Living in the country of careless translators and homophobic teachers

Today I've been really annoyed with people, who certainly shouldn't be working with languages, but unfortunately they are. As some of you know, I've been collecting papers for my permanent residence permit (and possibly also citizenship, if I'd be allowed to keep the Polish one as well) in Ukraine. And so, among many other papers, I needed a translation of 3 birth certificates: mine, my mother's and my grandmother's. That's a way to prove that my granny was born in Ukraine and that she's indeed my granny :) Of course, I might translate those documents myself, but I can understand why an official translation, signed and stamped by a notary is required. I can even understand, why such translations are quite expensive - afterall translating documents is a huge resonsbility. So can you imagine, how shocked I was, when I saw my papers translated with several mistakes?! First of all, my grandmother's surname was transliterated differently in hers and my mother's certificates, although in Polish the spelling was identical in both documents! And believe me, my grandmother's surname isn't that difficult to transliterate. That was the first thing I paid attention to, because the immigration officer told me that even if just one letter is different, my application can be rejected! I asked them to correct the spelling and went to uni. Fortunately, I had a boring class, so I spent some time reading through those translations carefully. And guess what? Apart from some minor mistakes, I've also found something really ridiculous! Next to the notary's signature and stamp it was written... "A translation from Ukrainian into English"! :D Polish into Ukrainian or Ukrainian into English? Makes no difference at all! I should have all those stupid mistakes corrected by tomorrow, but it seems to be a more global problem with Ukrainian translators. I remember how in one questionnaire, which my dean was supposed to fill in, they translated "your country" as "наша країна" (meaning "our country"). Just amazing! :)

The truth is that most of Ukranians still can't speak any foreign languages (unless we count Russian as a foreign one) and apparently you can't expect even those, who have a diploma in languages, to be thoroughly fluent. On one hand, it's a good thing for me, because being able to speak 7/8 languages in a country, where people can barely speak English, is a huge advantage. On the other hand, it becomes really annoying, when I need those official translations, I pay for them and I realise I would have done them much better myself.

Once I'm writing about people, who work with languages, although they shouldn't, I'd also like to mention my German teacher. Well, she's nice and I like it that she motivates me to learn the language (I doubt I'd be learning it actively on my own). But today we were discussing the topic of youth crime and she expressed her opinion that... "It happens because our society is too tolerant towards gays"! Dear readers of my blog, could you please explain me, what's the correlation between homosexuality and youth crime? I'm sorry, but I'm too stupid to understand! :/ But seriously... I wish one day it won't be acceptable to express homophobic comments at least at work in Ukraine. I respect it that people can have their own opinions and discuss them with their family or friends. But when you're working with strangers, for example as a language teacher, you should keep in mind that the person you're talking to might also be a member of the LGBT community and, what's even more important, be interested in learning the language rather than listening to your homophobic views. Now I regret not having said anything, but I'm not much of an activist. Sometimes I think I should become one, because I don't really care for my reputation (at least as long as I'm a student), but I guess I'm not brave enough :(

But not to finish my blog entry on such a negative note, I'll share the pictures of my mail with you, as usually :)

This beautiful envelope came from Marina in Russia on Monday. Amazingly, it took just a week to arrive! Anyone, who's had something to do with Russian postal service will understand why I'm so surprised ;) I love the stamps, especially the round ones! Marina has also sent me two postcards and some yummy tea :)

This letter came from another Ukrainian penpal of mine, Anastasia. Ironically, I've been to her city (Chernihiv - which is actually one of my favourite places in Ukraine) for 4 times since we've started writing to each other, but we've never met, because I was never alone during those trips. But I think one day I should just go there on my own with the goal of finally meeting Anastasia :)

This big envelope and postcards came from Tündi in England, who is my most extreme penpal ;) Believe it or not, once she's sent me a letter, which was 124 A4 pages long :D Since then we've been trying to make our letters a bit... less extreme, but we seem to fail, all we manage to do is to make our letters look shorter :) For example, once I've typed a letter for her and was satisfied with it having less than 30 pages - nevermind that the font was really small and there was minimal space between the lines ;) Now she's handwritten "just" 32 pages for me, but there are about 60 lines on each page... Does that already sound ridiculous to you? Well, I think it indeed is, so we should just relax and write as much as we want :D

And here's my outgoing mail:

A letter for Søren in Iceland, sent on Tuesday. No, it wasn't me to put the "par avion" stamp upside down ;)

A letter for Katka in Czech Republic went out on Thursday and includes a sample of my very broken Czech :)

And a letter to Anastasia in Ukraine, also sent on Thursday.

Currently I'm writing to Marina and I'll try to send my letter tomorrow ;) It's going to be a slightly weird one, because I wanted to write it in a small and cute notepad, but 31 pages don't seem to be enough, so I'll have to add extra ones ;) I hope she'll like my letter nevertheless :)