For those of you only familiar with Swedish from the old Muppet Show’s Swedish Chef character, I can assure you that actual Swedish as I’ve encountered it in my legal translation wanderings is nothing like that.
Even though the Philippines has only been independent (in the modern age) since the late 1940s, it has enjoyed a lengthy history and maintained its singular character and culture throughout centuries of domination by stronger, larger countries such as Spain, Germany, and most recently The United States. As with every country, it has its challenges, but the Philippines enjoys a buzzing energy and ambition you can almost feel simply by watching their news broadcasts. And it’s an interesting, fascinating country, something I am lucky enough to know about from my translation services work. To prove it to you, here are some fascinating facts about the Philippines!
Taiwan, or the Republic of China, is a country not unused to being in a state of uncertainty. Although once populated by aboriginals, the arrival of the Dutch in the 17th century (when the island was known as Formosa) changed this – although in a different way than in other examples of European ‘discovery’ affecting aboriginal populations. Instead of the Dutch displacing the natives, mainland Chinese began to immigrate to the island, formally conquering it in 1683.
All countries and ethnicities garner an “image” over time. Americans are loud, Germans are fussy, and Latins are passionate. All very silly, of course, but that’s human nature – we like to put things into neat little boxes to make the world make a little more sense to us. When you work in business translation, this is shown to be silly. That’s why travel is so important – it exposes you to the truth, which is that people are the same wherever you go.
It’s that time again – time for the Translation Services Professional to give in and admit that not everyone in the world enjoys learning languages the way I do. It’s humbling. In my youth I would harangue people in pubs about how they should never simply learn phrases but instead attempt to learn a language at least on a simplistic level. Today I have mellowed and realise that when my friend tells me he’s visiting The Philippines for a few days and just needs some simple survival phrases in Tagalog (he’ll be in Manilla, where Tagalog and English are the dominant languages), I shouldn’t lecture him on the awesomeness of learning a language fully and instead just give him the following advice. As they say: With age comes wisdom!
The Philippines has a long history dating back to prehistoric times, and its languages are just as fascinating, at least to Word Nerds and translation services professionals like me. Many times if you try to study the history of a country or its languages you end up seeing it through the lens of European colonialism, as that’s where the country’s story begins as far as the Western world is concerned. Obviously, the Philippines existed quite ably on their own prior to their “discovery” by the Spanish in the 16th century, and after centuries of being controlled one way or another by various other powers they are now existing quite ably on their own again. Their language follows a similar pattern.
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Proverbs have a lot of purposes in the world. Some of them are designed to be “space fillers,” something you can say when nothing comes to mind. Others are aphorisms, common wisdom repeated not because you think you’re teaching anyone anything, but simply because it’s accepted as common knowledge. And some are meant to be inspiring, to remind us that the world heals and no matter how dark things appear to be we can always expect the dawn. There are a lot of these sorts of proverbs originating in Norway, for some reason. I’ve come across a huge number in my travels and document translation work. Here are some of my favourites.
For a relatively small country, the Philippines has both an outsize history and an outsize language presence in many ways. With a population just shy of one hundred million, The Philippines has seen plenty of action over the last few centuries, and is today one of the most interesting places to visit from a linguistic and translation services point of view, because of the diversity and sheer number of languages – not dialects or regional variations, but literal separate languages – that it has the honour of hosting. For a document translation pro like myself, there’s no easier way to lose a few hours than to start sifting through the tangle skein of languages in the Philippines.
The world is filled with universal truths. You might imagine that the cultures of the world are vastly different and that life in one country is generally very different from life in another, and on many levels you’re right – but these often bizarre differences in culture then combine to be one of those universal truths: That you can find strangeness anywhere. Consider the Scandinavian culture in general and Norway’s in particular: In some ways life in Norway is very similar to life where I live. In others, based on my visits and the reports of some of my friends and colleagues, it’s like a whole different planet. Consider some of these (mostly amusing) facts about daily life in Norway.