Misunderstanding Misunderstandings can be dangerous. Sometimes the simplest communication can cause problems. Some of the problems might be due to the fact the people communicating with each other do not speak the same language. I have seen many examples of this. In the court system interpreters are used when people who testify do not speak English. I remember one case in particular when someone was testifying in a criminal case and the interpreter was translating what was being said. This went on for about five minutes until someone in the audience jumped up and said they spoke both English and the language being translated and the translator was not doing it correctly. It turned out the interpreter was not very proficient and if allowed to continue would have misinterpreted much of what was being testified to. Sometimes even with two people who both speak the same language there can be a misunderstanding of what is meant when one talks to the other. I bet you have heard something like “are you trying to say I did such and such?” Then the other party says something like he or she didn’t mean it that way at all. The English language can be very imprecise sometimes. This has happened to me a few times and I am sure it has happened to many others. In 1859 the British and Americans were both on San Juan Island. The Americans had some farmers there and the British had the Hudson’s Bay Company. An American farmer saw a pig digging up his crops and shot it. The Hudson’s Bay Company took umbrage at this and contacted the British Government. The farmer told the American government who sent George Pickett who was later to fight in the American Civil War and a contingent of troops and declared the entire island American. The British responded by sending a fleet. It took several weeks, but a war was barely averted. This event was known however as the Pig War and happened over a misunderstanding. It seems the pig was owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. There is a theory that some historians have which states 90 percent of wars start over misunderstandings. During World War II President Truman decided he had to drop a nuke on Japan because this was the only way he could end the war in the pacific without a huge loss of American life. He dropped one nuke and the Japanese did not surrender so he dropped a second. The Japanese misunderstood our nuclear capacity and didn’t realize we had only two nukes and had expended both of them. They believed we had many more and didn’t want their country reduced to ashes, so they surrendered. The two nuclear bombs we had were Fat Man and Little Boy. It has been said the famous Charge of the Light Brigade took place because of a misunderstanding. The commander of British Forces had sent a communication to the head of the Light Brigade which was not clear as to what area was to be attacked, it just told the troops to attack the Russian guns, but the Light Brigade had no idea where they were located. The officer in charge of the Light Brigade asked the messenger, a captain, what area were they supposed to attack and he gestured with his hand, making a sweeping motion which was interpreted as a suicide attacked through the front lines, so this is what the Light Brigade did. In truth the commander wanted just the area where the guns were attacked when the Russians started to move them. The rest has become history. One area where some misunderstandings take place is in naming products. Let me give you a couple of examples. There is a cola drink in Ghana which is Pee Cola. I don’t think you would be able to give it away in the United States, but in Ghana it means very good cola. Nokia came out with a cell phone named Lumia. Sounds good to me, but there is a problem with the name in Spanish speaking countries. The reason for this is it means prostitute. One of my favorite boo boos is a detergent named Barf. Some of the packages proudly state lemon flavored Barf. It is manufactured in Iran and in that country means snow. There are just so many of these things I could go on all day but enough is enough. A NASA orbiter was lost due to a misunderstanding. In 1999 a Mars orbiter was lost due to a misunderstanding. NASA uses the metric system but they failed to tell Lockheed Martin so the engineering team there used the English system. When it came time to transfer information from the Mars Climate Orbiter in Denver to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California the information was misunderstood and the engineers gave instructions to the orbiter using the metric system based upon information which was giving them numbers from the English system. It was a disaster and the orbiter went too close to the planet. They say one of the top reasons people get divorced is based on misunderstandings. I am not so sure about that. I have always thought it was money and unfaithfulness. A misunderstanding can destroy a business relationship especially when the partners don’t know much about each other. There once was a business where a couple of people were partners. The list of its customers was recorded on index cards. One of the partners wanted to computerize it so he began to make a list so he could transfer it to a computer. As he was doing this, the other partner walked in and saw him making the list. He asked what was going on and was told a list was being made so things could be computerized. He didn’t believe his partner and got the idea the partner was trying to steal the list of customers which was not the case. That was the end of the business. Another time a jewelry business used to place large orders with a manufacturer in China. One day an order was put in and the Chinese factory misunderstood what the company wanted and sent the wrong items. It was a large order and the Jewelry business wanted to return it for a credit but the Chinese factory would not accept it back. This ended their relationship. You have to wonder how many times a misunderstanding has destroyed a relationship, whether it be a business one or personal one? Sometimes when this happens you just have to shake your head and wonder how what was done could have been misunderstood after seeing what happened.
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