Blog #24

Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman

By- Ava Daniels

In 1959, Eva Hoffman emigrated with her family from Poland to Canada. In Lost in Translation, she uses this excerpt to talk about this transition and how it impacted her life. In the start of the reading, she talks about how she spent her days learning new words and expressions. Hoffman did not have a private tutor or teacher to teach her these things, so instead she learned new words and expressions through conversations she would have, tv shows, and other interactions. This reminds me of when I went to Australia and had to connect Australian words, dialect, and sayings to what we say here in America. "When my friend Penny tells me that she's envious, or happy, or disappointed, I try laboriously to translate not from English to Polish but from the word back to its source" (388). In this quote, Hoffman is describing how she would learn expressions and how it was hard at first. Hoffman's struggle with losing her native tongue is one of the most stunning aspects of her story. She was fluent in Polish as a child and loved the nuance of its rich language. However, she found it difficult to express herself in English while in Canada. Despite the challenges she encountered, Hoffman eventually settled in Canada. Her experiences as an immigrant influenced a lot of her writing, and she went on to become a successful professor and writer.