Found in Translation 4: la Vendetta

As a foreigner living in a foreign country (that’s wired; notice that I’m a foreigner to the indigenous, and this country is their own; but if I go temporarily to my country of origin I become an indigenous living in a foreign country; and the indigenous from my place of residence become indigenous in a foreign country or foreigners in their own country, for me; and when I come back… well, I’d better leave it up to the philosophers, or to the IRS, which calls me a resident alien (especially for tax purposes),) I often have to deal with documents and translations in various languages. Recently, I had to translate a police certificate from Italian to English.

My innate laziness prompted me to use the help of the world’s highest ranking web site, Google. So I entered a paragraph in the translation box of the related web page. The paragraph contained the phrase carichi pendenti, which translates into English as pending charges. The dear Google returned it as hanging cargos. I could have sent to the immigration office a certificate stating that I had no hanging cargos. If the authority of Google says so who am I to contradict it? But, hey, wait a minute, I’m an alien, I can contradict it.

Found in Translation 3: Pronunciation while rubing the bank

The pronunciation of the Us, Os, As, and their combinations is of great challenge to non native English speakers. Sun/son, uncle/ankle, man/men, drunk/drank, gem/jam, and countless others, make us sweat heavily when trying to express something related. Yeah, we are great sweaters at times...

We left the restaurant’s parking lot at dark and I pulled into a closed business' drive-thru for a U-turn. “Are you going to put gas?” my wife asked. “Mom, this is a bank. They don’t have gas here.” “Oh,” she was in good mood, “are we going to rub the bank, then?” She wanted to say rob, and that’s what she actually said, but she pronounced it as rub.

At this point, my son and I brought forth the best of our foreign accent (with some wannabe Indian scent) in the following mix of dialogues:

“Sir, I’m here to rub your bank” “Oh, please, help yourself.” “I’m serious, sir. This is a rubbery.” “Really? Do you have a rubber?” “Yes, here is my rubber gun.” “Oh, it looks real; very good gum.” “Sir, this is a real rubber gun, and I’m going to rub you.” “Oh, that is so nice of you. Could you please rub me under my left shoulder?”

and

“I’m the famous Jack the Rubber. Kindly give me all of your dirty money!” “Why? Are you going to rub them, ha-ha-ha?” “Don’t laugh sir! I did rubberies for the last 20 (pronounced tventy) years.” “OK, rub this for me, and keep the rubbish for you.”

and

“Everybody, don’t move. I’m here to rub you. I’m a serial rubber, and very dangerous.” “Oh, poor creature, you must be hungry, if you fell like rubbing cereal.”