Translation Titters

Here in a suburb of Hamburg, the neighbor often visits the house owner.  Both speak German to my sister, who also speaks German.  All three speak English, my and my sister's first language.  Translation often produces funny results.

For example, we were talking about poetry, having seen the Heinrich Heine statue in Hamburg.  Philosophy came up.  I said something with the word "philosopher" in it, but the German equivalent sounds very different.  Our host heard "floss" and though I was  talking about the candy floss, or cotton candy, such as one eats.  My sister then said that in the future, when she walks past the philosophy department at the University of Alberta, the university where she worked for years, that she will imagine its people holding and playing with candy floss.

When she explained the work of a psychologist, another word somewhat different in German, she called him a brain mechanic.  The house owner, a special education school teacher, then explained the work of her school's guidance counselor by calling him a child mechanic.

There have been dozens of humorous incidents such as these since I arrived two days ago.

Before  our host left on Saturday afternoon in her motorhome, bound for the North Sea coast, where her boyfriend will meet her, before they board their boat to sail the sea, her neighbor invited us to supper at her place.  We had a nice stir fry of chicken and vegetables with ginger, in a creamy sauce that included peanut butter.  Dessert was a frozen torte we bought a couple days ago.  She suggested various sights to see during our time here, notably Berlin and especially Dresden.