Johnson Lost without translation

摘要

SITTING ON A muddy floor beneath a tarpaulin roof, Nabila, a 19-year-old Bangladeshi, fiddles with her shoelaces as she listens to Tosmida, a Rohingya woman in her mid-3os. Both are crying. Nabila, a student-turned-interpreter, says awkwardly: "She had it from all of them in her secret place."The struggle to tell the story of Tos-mida's gang-rape is not just an emotional but a linguistic one. Since some 700,000 Rohingyas escaped persecution in Myan-mar and fled to Bangladesh over a year ago, many Bangladeshis like Nabila have suddenly found themselves with new jobs, as interpreters. Tosmida's Rohingya and Nabila's Chittagonian are related but not identical. Interpreters, quickly trained, must try their best to understand another language, and fill in the gaps left by cultural differences-including taboos about what victims can say.