Language again

I was googling the phrase 'please in Kurdish' in order to figure out how to say please in Kurdish and I stumbled across a list of proverbs and quotations in different languages. I still didn't figure out how to say please, but I did find something that reignited my faith in language, "Le langage est une peau: je frotte mon langage contre l'autre. C'est comme si j'avais des mots en guise doigts, ou des doigts au bout de mes mots. Mon langage tremble de desir."

Translation-
Language is a skin : I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.
- Roland Barthes

Today was my first attempt at giving a speech and I forgot that having someone translate ones words impacts how you speak. I started out, then paused for translation, another sentence, pause for translation, another awkward sentence that I hope my translator translated correctly and did not translate exactly what I said, and so on. I did not quite know what to do during translation and so I looked down then looked up and I just did not engage my audience. I was also frustrated with myself because I know at least enough Arabic to say good morning, but once again I did not trust myself to say it correctly.

I talked to 'my fixer'*, who was also translating for me today about what he preferred from a speaker. Was it easier to have the speaker pause and translate each sentence, or have the speaker ramble on? He said it was up to the speaker. He had one boss who wanted him to just say what needed to be said, regardless of what he was saying. Regardless, I had to trust that my words were interpreted and translated to the audience.

During the break one of the participants, who I had met the day before briefly, asked me if I spoke Arabic. I replied I spoke very little (shwaya, which I said in Arabic). He then told me I needed to learn Arabic. I was a little frustrated at this point and I asked him how long it had taken him to learn English. He said he started learning in middle school and continued through college. Um, hello people, I can't learn Arabic in 6 weeks. This same gentleman also came up to me during the break and told me that I needed to look at the audience while I was speaking. Oh dear. 

I was talking to another friend who has done translation work and is very meticulous about his translations. We talked about how hard it is to pick the right word in English, let alone translate that to Arabic. Then another friend forwarded me an article by Michael Cunningham called "Found in Translation" that talked about how a novel is only partly finished and it is up to the translator to convey the thoughts.

What I am trying to say is, it kind of does not matter what I say because my words are in the hands of the translator.

*You know the guy in Italian movies, when they say, "I've got a guy". 'My fixer' is my guy. I hired him purely on gut instinct and now he is running part of my program way better than I could ever do. On top of it he manages a ton of other random things for us, because he's a fixer.