(Almost-) Lost in Translation

***(Almost-) Lost in Translation*** (#StorytellingSalemStory #999,987 out of 1mil:)

🎶So I’ve been travelling across the country—
town to town/city to city/State to State;
sitting down in random locations—
across this Nation— with a whiteboard in my haaand;
I’ve been asking pplllll:
“What’s Yor Story?”🎶

And when I was in Crystal City, Virginia, tucked beside a food truck parked near 18th and Bell, where government suits walk past murals and scooter racks like they’re in a rush to somewhere, a short man in a pressed white shirt, thick mustache, and lanyard with more badges than I could count, looked and read what was written upon my whiteboard; and then started to share:

⸻

“I tell you this only because you look like you might be worth talkin’ to:

I used to work in that building—see it? Glass one, corner office, third floor? Yeah- that’s me. I was a translator. Four languages. Arabic, French, Turkish, and this hybrid Dari-Pashto dialect only spoken by some real stubborn fellahs and a grandmother near the Afghan border. I was good. So good. They kept callin’. And I kept answering.

But lemme tell you the one time I nearly-messed-up.

I was in a meeting. Diplomatic one. Big table, coffee nobody drank. Bunch of suits from two countries that don’t like each other. I’m not gonna name names, but you’d recognize both; cause they end in ‘stans.’

Anyway—they’re all being polite, fakely. Tension like a tight drum. And then one of ’em leans in and says this phrase that could mean, ‘We’re happy to proceed with caution,’ or, if said wrong—like this man said it—it means, ‘You should kiss my aunt’s donkey.’

I caught it.

And in that one second, I made a call. I translated it the polite way.

Nobody blinked.

Meeting moved forward. They shook hands.

Later that week? Trade deal signed. Historic stuff. Made the papers.

But I kept that moment in my back pocket—’cause I knew I held the pin of a diplomatic grenade, and I let it roll back into the dark instead of blowing up in the room that day.

That’s what translation is, man.

Not words.

Decisions.”

⸻

He checked his smartwatch like it offended him, then muttered something about a lunch hour disappearing too fast and stepped back into the stream of pedestrians.

🎶And iii?
I was wondering if I heard that correctly-
as my whiteboard still stayed propped-up- beside me; still asking:
“What’s Yor Story?”
waiting for the next person to walk my waaaaay~🎶

(#StorytellingSalemStory #999,987)