Lost in Traslation

While sitting down to Thanksgiving Dinner with some of our dear local friends, there were times when conversation became interesting, due to translation discrepancies. Almost every guest spoke English to some degree, but when people fluent in our language started speaking too quickly, a glazed look came over the eyes of those not able to translate the conversation fast enough. When anybody noticed this happening, someone would quickly give a synopsis to the person needing it, and the conversation would resume. When not speaking in English, our friends would speak in Russian since I could pick through the conversation a little bit. Well towards the end of the night our friend Nune picked up my oven mitts and had them on both her hands, saying they made a good accessory to her outfit. Well her husband Ashot, starts joking that the reson Nune was wearing them was because she had frozen her hands off in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Well, I was not able to quite follow his story since he was using both Russian and English words. So I asked him to repeat it slower, and what I heard was,  "When Nune was in Nagorno-Karabakh, she was a prostitute..."

I interrupted and said, "Wait Ashot, what did you say? You said Nune was a prostitute?"

He responded, "Da, Nune was prostitute."

I turned to Nune and said, "Nune, I think that I am not understanding Ashot. He just said that you were a prostitute."

She got so mad and said something in either Russian or Armenian. It was so fast I couldn't make out any definite words. Ashot just started LAUGHING! He laughed for a good minute before he was able reply to Nune that he was trying to say that she had frozen her hands off. The Russian word is: [spelled phonetically] "prost-ood-its-ya." Ashot, Jared and I thought the mix up was hysterical! Nune? Not so much.