Quote:
Originally Posted by Kalzazz
Is it possible to use Social Skills through a Translator?
Suppose Alice and Bob visit a French Island where the populace speak French. Alice knows Streetwise and Savoire Faire. Bob knows French. Is it possible for Alice to use her skills with Bob translating?
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Remember that scene in Patton where the Translator had the dilemma of telling the Russian General that Patton had called him an SOB? In that case it wasn't a matter of social skills for the translator (it probably means roughly the same in both languages after all). However there must be plenty of eventualities where an innocuous phrase in one language is fighting words when translated literally.
Take a look at some English words. Coward (why does being a bovine herdsman make you lacking in courage?), Welch (who says being from Wales makes you dishonest), or the above (aside from being biologically impossible, female canines are not subject to human sexual laws and in any event that does not prove that one's mother was not monogamous). Imagine oddities in other language. Other English words come to mind: villain (who cares if your ancestor was a sharecropper) and noble (equally who cares if a king gave your ancestor a land grant). A translator has to know them to be able to smooth troubled waters.