Two Innocents in Red China

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Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Two Innocents in Red China

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TWO INNOCENTS IN RED CHINA

JACQUES HÉBERT

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Things get lost in translation in China. Hébert and Trudeau constantly made mention of the difficulties of translation and went through a number of translators, French and English. During our family trip of 1990, my brother and I made a game of tracking the times our father’s gentle sarcasms were translated literally, causing confusion amongst our Chinese hosts. Sometimes we even pointed out the misunderstandings to him and urged him to make it clear that we didn’t actually mean to walk fifty kilometres to a temple or that the previous night’s lavish banquet had not in fact been “a tad informal.”

A translator is a kind of filter, someone who interprets and edits meaning while transmitting it. Too easily, he or she becomes an unwanted mediator. Communication and understanding find their surest foundations in a connection between personalities, in a trust built between traveller and host. And the true foundations of trust— our emotions, humour and anger—are often left out in a translated conversation. As they are squeezed through the dehumanizing prisms of translation, conversations are reduced to bland exchanges of information.

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