. So we go into a room and I ask the usual questions: how do you feel, how are you sleeping, how's your appetite, blah, blah, blah. She translates verbatim what is being said. I ask for clarification about something and she responds ‘duh’. Again I ask what the patient means and she says ‘duh, duh’. We move onto the next patient and the same scenario repeats itself. This continues throughout the day.
Wha? Seriously?
Unbelievable! And she is saying it without a hint of malice in her tone or facial expression.
After we leave the hospital I ask her if I have done something to offend her as I don’t understand the sarcasm. She looks at me quizzically and says, “Jennifer, I am not being sarcastic, I was saying da. . . Da is Russian for ‘yes’! I was confirming what you were asking about the patient”.
OOHHHH.
Those Russian lessons didn't arrive a minute too soon.

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