[BC] UC prompt #1/2 take two

When I was a child, I love reading joke books. There was one section in the books I found particularly interesting; it is how movies’ names are being translated. The names are being literally translated, and the original meaning of the movie is lost. I find it sad as most the hidden theme of the movie always lies within the movie title, the badly translated movie titles has lost the movie’s meaning.

I came from a traditional Chinese family where parents would hold high expectations and enforce strict family rules. When I was growing up in Hong Kong, my parents hardly ever let me out of the house unless I have to go to school or piano classes. Even if I have a chance to go over to my friends’ houses, it is for doing school-related projects only. I had no social life at all, and maintain a weak friendship with my peers. At that time my biggest entertainment is reading or watching Saturday cartoons on the English channels; almost all of my knowledge came from books and dramas.

My family moved to America when I was thirteen years old, by then my parents had finally decided that I am old enough to hang out with others. But after years of being isolated from people my age, I found it difficult to have a normal conversation with any new people I met in middle school. To make my situation worse, they speak another language than I do. Although my English was already fluent enough to be placed in a regular English class, I knew I can never express myself fully with another language. This made me depressed for a while as I had longed to make friends with my new classmates, but language barriers and cultural differences made it difficult to meet someone who is patient enough to listen to my broken English. When I enrolled into high school, the school counselor mistakenly assigned me into a French class when I signed up for Spanish one. I didn’t know that I could switch classes then, therefore I decided to stick with French and see how the class will be. I was curious; when I was studying in Hong Kong I had never learnt a completely new language. I have learned Mandarin, but the words I read are still the same as Cantonese, only the pronunciation of the words is different. Although some French vocabularies have similarities with English words, the grammar and sentence rules are completely different. The first day in class was challenging; we started by learning the French words for stationeries and classroom supplies. I was already lost and confused when the teacher, Mr. Meyers started introducing himself in French. Luckily he then repeated his introduction in English and told us his own rocky start when he first learns French. Turned out that Mr. Meyers has discovered his passion for French after he got into college; his French only got better and more fluent because of continued practices. As I spent more time and effort studying for that class, I found that I could understand basic short French conversations.

note to self: obviously this is still far too crappy, must answer prompt questions in a less bs-ing way