Changing the Language

Having many years of experience of being a rebellious son with strict asian parents, I’ve came to realize that the many tensions that was created within the parental relationship derived from miscommunication. As much as I would love to put the blame on them, more often than not there was miscommunication coming from both sides (me and my parents). One of the reason is because I can’t speak Chinese fluently and have trouble expressing my thought in full with Mandarin. The fact that they’re relatively poor with English as well didn’t help at all. Although now that I’m in college and don’t have to face to face encounters with them, I still have to keep in contact with my parents through text. This is a major issue because having your parents text you in English is like watching a foreign movie with awful subtitles. I didn’t want this to be a continuous issue so I’ve decided to use a simple strategy.

This strategy is so simple it’s going to blow your minds. Instead of texting back in English and pretending they’d understand, I’ve decided to text back in Chinese Characters, which I cannot do without the help of google translate. When I have the time and patience which is most of the time, I take the extra step in making sure my every sentence perfectly delivers my messages in Chinese mainly for two reasons. Reason one is to improve my Chinese since I am Chinese after all. Secondly, I tried it in hoping to build my relationship with my parents by improving on our understanding with each other. Even though there are still some arguments here and there, I’ve realized how effective it is to communicate with my parents through text in Chinese. Therefore, I will continue this practice in the future.

This is me attempting to message my mom with the help of (Google) Translate App.