Translating

There’s an interesting phenomenon with bi-lingual people - a kind of switch that triggers in the brain when they’re translating so that it becomes automatic. This can lead to confusion when you start picking up the language and trying to use it. For example, if a waiter asks me something in Bulgarian that I understand and I reply in Bulgarian, my wife will translate what I’ve said into English for them. This inevitably leads to embarrassment as speaking English is usually seen as being pretentious. I definitely won’t be exploiting this quirk or using it as motivation for learning more Bulgarian.

The Conversation

This happens about once a fortnight. It’s usually started by elderly shop assistants and filtered through my poor, perpetually translating wife:

Assistant (in Bulgarian): ‘Where is he from?’
Wife (in Bulgarian): ‘England.’
Assistant (in Bulgarian): 'Ask him if he likes Bulgaria.'
Wife (in English): 'Do you like Bulgaria?'
Me (in English): 'No, I hate it. That’s why I married a Bulgarian and I’ve lived here for five years.’
Wife (in Bulgarian): 'He says he loves it.'
Assistant (in Bulgarian): ‘Yes, we have beautiful nature.'

It’s generally ‘beautiful nature’ but sometimes it’s ‘fresh vegetables’. It's never ‘efficient bureaucracy’ or ‘reliable infrastructure’. 

Flicking the Vs

The most frustrating thing about not knowing the language is the inability to protest or argue. You may be able to pick up that you’re being insulted, but you can’t respond in kind. This is why flicking the Vs is so valuable. Bulgarians aren’t familiar with the gesture and will most likely think that you’re suggesting they do something twice. Showing the middle-finger will provoke an instant frenzy of rage, but the Vs will cause confusion while satisfying your own sense of outrage. They may be able to pick up that they’re being insulted, but they can’t respond in kind.

Cultural References

Everyone’s vernacular is littered with cultural touchpoints that are impenetrable to outsiders. Even now, I still use quotes from British comedy shows in my everyday conversations, particularly Detectorists, Partridge, Father Ted, and The Office. I don’t edit myself for three reasons:

1. The other person gets the reference and you have an instant connection with them (this never happens)

2. They don’t get the reference but find it funny and credit you with being more witty than you really are (this sometimes happens)

3. They are utterly bewildered by the reference but you’ve amused yourself anyway (this happens most often)

Road Rage

There was a recent item on the news about the residents of a tower block who woke up one day to find that all the tyres of their cars had been punctured with a screwdriver. The culprit was said to be an Englishman who had been in Sofia visiting his wife’s family and had left that morning. I don’t know if he was a convenient scapegoat to enable the police to avoid doing any actual policing, but if it was the Englishman, I can understand it. The Bulgarian standards of driving and parking don’t mix well with repressed English rage.

Selective English

No Bulgarian tradesman knows a word of English. That is, unless they overhear you raising questions with your wife about their prices, quality of work or honesty, when they'll suddenly become – if not fluent, then certainly enthusiastic – English speakers. The abilities they all share, however, are coming up with excuses and applying enough pressure to make saying no practically impossible. This is when selective English can be turned to your advantage. In these kinds of situations, my wife says: ‘Well, I agree with you but my husband refuses, so you’ll have to convince him’ and they don't have any comeback.

Default English

We’re extremely lucky that English is the most common second language between people who don’t share a first. Because of this, when you travel to another non-English speaking country with a Bulgarian, you might think: ‘This is it, my time to shine. After years of relying on others to translate menus, order things and ask questions, I will finally be able to pull my weight.’ This is not the case. A Bulgarian English speaker is much more understandable to a Greek or Spanish English speaker than you are – they share similar patterns of speech and have the same key vocabulary.

Weaponising Friendliness

Much of the time, when dealing with administrators in places like banks or ticketing offices, they’ll use your foreignness and lack of awareness against you – bamboozling you with half-truths or outright lies in order to get rid of you before you can make them do their job. Other times, your outsider status can help you. Because administrators are insecure creatures and naturally defensive, if you have a relaxed attitude and laugh at yourself or drop in a dobre or k’vo, it can disarm them. They may suddenly become helpful or even smile along with you with what seems like relief.

Renewing A UK Passport

Dealing with Bulgarian bureaucracy has conditioned me to expect a quagmire of arbitrary complications, but the process was totally straightforward. Most of it was done easily online, I had regular emails guiding me through things, and the new passport came in about two weeks. However, for those two weeks, I felt like more of an outsider here: short-tempered, cynical, and far less tolerant of everyday Bulgarian quirks. It was the subconscious knowledge that I couldn’t escape. I have no desire to leave Bulgaria but knowing that I couldn’t – even in an emergency – gave me an underlying sense of being trapped.

Not Knowing English

There are three reactions when you speak to someone who doesn’t know English. The first, and by far the most common, is embarrassment. This is sweet and says a lot about the national character but is, of course, ridiculous as it’s you who should be embarrassed. The second is to try and teach you some Bulgarian - a helpful and more assertive response. The third is to speak at you normally in Bulgarian. I must have had 50 interactions with our village in the sky’s curtain twitcher where my only contributions to the torrent of gossip are nods and smiles.

The love of flags & parades

This is something that Bulgarians and Americans share and the English do not. The national flag is everywhere here – flying from balconies, painted on electricity substations and bins, even the climbing frames in playgrounds are layered white, green and red. There’s none of the faint embarrassment that an English person feels when the St George Cross is displayed, none of the uncomfortable nationalistic overtones that are associated with it. Likewise, a parade is taken at face value as a straightforward celebratory event without people feeling like they need to gravitate towards the back and mask their awkwardness with smirking cynicism.

Knowing a bit of Bulgarian

People you practice on usually appreciate the effort - they might even reward you with a rare smile. However, you often end up starting conversations that you can’t continue. You can renew your travelcard by saying: ‘can I have one month, please’ and then they ask you something and you have to resort to hand gestures. Or at passport control when you show off by saying: ‘good evening’ to the guard and then panic about your visa when he starts talking to you, standing there frantically searching your pockets for paperwork until he rolls his eyes and waves you through.

Social Situations

When you don’t speak the language, there’s a tipping point in the number of people present in a social situation before you start feeling like an outsider. That tipping point is five. Any more than that and the native language is too dominant for people to speak English and the poor sod who’s acting as translator can’t possibly keep up. Only then do you feel your foreignness, sitting there quietly while everyone else is chatting and laughing. Young kids and dogs are always your friends on these occasions – they’re outsiders too and they don’t care that you can’t communicate verbally.