Being bilingual does not equal being a translator

by Tony Chusho
(Lima, Peru, SA)

I remember that I had just returned home from graduating at a USA university and one day, my father asked me how to say the following in English:

"Y, ¿cómo te ha ido hoy día?"

Well, I just couldn't make it out. The immediate conclusion he jumped at was, in his spontaneous Spanish, "Boy, you really wasted your time in that country".

It took me some years to be able to go back to him and show him I did not waste my time in that country up to the north of mine and that just because I was bilingual didn't mean I knew how to translate everything.