I was sitting outside in a small courtyard in the Jamsekal district of Kathmandu. It was just after lunch on a mid-summer afternoon and the sun cascaded through the tree leaves and branches that bordered the brick walls of the compound. There was a slight breeze in the air. Roshan sat down beside me as he handed me a cup of milky tea. I had gotten to know Roshan through my work with the security company at which he worked as a recruitment manager. His primary role was to recruit and assess local Gurkhas from the Indian army. Roshan was British, having received his citizenship when he served with the UK military during the 1990s. He spoke English with a subtle accent, with a pronunciation that most British people, attuned to regional accents and their association with class, would consider posh.

As we both gazed into the hazy blue sky that day, Roshan began to tell me a story about when he was selected to take an infantry battle course in the UK during the 1990s. He was stationed and trained in Hong Kong at the time and was surrounded by other Gurkhas and British Gurkha officers. He recounted how exciting it was to travel to the UK and how gruelling and frustrating the training was. As the physical fitness instructors and trainers barked orders in their Geordie or Liverpool accents, he and his other Gurkha colleagues tried their best to understand what they were being told to do. The instructors thought Gurkhas could not grasp basic military commands, rather than reflecting upon issues comprehending regional accents. ‘We learned the Queen’s English in Hong Kong, and we could not understand what these guys were saying and so we had difficulty following commands,’ Roshan explained as he chuckled. I laughed along with this. As a Canadian migrating to the UK, I personally could relate to the difficulties of understanding the various regional dialects. (Fieldnote, Kathmandu, May 2017)

Introduction

The experiences of race and class and how these get lost in translation due to regional accents are certainly compelling stories to reflect upon. But what is important here is that this type of lost-in-translation experience was interpreted by the British national trainers to be a deficiency with Roshan and his Gurkha colleagues.