scrutinizing the difference between 'western human interaction' and its arab counterpart has been a trend in my time here, and ruminating about the limited facility to express the whole idea of love in the arabic language has been the hot topic of late. today i encountered the best example. my parents got me a 12-language pocket translator for christmas (thanks!) and while avoiding studying today i was browsing thru the italian phrases for my upcoming adventure. i found one catergory deep in the 'emotions' subcatergory of the 'conversational phases' section called "expressions of love". i continued to scroll past phrases like (i kid you not), "shall we dance together?" "you're eyes are very beautiful", "shall we go to the resteraunt together?", "shall we go to the hotel together?", to "i have never seen a girl as sexy as you" in italian. finding this absolutely hysterical that someone could actually use this little device to get laid while travelling, i switched over to the french mode to test the machine's accuracy. much to my suprise, the phrases translated almost perfectly, save the use of formal pronouns. out of curiousity, i switch to the arabic mode and i found:
"it is really nice to meet you".
one, single, poorly-translated phrase in place of the dozen or so available in the romance languages (perhaps i understand this name better now). hahahahahaah. priceless.
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