Lost in Translation

Last spring during a walk on York’s city walls I overheard a strange conversation. A girl was crying out in anguish to her friend, “I used to live in Shanghai, now I live in a village!”

This fleeting moment left a lasting impression on me. It sparked a curiosity as to how one makes the transition from cities such as Shanghai, Mumbai or New York, to our little old town, a melting pot of wonder to some, but to others a claustrophobic cloister of old buildings and small shops.

Imagine arriving in a strange place where you have no friends; you find yourself in a bare room, isolated from your cultural norms with few provisions or ‘homely’ reminders – they can’t be lugged across countries or continents. The campus is quiet, the air cold and the whole place overwhelmingly dark past five o’clock. The range of accents, and sometimes even the language, is alien. The city is unusual, quaintly English, almost scarily small, and worryingly closed after daytime working hours. You feel your culture is being lost in translation.

One can argue everyone experiences aspects of this when entering York as a new student. Yet imagine yourself being thrown not just into another city (where the greatest cultural differences are on a level of whether you eat a bap, roll or cob), but into an entirely alien country with your family and friends not just a train ride away, but thousands upon thousands of miles.

Most will grab this new world and culture with open arms – whether through adapting their habits to social binge drinking and watching hours of The Inebetweeners with the Brits, or finding peace in long afternoons spent in Betty’s, immersing themselves in the finer side of English culture. Others, however, feel isolated and suffer severe culture shock in a city almost systemically designed to be a beacon of Englishness.

This ordeal, induced by moving from your home country to a largely different culture, is said to have several stages. It starts with the honeymoon period, when the new culture is fascinating and exciting. The initial pleasure of this is gradually followed by the negotiation stage, where high levels of anxiety emerge from a sense of isolation or loneliness, coupled with stress over both academic and social experiences under the constant weight of the language barrier. Ultimately, students hopefully begin the adjustment stage and find their own individual method of support that enables them to adapt to, and then ‘master’, the culture of their adopted country.

York’s own sense of isolation is undoubtedly further exaggerated by York’s peculiar Englishness, rarely found in its big-city neighbours. Students thus have to not just adjust to the quirks of England, but to York as a city. For many internationals their only experience of England is in the cultural centre of London, which can often feel like a hundred different cultures wrapped up in its own.

Second year Hongkongese Sociology student Lawrence Ong* came to York and found this comparison to be stark. “I’d only ever visited London, and I expected the cosmopolitan, multicultural nature of London or English big cities to be reflected in York. York feels so isolated from the centre, and so defiantly English…It came as a massive shock to me and, yeah, I felt like I had to adjust more than I expected.”

York’s comparatively peripheral place in modern vibrant British culture is further emphasised by its irrefutable status as a WASP nest – its demographics reveal it to be almost 98% white and Christians make up a considerale majority. A small Chinese supermarket and a few under-spiced Indian restaurants form its claim to multiculturalism.

Rossin, a Bulgarian national, found out the hard way how York’s lack of cultural diversity can lead to problems. “When you step outside the university walls I was surprised how ignorant some people can be. One particular incident, where a guy larger than myself verbally abused me for not being British, left me scared to even step outside the university.”

Despite York’s drawbacks, some enjoy this new, very British cultural escape, and never seem to leave their honeymoon period. According to a recent survey by i-Graduate, four out of five international students are satisified with their university experience in the UK.

Jashan Bhatia who came from the Canary Islands to study software engineering, enjoyed the Englishness of York in comparison to his tropical home. “At home I would look either side of me and the sea would be there.” In terms of his experience at the university, he described International Fresher’s Week, the induction week for internationals before term starts, as “fun, because I met so many really friendly people. I think everyone got on well because we were all in the same boat.”

Bhatia felt the support was there if he needed it. “The whole time we were told all the different people we could talk to.”

Others, however, found they failed to adjust to English university life in those initial weeks and did not sense that support systems were in place.

Pascal moved here from France this year to study Politics and International Relations, and was shocked at the cultural differences she discovered. “I’m from a small community where women are expected to behave in a proper manner, so the whole short skirts and excessive drinking wasn’t really my thing…The experience of English university isn’t as glamorous as it is made out to be.”

When asked about the difficulties York international students face, Leslie Tay (President of the International Student Association) admitted that more needed to be done to ensure students are not “isolated from their colleges” and are provided with social opportunites outside of the largely alcohol-focused fresher’s events. When questioning YUSU on these student concerns, they claimed that they were looking into solutions to the problem.

“There’s a lot more that we are planning to do in order to integrate and support our international students, from encouraging international students to get involved in YUSU and college events, campaigns and elections, to supporting the integration of home and international students, whether through events, support or buddying schemes,” said YUSU welfare officer Robert Hughes speaking to Vision.

However, even by their own admission YUSU and the university recognize that they are not doing enough. The University provides a comprehensive guide on coming to York and adapting to Britain via email and the website, but the 100-plus page text features only small sections at the end of the guide on the issues of “culture shock” and “welfare”, hidden by mammoth sections on visas, bank accounts and other such formalities. None of our interviewees admitted to reading the guide.

Furthermore, many of our interviewees admitted they felt the International Fresher’s Week lacked an active social element, and that the Fresher’s Week events that followed often excluded many internationals due to the focus on excessive drinking and the undynamic non-drinking alternatives. Even when information about support was passed onto them, it was, put simply by Cypriote Tainn, done through the medium of “boring” talks that were often poorly attended and only covered the basic fundamentals of setting up a life in England.

International Fresher’s Week is a fantastic idea in theory, and one that makes York stand out, and “allows students to adapt better to the new environment”, said Tay. York shouldn’t be criticised without due credit – compared to the barren websites of its league table rivals Exeter, King’s College and Imperial, its web resources for incoming international students are a treasure to uncover. But in comparison to similarly ranked institutions, notably Warwick and Edinburgh, York falls short by not forming a dialogue with students before they make their daunting move. It has a severe lack of international officers or ambassadors and most internationals we interviewed had not been to York before their arrival as a student. The fact is, when looking at other similarly placed universities, York doesn’t appear to be doing enough to help remedy the effects of culture shock and deal with the root problem by reaching out to students before the students have to reach back.

Aalim Javari, an Indian international student studying Politics at Warwick, remarked on how in his accommodation, “integration was key, and the university stressed how all flats should be a mix of home students and internationals so we understood each other and immersed ourselves in different cultures.” “This, the extensive societies and the union venue where everyone congregates, have helped me feel more at home in England, even though I may not always be around those from my country.”

So, is full integration with home students the remedy to culture shock?

It has certainly been attributed as a vital factor in a report by Mannheim University, with it almost being self-evident that mixing with people of your adopted country helps you adapt to their societal norms and expectations. Then why does York have numerous “international blocks”, isolating international subcultures within the university and minimising home student presence?

On the surface university administrators appear to have engineered a system under the impression that segregation with likeminded internationals will foster and help facilitate the best experience, allowing them to explore York with those from similar cultural backgrounds. Almost every college has a distinct block designated for international students. The ISA, however, acknowledges there is a problem in mostly international blocks, with a “few college chairs” complaining and attributing it to large numbers of second year internationals choosing to stay in campus accommodation.

Parallel to the issue of segregated international blocks, York suffers from a number of drawbacks that make integration inherently more difficult. First, there is the staggered nature of arrival at the university. Most international students arrive up to a week before term begins, leading them to form those strong bonds that university so often creates in those first few days. By the time home students move in nearly a week later, Jashan admitted “a fair few just stick to their group of internationals.” One interviewee from Goodricke even admitted it was harder for the British students to move in afterwards, as the internationals had already bonded beforehand and thus were less open to integration and were already forming distinct friendship groups.

Segregation can be easier than integration, and people can fall under the false impression it is better. However, it often means the only aspects of English culture experienced by internationals is restrained to mundane city wall tours during International Fresher’s week and experimenting with the ‘local cuisine’ on late night visits to Oki’s.

Yet Hughes defended the existing system of integration and support for international students, stating “In terms of support, we have the University’s International Support Office, and the ISA run regular coffee mornings alongside a range of events that are there to help international students meet people from their own countries, as well as meet home students.” Most of the students I spoke to recognised their contact with home students in those first few weeks was minimal at best.

“Everyone in my floor was international, and the same was true on the floor upstairs. We had, I think, one English girl in our flat and she soon found other friends and rarely hung out with us. Then on the bottom floor it was the total opposite, almost completely British. It was surreal and obviously engineered,” Lawrence Ong told Vision.

When I spoke with Louise Sanderson, the university’s International Student Support Officer, she did recognise that not every step has been taken to ensure a strong welfare system, saying, “although we hope orientation talks help to address [the culture shock], we are aiming to develop this area of support further for those who need it in more depth.” She also admitted that dealing with issues of homesickness is “done through the Colleges and social events”, with no specific support team for international students – just a communal Open Door team based in the Career’s building.

Yet the crux of my concerns were dismissed, “I have never received complaints from students about culture shock or failing to integrate.” So is this really an issue in York?

Everyone, whether from Brunei or Barnsley, gets homesick at some point. And is, as the ISA President put it, “integration is about celebrating differences”, if we try and integrate too much, are we in danger of removing people’s support systems and homogenising culture?

These questions are legitimate, and the fact is that York is a fantastic place, steeped in history and culture that, as I have found, is enjoyed by most international students who come here to study and experience British life. Nonetheless, it is this same character of York that appeals to some internationals that can isolate others – and whether admitted or not, people do feel a sense of cultural isolation that cannot simply be quelled by a pre-arrival manual, coffee morning or welcome talk. Are our cultural barriers too great to remedy this? Can we honestly provide a university life and support system that caters for all, when people’s individual circumstances and tastes vary so much?

In the end culture shock is a very individual problem. At all points, all internationals will experience some elements of it – but its severity depends on your own circumstances. Whether you drink or not, your priorities at university, your relationship with your family and friends, the size of the place you previously lived…all can greatly influence anyone’s reaction to York as a new student, or a returning one.

Everybody knows a person who stays in their room, who longs for home and struggles to adapt. They should reach out for help, and I’m sure some do – but ultimately it’s up to the university to create a support system to reach out to them and help alleviate that culture shock and isolation that can define your entire university career, as one struggles to make friends, enjoy themselves, succeed academically and find future housemates.

Reaching out to those people, making our support system explicitly clear and understanding we need to prepare students before they leave so we can learn from each other and culturally assimilate – that is where the challenge lies. That is why we need to find that common dialogue so we don’t have those few voices lost in translation.

*Some names have been changed for confidentiality.