Cosmopolitanism

I've probably complained about the little things in the past but I need to explain to people about Americans' insularity. They're not ignorant in the way they are stereotyped but they are insular. This comes out not as a lack of knowledge but more in their attitudes to foreign things.

The most blatant example was when the secretary in my dept was organising a restaurant dinner for a guest speaker that I was to attend and she asked, "Do you like ethnic food?" Implying: (a) that there are two classes of food - American and ethnic; and (b) that it's perfectly reasonable to reply, "No, I don't like any ethnic food."

The next most confusing attitude is the opposite one. I had a classmate who had spent a year at Oxford. She was quite proud of the fact that she occasionally spelt words the proper way. Not because she saw that American spellings are merely common childish mistakes that no one bothered to correct. No, she felt that there was something romantic about that sort of thing. Likewise the occasional use of "British" words: again, not because it's good to have a broad and varied vocabulary but more because those particular words carry an exotic cachet. I've since met other Anglophiles but I still can't quite work out how you can be in love with English culture. I mean, it's just normal, the default. It's Continental, Asian and African cultures that are foreign!

And that's the thing. For these people who find England exotic, anything more foreign will always be foreign. The foreign foods section of the supermarket (which I've mentioned before) is the best example. Certainly various styles of cooking belong together but the thing I noticed more recently is that it's not just ingredients for certain dishes - the one Italian brand of coffee that they carry is in the Italian food section! All the other brands of everything are American brands.

The reason why I'm writing about this now is because this semester I'm taking a course in the French dept on translating. The teacher made it clear from the start that we needed to produce translations that are readily understood and, if that means translating aspects of culture, so be it. A number of students objected when she said that the correct translation for "15 miles from here" was "à 25 km d'ici". They started to say that there might be a situation where miles would be understood. Where? Louisiana? They must have no idea that the only other countries that don't use metric are Liberia and Burma. (Although, for some reason the UK still uses miles on the roads, but you pay for litres of petrol.)

And to compound the issue, the lecturer for this class is English. I was a bit surprised to hear the other students muttering when we read a passage full of correct spellings like "learnt" and "burnt". I don't know what their problem is; you'd think that in academia you'd have been exposed to enough different styles that it all seems normal. There's no reason at all for the lecturer to refrain from assigning that. But then again, when she uses British slang in class (e.g. "on his uppers") I think that she just might be trying to stir them up.

Still, I was surprised at how difficult they found the cultural context. I wasn't sure what to think when I heard a student comment on the passage we were translating, "He must be really angry to use the word 'damnit'. We'll need to find a strong curse in French." Realising where I was, I gently reminded him, "England is not a religious country." No one understood what I was getting at, so I said more clearly, "'Damn' is the least offensive word. Children are allowed to say it." Well that set the whole class chattering but the teacher confirmed that it's common enough and they eventually believed us.

I'll probably learn a fair bit of French and a little about French culture (as I always am) but my American classmates will be learning a lot more, it seems.