2/12 & 13

I have never been more frustrated by a language barrier in my life. *Gritting teeth and growling*
Okay, now to start from the beginning. Puthumai and I went to meeting in Jalpiguri for a coalition of groups working on Community Based Disaster Preparedness (CBDP) projects. 12 hours round trip in the car and 24 hours in Jalpiguri. The meeting was all district coordinators running CBDP programs in different places around W. Bengal. The purpose of the meeting was to share progress and collaborate on a plan for the final year of the project. It felt like attending a class that I hadn’t read the text for. Oh yea, and the class wasn’t in English. It was also 8 hours long. I am not complaining, please don’t misunderstand my frustration as whining. I continuously kept repeating to myself, a positive outlook is key, a positive outlook is key. But regardless of my positivity I was frustrated with my own limitation, with my own inability to understand.
You see, I am an intelligent person. I know that sounds pompous, and that isn’t my intention. It is just that I have always able to contribute something in intellectual environments, or if I am not able to contribute, I am at least able to ask appropriate questions. As I sat through the meeting I understood just enough of what was being said to have no idea what was going on. There were a few people who very kindly translated for me, but the problem was they were participants in the meeting and they were more interested in what was being said than in translating it for me. I also feel as though translating is highly ineffective. I have the sneaking suspicion that 80 percent of what is said is actually lost in translation. For example, if the speaker says “There was a horrendous downpour and the villages were not able to coup with the level of rainwater,” the translated version is “He is talking about floods.” The meanings may be similar, but after 3 or 4 hours I didn’t want to hear similar meanings I wanted to hear what was actually being said.
The PowerPoints were in English, and that was helpful. That was probably the one (attention) saving grace of the weekend. Although the PowerPoints contained so many abbreviations that even as I was able to begin to formulate more complex thoughts about what was happening, I would hit a roadblock because I didn’t understand an abbreviation. By the time we left my jaw was sore from grinding my teeth in frustration.
But as we drove away I began to let go of the frustration. There is only so much that I will be able to understand here, and accepting limitations is humbling (that’s why it is so difficult). Frustration in and of itself is draining. It isn’t productive. As we drove into the night, I left my frustration in Jalpiguri and returned to Raiganj.