When people say that translation is definitely not just about replacing words with words –
and how true that is! – they are most commonly talking about grammar rules, for the scope of
how they differ between one language and another (even if they would struggle to begin to
explain the particulars applicable with any given case). This along with how, for a given
language, a particular word that a non-native speaker might be most inclined to use for
something, results in a tone or suggestion that makes what they are trying to say “wrong”
because it leaves the meaning of the message all out of touch with what would (normally) be
intended and expected. Even simple misspellings and mispronunciations of a single word can
foster an unintended idea that will (as good as inevitably) trigger confusion or amusement at
best, embarrassment or offence at worst.
Not that it stops there…
From my experience, it seems that many people, when persuaded to talk about another
culture (of another country), will be inclined mostly to refer to those aspects of it which
anyone can just easily savour both inside and outside that country; for example, food (from
French baguettes to Japanese sushi), or pastimes (such as samba dancing in Brazil, or Nordic
walking), or technology and engineering (German cars in particular are highly admired, and
Swiss cuckoo clocks are popular). Even a country’s sightseeing monuments (like Big Ben in
Britain or the Statue of Liberty in the USA) fall into this list, at least in the sense of photos of
them.
That said, if we’re defining “culture” properly here… I’m not judging; but to me (at least),
such people usually have notably less concern for the particular general ways and customs of
those who are from a country other than their own. Why? Because they don’t (or hardly)
know (never mind appreciate) them, and as such don’t know any better. Truth be told, I have
already written an article about things that are accepted as good and bad manners, or as
appropriate or inappropriate, in the eyes of the general population of one country but not so
much in the eyes of the general population of another.
https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeTrailTranslator/posts/1668181406605257?__tn__=K-R
Even so, for the sake of progress and peaceful co-existence: if we are serious about giving the
ways – the qualities, imperatives and prohibitions – of the people of another country the kind
of attention they really deserve, it would certainly seem a good idea to develop familiarity
with, nay embrace, different mindsets… which means having the good grace to look beyond
just defending what you regard as acceptable and normal (or not) (even if it is for very good
reasons) and simply being appreciative of i.e. respecting other people for who they really are,
which includes how they think and what is important to them (even if they might not be so
willing to discuss such things with anyone other than those they trust the most).
I used to have a friend who worked as a pizza delivery guy during a summer job at some
point in his life. Well, at one time, there we were talking together and he told me about this
summer job he did, with mention of this story: once when he made a delivery to a home and
handed the pizza to the customer, he said “Have a good night, sir” to which the customer,
apparently, responded, “Yeah, whatever.” For this my friend described him (to me, anyway)
as a “rude bastard”. Although I didn’t say so at the time, I didn’t get it; back then I just
thought that such a response was only normal, nay only to be expected. Mainly because
“politisms” like “good night” can come to seem cliché if they are used too repeatedly. If I had
been the customer, after hearing the “have a good night, sir”, well, back then I would have

thought, “Sure, wishing someone a good night should be acknowledged as both (formally)
polite and kind on the surface, but I imagine he only said that because his boss expects him to
at this point when he’s delivering pizzas. It didn’t really come from his heart. For someone to
say ‘good night’ to you idly because they can, doesn’t amount to them being truly concerned
about your welfare or anything.” After all, as a child one key part of my own mindset was (or
should that be became?) this worldview: “If everyone really used ‘politisms’ like ‘please’ and
‘thank you’ and ‘good night’ as much as grown-ups would have me believe that I should,
then how long before said ‘politisms’ were used disingenuously en masse (pretending to give
a shit, if you will)? Do we as a society really want that?” (Even if I just utterly failed to arrive
at any kind of way to express as such so lucidly back then, and in any circumstances, never
mind publicly.) And, quite frankly, my friend certainly never struck me as the kind of snooty
person who would claim to find “that sort of comment” rude, “that kind of attitude”
inappropriate. After all, to be honest, and with all due respect to him, he grew up in a low-
income family, and was not without a love of dirty jokes and Jackass-like tomfoolery.
In his famous Great Dictator speech, Charlie Chaplin begins by saying, “I should like to help
everyone if possible – Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another;
human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s
misery.” And I will readily credit him for that. It’s definitely not that I want to threaten and
humiliate people just for the sake of my own ego (and I was bullied at school). But I realised
too late in life that the phrase “take liberties”, which does actually amount to disrespecting
someone, is not meant to imply “taking the liberties of that person” – and of course, I grew up
in a democracy, in which the concept of liberty is acknowledged as not only normal and
acceptable but imperative, and with good reason. It was just how I thought; my own defective
logic. I can only hope you can forgive me for that.
But it goes deeper than that. Going back to the pizza delivery story in which my friend
thought the customer was a “rude bastard”. For the “Have a good night, sir” bit: these days,
thankfully, I am capable of explaining that I would have thought that if anyone expected me
to hold someone in higher regard simply for confirming that they hope bad things don’t
happen to me rather than good ones, then that person would be rather naïve and ignorant, and
it would leave me with reservations about them. And the “Yeah, whatever” bit – I imagine
that maybe the customer was tired and just didn’t want to be bothered with other people’s
problems (probably more like “problems”) as a result, or was in a bad mood for some reason
but still wanted to temper it. But that’s just my own theories, and I say as such here thinking
that it’s important that I do so because, at the end of the day, they are no more important than
anyone else’s. I may be “only human”, but then so are you as well.
Consider the actual meaning behind me telling you all this (at my own suggestion, no less). I
remember some moments which – in my mind, at least – suggest that my friend in this story
resented growing up in a low income family. He tended to avoid his peers from far richer
families. Still, he works as an architect today, and makes way more than I do (well done to
him) – which suggests that he had much ambition even at a young age; and if I’ve got it right,
that likely fuelled his resentment at coming from a poor family all the more. And this in turn
would suggest that he was more sensitive to being looked down upon (whether truly or
supposedly) than me, and that’s why he called the customer a “rude bastard”.
All this “woke culture” carry-on that’s become so prevalent in modern society is
characterised by people determined to show how tolerant they are, and how “kind” they are in
ways that they might not otherwise have conceived of. For this they are, not infrequently,

criticised as being smug and patronising. And entitled. Myself, I insist that I respect the right
of people to say they “don’t like” (or should that be “shun”?) the people from another
country, including my own. But, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, the general ways
and customs of a given people, and that people’s prevailing mindset, are what makes them
who they are as a society, and what unites that people in that it gives credence to the idea that
they are “mentally set” on more than just, to put it crudely, looking and hoping for better and
trying to avert worse while otherwise reflecting nothing but ignorance; so that, in a way, they
have more value. If so many people have a problem with the term “woke” as an adjective
being widely regarded as derogatory and discredited in society at large, maybe this is the kind
of definition that it really should be acknowledged by the masses as carrying.
I’ll end it with this leaving question. In the UK, before I was born it used to be the done thing
to smoke in public buildings all the time. Of course, on 1 July 2007, the smoking ban was
enacted – I’m sure health concerns were the largest part of it. But you could say I’m being
kind to people worried about their reputation out of allegations that they are rude. So anyway,
the question is: seeing as how things “change all the time”, in light of the smoking ban, what
are the real chances of even uncouth or “Jack the lad” types in this country admonishing
you/calling you disrespectful for smoking inside their property if you did it without their
consent? I wonder. But peace and love to one and all.