Sometimes words in one language don't translate well into another language. A classic example of this was when the GM car, the Nova, didn't market so well in Latin America. Probable reason? No va, in Spanish, basically means...No go. Hmmm.
I experienced a humorous case of this language confusion recently when I was in Hungary. I was at a gas station, paying for permission to drive on the motorway (like paying a toll, I think, but all at once, in advance). The worker showed me a little machine with the information on it. At the bottom of the screen it said, "helyes?" All the information looked correct, so indeed, I thought, as I gave the go ahead for processing..."hell yes!" I asked my Hungarian friends about this later...and sure enough..."helyes" (pronounced something like "hayesh") means "correct." Like in English, us saying...is all of this information correct? We got a good laugh about this later. I also mentioned in their guest book that if someone were to ask me if these things I wrote about them being great hosts were true, I would simply say..."Helyes!"
No comments:
Post a Comment