ru guo ni yo addictions . . .

Last week, a group from my church went to help out at a soup kitchen. Shortly after arriving, I was asked if I was bilingual. I foolishly replied, "Yes, in Mandarin." Turns out, since it's close to Chinatown, a lot of the people that come only understand their native language and they need to translate everything from English into Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin.

The last time I spoke Mandarin was when I lived in Taiwan, back in 2004. At first, I frantically tried to find someone to replace me, but finally someone from church convinced me my Mandarin was probably good enough. He even wrote a cheat sheet for me for some of the words that he knew would be brought up like "health care", "unemployment", "social security", and "food stamps".

We all had to stand on the stage and translate everything the pastor said. At first it was just simple instructions, like "Welcome, eat as much as you like, don't take any food home, Jesus loves you, etc." Then he started praying. And then gave a 5 minute sermon.

At the end he reminded people that we could help them if they had any problems and needed someone to talk to. Obviously I didn't know how to translate every word, so I ended up saying things like "ru guo ni yo addictions, ...". (if you have any addictions)

Someone later pointed out that I got all the easy words right and basically left out all the important words. If I were translating into English, it would be like "if you have any ______ we can help you. Or if you have any questions about ______, just come to the ______. If you can't speak English we will be offering English ______ at 10:30. Go to that door."

Moral of the story - find out what they need translated before admitting you know another language.