Locked up in language

This morning I cracked my noggin working on translation editing. Enjoy some samples from the two different documents I am wading through. The first, I fixed. The second, I still don't understand.

As part of activities in responding to the "Wetlands Day in 2011", the project of Vam Ho bird sanctuary conservation, in the weather of the full moon of Nguyen Tieu, Tan Mao, in the afternoon of February 17, 2011, a group of experts and volunteers of Bird conservation project in Vam Ho, Creative Youth group from Be Tre College together with more than 250 Buddhist from Ben Tre city cam to Vam Ho bird sanctuary (Tan My - Ba Tri) to perform the bird releasing ceremony.
[My version: The Vam Ho Bird Sanctuary in Tan My – Ba Tri, which is organized by the Creative Youth Group from Ben Tre College, performed a bird releasing ceremony on the afternoon of February 17, 2011, as part of the activities of  “Wetlands Day in 2011.” Participants included experts and volunteers from the Vam Ho sanctuary and 250 Buddhists from Ben Tre City.]

Diffusing instruction for exploiting materials on integrity prevention and combating in organs creative; with high reality by showing designed scenario-curricular lectures on integrity prevention and combating to students and youth, on after class time, the family and community.

It took me at least five minutes to explain that I didn't understand the second document. For the first four, Mr. Luan thought I wanted to know more background about the project being described. It wasn't until I said, in exasperation, "This has no meaning!" that I started to get through. For the record, I'm pretty sure that "integrity prevention and combating" is actually intended to mean the opposite.

I texted Trang today to set up a lunch date. It felt like it had been eons since we had really spent time together; she is always so busy, but luckily both of us were free today. Occasionally I wonder if and when the day will come that I run out of new dishes to try. Today was not that day. Trang and I had bún xào Singapore, a large appetizer abundant enough to make a meal for the two of us. It was a Vietnamese take on a traditional Singaporean dish, featuring a crust of fried, eggy, crunchy vermicelli over shrimp and squid. Yum yum, crunch crunch.

Trang and I had a fascinating discussion about the semantics of 'pride' and 'to be proud of'. It all started when I said I had felt proud of Morena yesterday when she conducted a transaction in Vietnamese by herself for the first time. Trang asked if I felt proud because I had taught her. I tried, somewhat bumblingly, to explain that I was proud of her, not proud of myself. I'll fast-forward through the linguistic meanderings and get to the conclusion. Essentially, in Vietnamese, the concept of pride is communicated using, in part, a word that refers to the self. So, pride is always self-reflexive and never something you feel for others. When you say you are proud of someone else, you say it because you are proud of the role you played in their accomplishment. When you are proud of your child, it is because you are proud of yourself for having been a good parent.

Tonight's visitor decided to get a little more intimate:
the last time I saw him he was hopping under my bed.