Transparency, translations, and TVs

Now I´m busily translating the stuff that I´ve already written on this blog from English into Spanish. One thing about missionary writings it seems to me is that there are very clear demarcations between who it´s “to” and who it´s “about”, and it was starting to bug me that our communications are becoming that way too. So we´re trying to blur the boundaries and put everything into two languages, starting with the blog. If I had thought about that in the first place, I might have used simpler English and made life easier for myself…. “Peter has a dog. The dog has a bone. The window is open, The door is yellow…”
I had a strange experience a few days ago, which I´ll probably get into trouble for writing about, so this is me writing about it… I was cycling home through a quietish neighbourhood and I passed two transvestites sitting on some steps. And that seemed like a really odd sight to me, and I couldn´t work out why it seemed so odd, until I realised that it´s because we always meet some of the transvestites when we go to the Hospital Rawson among the HIV or AIDS patients, so I had kind of associated them as being at the hospital in my head, and completely lost sight of the fact that they don´t all live in the hospital and most of them live in normal houses in normal neighbourhoods, and drink coke outside on the steps on a warm day.

So now I´ve written something else that I need to translate. Luckily I know the Spanish for transvestite. Actually it´s the phrases that we use without thinking that cause me the most grief, particularly the metaphors… I can already see myself deeply regretting “blur the boundaries” for example. Ho hum…

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