Reality Check

The past four weeks, I have had the opportunity to do a bit of sharing.  I looked over some material I had written (in English) to help me prepare.  I remember when I wrote these messages.  I remember carefully choosing each word to express with pinpoint accuracy exactly what I wanted to.  As authors know, a  well-chosen word is worth its weight in gold when it comes to expressing meaning.  What happens when you have to translate your carefully chosen words and examples into another language (and culture!).  I took a translated message to my tutor yesterday that I had labored over for several hours, expecting him to be wowed by my profound insight.  Unfortunately, at key moments in the message he would say, "I'm not sure of your meaning here."  At this moment, I painfully understood the meaning of the phrase lost in translation.  Fortunately, after an hour of laborious editing, the message will now do a better job of communicating.