Semi-regular language gripe
Been late on answering requests on that words meme thingy. Things have been busy; sorry.
So, tried to make a purchase the other day, using my debit card - one of those cases where I didn't have the cash in my wallet, but had plenty in my account to cover the purchase. As is customary here, I handed over my Greek ID card with the bank card; generally they ask for it, so I developed the habit of just handing it over anyway.
If only the name on the ID card matched the name on the bank card. I've probably griped about this before, but they kind of mangled my name on the ID card. My last name doesn't translate properly - or more to the point, it doesn't transliterate well at all. Six letters, half of them silent, so my last name on the card begins with an "N", not a "K". OK, I said, but the Greek ID card also has space for spelling out my name in Latin characters, right? So they can just spell it right in that space. No, the National Police official said as he put my information into the computer, they convert it letter-by-letter from the Greek. That's the procedure, and they can't deviate from it.
So my Greek ID card was no good for identifying me as the proper holder of my bank card, which was set up before I'd gotten the national card, and more or less had my proper name on it, spelled with all the proper characters. I still carry my New York driver's license, so that should be a match, right?
Well, that "more or less" above includes one additional quirk: in place of a middle name, Greeks use a patronym. Since my father shares my first name, my middle initial was rendered on my bank card as "B". Which isn't so much of a problem until you look at my driver's license and see that my middle initial is actually "K". And complicating things, my middle name is rendered in Greek on my national ID card as an extension of my first name, and the cashier saw that and thought that what he was seeing on the bank card was actually my first name, my father's first initial, and my middle name - he thought the bank card belonged to someone whose last name was in fact my middle name, and was thinking he was seeing some convoluted sort of identity fraud.
I explained to him that the problem was that my last name had all those silent letters, which the police refused to carry over in the back-translation of my name (it's a variant of the joke of the auto-translator; punch up Google and feed in "the vodka is good, but the meat is rotten", and you'll see what I mean). I showed him my New York driver's license. Both of them had mug shots of me on them, by the way.
Finally, two cashiers got their heads together, hashed out a rough translation, and decided that either I was telling the truth or I was an absolutely hopeless fraudster. So they finally ran the card through, and I made my purchase.
Spent some of the next day thinking that I shouldn't gripe too much, considering how many times you run across silent letters in English. Then it occurred to me that a language with six different ways of writing a short "i", indistinguishable by pronunciation, has got problems of its own. Add to that the problems of a bureaucracy that can't conceive of someone being given a name in a Latin alphabet that doesn't correspond letter-to-letter with a Greek equivalent, and...
...joy. Latest document to translate not only does the annoying back-and-forth flipping of first and last names (pick one method and STICK WITH IT, why don't you?!?), but it seems to be making up words out of whole cloth for converting currency into euros. Anyone know where I can get a large-type hardcover edition of Strunk and White? And when I say hardcover, I would prefer an edition bound in lead or steel.
So, tried to make a purchase the other day, using my debit card - one of those cases where I didn't have the cash in my wallet, but had plenty in my account to cover the purchase. As is customary here, I handed over my Greek ID card with the bank card; generally they ask for it, so I developed the habit of just handing it over anyway.
If only the name on the ID card matched the name on the bank card. I've probably griped about this before, but they kind of mangled my name on the ID card. My last name doesn't translate properly - or more to the point, it doesn't transliterate well at all. Six letters, half of them silent, so my last name on the card begins with an "N", not a "K". OK, I said, but the Greek ID card also has space for spelling out my name in Latin characters, right? So they can just spell it right in that space. No, the National Police official said as he put my information into the computer, they convert it letter-by-letter from the Greek. That's the procedure, and they can't deviate from it.
So my Greek ID card was no good for identifying me as the proper holder of my bank card, which was set up before I'd gotten the national card, and more or less had my proper name on it, spelled with all the proper characters. I still carry my New York driver's license, so that should be a match, right?
Well, that "more or less" above includes one additional quirk: in place of a middle name, Greeks use a patronym. Since my father shares my first name, my middle initial was rendered on my bank card as "B". Which isn't so much of a problem until you look at my driver's license and see that my middle initial is actually "K". And complicating things, my middle name is rendered in Greek on my national ID card as an extension of my first name, and the cashier saw that and thought that what he was seeing on the bank card was actually my first name, my father's first initial, and my middle name - he thought the bank card belonged to someone whose last name was in fact my middle name, and was thinking he was seeing some convoluted sort of identity fraud.
I explained to him that the problem was that my last name had all those silent letters, which the police refused to carry over in the back-translation of my name (it's a variant of the joke of the auto-translator; punch up Google and feed in "the vodka is good, but the meat is rotten", and you'll see what I mean). I showed him my New York driver's license. Both of them had mug shots of me on them, by the way.
Finally, two cashiers got their heads together, hashed out a rough translation, and decided that either I was telling the truth or I was an absolutely hopeless fraudster. So they finally ran the card through, and I made my purchase.
Spent some of the next day thinking that I shouldn't gripe too much, considering how many times you run across silent letters in English. Then it occurred to me that a language with six different ways of writing a short "i", indistinguishable by pronunciation, has got problems of its own. Add to that the problems of a bureaucracy that can't conceive of someone being given a name in a Latin alphabet that doesn't correspond letter-to-letter with a Greek equivalent, and...
...joy. Latest document to translate not only does the annoying back-and-forth flipping of first and last names (pick one method and STICK WITH IT, why don't you?!?), but it seems to be making up words out of whole cloth for converting currency into euros. Anyone know where I can get a large-type hardcover edition of Strunk and White? And when I say hardcover, I would prefer an edition bound in lead or steel.