difficult conversations or “wait….translate”

difficult conversations can happen when one ventures outside of the culture[s] within which one immerses oneself. they can also happen when one uses the word one too much in a blog entry lol.  so, one would think the key to making these conversations less difficult would be to commit oneself to learning everything about the cultural context of the person with which you plan to communicate. further clarification of the word culture is needed here. i am not referring to the common groups of people or environments commonly associated with the term culture [such as ethnicity, religion, nationality , etc]. i am referring more to the combination of influences and daily habits that become so ingrained in our lives that we do not even realize they are probably viewed by some as unusual and misunderstood or in some cases, not even defined.

case in point: communicating with my mother. i recently had a phone conversation with her  [which, with me being a bit phonaphobic tends to make conversation stilted in even the smoothest of interactions]. in this particular conversation, i found myself stopping my flow of talk almost constantly as i realized that i was about to mention something my mother had no idea about and that i would need to translate this into a more familiar and, in her case, less threatening form.

examples:

i began to talk about my son’s upcoming birthday party and she asked me about gifts. i promptly [and somewhat absentmindedly] answered that his wish list was on amazon. she did not know what amazon was. ok.. so translate…. a list of gifts on line where people can go to see them…. but ok translate…. that is is safe and private and that no one that i don’t let see the list can see the list, etc….ok, too complicated, i just brought the list up on my computer and read it off to her. whew! that was hard work.

i told her i had taken a great picture of my daughter. she asked me to get copies made when i developed them. ok… wait, translate…. they were taken with a digital camera, i can send her a dvd… wait, no i can’t, she doesn’t have a computer.  i can print a copy out for her, yes, and asked her what size it needed to be…. to which she replied… whatever size you have left. ? huh? oh, ok, wait….. translate. she’s thinking of those photo sets in which one gets various sizes of pictures in a package., next..  me: i can print you out whatever size you need. reply from mom: well, you just do what is easiest. ? ok. give up. i decided just to send her a 5X7 since I know she has a lot of frames that size.

she asked about my son and daughter-in-law and wanted to know when the last time i talked to them was. i told her i talked to my son the other day and she was so excited that he had called me. ok, wait…. translate,…i didn’t actually “talk” to him; i I’M=ed… wait, translated…. wrote back and forth with him… on the computer. yeah, that was good.

my mother is a smart lady but obviously not a part of the intenet culture. the conversation i had with her made me realize how much i still tend to assume others are up to or into the same activities, verbiage, and that i am. i thought i was pretty universal and could talk to and understand pretty much everyone [in english, that is] by understanding their culture and where they come from. in other words, if someone does something differently, that doesn’t make it bad or unacceptable, it makes it different, it is their familiar, their culture. what i need to work on now is understanding culture in a broader sense and that is why i wrote this blog {which, by the way, was another concept i needed to explain during that phone call].

and i wish my mother would get a computer lol.

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Tags: blog, camera, children, communication, computer, conversations, culture, cultures, difficult, digital, email, expand, facebook, frustration, gap, generation, generational, get, im, interaction, internet, mother, my, myspace, phonaphobe, phone, phoneaphobic, talking, technoese, technology, techojargen, text, translate, vox, wait, web, wish, wordpress, youtube