Translations

I was recently reading a friend's account of misadventures in foreign language and it reminded me of my two favorites- neither of which, it appears, have I yet related to you fine people.

One:  I spent my junior year abroad in France, where I stayed with a host family for a couple months.  The hostess once said to me "Ah oui, mon fils, il était pédéraste mais alors maintenant il est pacsé et lui et G., ils ont un enfant." *  The problem is, I thought she said "Il était pédophile", so I just smiled and nodded and thought WHAT??? and got out the big dictionary when I got home.

(There are a lot of words you don't learn from reading 18th century literature. Aside from de Sade.)

Two: Another time, I was working as an interpreter and we went to immigration court.**  They didn't close the previous hearing, so I heard an extremely amusing case with two South American brothers, in the US with employer-sponsored visas for skilled trades.  The lawyer got up at the beginning and said "Your Honor, we're here because in the initial application we incorrectly answered 'yes' to the question 'Have you ever been arrested for a felony?'.  In fact, these men were taken to the police station for questioning, but they were never arrested or charged."  Then it went on in mind-numbing detail with an interpreter over the phone, and then it ended and the interpreter hung up,*** and the judge granted the visas officially.

THEN he asked the brothers "So what really happened?"

One of them got up and said "Oh, Your Honor, we were at work, and my wife and his girlfriend, they got into an argument, and one of them killed the other, but we were at work. Only two people know the truth, and eh, one of them is dead and the other one is in jail."

The judge said, "Hmm," and then they cleared the court for our hearing.  Which was much, much, much less amusing.  (Rwanda; not amusing.)

* "Oh yes, my son, he was a pederast [homosexual] but now he's in a civil union with G. and they have a child."  I thought she said, you know, PEDOPHILE.
** I was not the court-provided interpreter, but there in case of errors.  He didn't know the word for 'whip.'  Of course, my brain stuttered to a halt in horror a few times, during interviews: once over 'fusiller', once over 'and then after the rape I escaped barefoot across a river in the night and miscarried', and once over 'the soldiers burnt down my house'. 
*** The rules of immigration court require that non-native speakers of English be provided with an interpreter, and that hearings be conducted in their native language, regardless of how well they speak English.  In case you're wondering.