Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Lost In Translation

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Conan talks to Waleson from São Paulo about working as a translator and Conan’s favorite controversial historical figure.

Hi, Wallace and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan. Great to see you, Wallace and where are you coming from? I am in Brazil, Sao Paulo. Oh, you're in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Oh, fantastic. That's incredible. Well, welcome to our podcast. It's very nice to see you, you're, what's going on?

Are you in a chalk mine? What's happening? Completely, you look like you're in a vacuum. I think he's in the matrix. Yeah, you're in the, you're in beautiful Brazil. Why would you waste time in the matrix? They told me not to reveal. Not to reveal.

I'm sorry. Very good. Very good. Very good. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that you have no furniture and you live in, in Middle Earth somewhere. At least they are giving me water. Oh, good.

Good. Tell us, tell us about yourself, Walson. I am Brazilian. I am a translator now. I have lived in Germany for some time. I am married to a Russian woman. Oh my God. You have a very international flair.

I like that about you, Walson. So you, you, you are Brazilian, you're native of Brazil, but you have married a woman who is Russian and you've spent a lot of time in Germany, okay? So you have a rich background and you say you're a, you say, you say you have, you're a translator. Yeah. Which languages can you translate? I work with English and German.

Oh, English and German. So what? I'm trying to learn Russian, but it's too hard for me. Yeah. Screw that. You just nyet, nyet and it's just a lot of nyet and you can be fine. And what about, how did you, why did you decide that you wanted to learn German? When I was 16 or 17, I was playing a game called a medal of honor.

You are the American hero and you, you need to kill the Nazis and then instead of killing the Nazis, I heard them talking and I thought, and I thought, wow, it's beautiful. So instead of killing them right away, this is kind of how Hitler got started. People heard a guy yelling in German and thought, Hey, wait a minute, this is kind of compelling. What does he want to do? What did you mean? The things that they were saying or the sound of the language?

No, the sound of the language. Yeah. Because I didn't understand German as a like, yeah, it's not, yeah, I don't understand that. So, uh, well, I have to tell you, I mean, German doesn't sound people. I think Italian sounds beautiful. Uh, I think Spanish sounds very beautiful. There are a lot of languages that sound very French is gorgeous, uh, but German, um, no,

it sounds like someone's throwing cans down a staircase. You know, it's a lot of, I mean, that's basically, wasn't that fluent German? What I just said. Yeah. I understood every word you said. Yeah. Yeah. I said onions, mustard, hamburger, submarine, dive, dive, dive, javel.

Uh, so you, yeah, but if you say this same without shouting, no, no, no, it has to be shouting. That's the only German I know. That's, that's, that's me whispering sweet nothings into my, into my lover's ear in German is out. That's the only way I know how to do it. Let me ask you a question. Do you, so you heard German soldiers in a video game speaking and you thought this language

is beautiful. I need to learn it. It's exactly what happened. Then I killed them in the video game, obviously, but after that, I, I started to learn German. I just wanted to learn the sounds, but I couldn't stop and now I speak German. That's cool. Very good. I don't think they had that in mind.

And when I went to Germany, I was, I was afraid of telling the story because in a way you can say that I speak German because of Hitler. Yeah. Yeah. I thought they would find it terrible. Yeah. Wallisyn, I think you were wise not to bring up. I love your language.

I learned it while I was killing Nazis in a video game. I think you made the right call by keeping that to yourself, yeah, but actually a friend of mine really wanted to know the story. I told her and she found it hilarious and she asked me to tell every German I knew the same story and all of them liked it. Okay. I don't know. Avoid like if there was a German you ran into who was like in his late nineties, maybe

don't tell him. Yeah. You know what I mean? Stick with the young cool kids. Okay. They'll have a little bit of an ironic chuckle over the whole thing, but when you see a guy wearing a lot of medals, she's about 98 and has what looks to be a little brush mustache. Maybe keep it to yourself.

Wallisyn, now you must, but you said your wife is Russian. So you speak German, but you don't speak Russian the same language as your wife? Yeah. Unfortunately. Are you a spy? People say German is hard, but actually Russian is much, much harder. So what do you speak to each other, English? When we met, we spoke English, but now she speaks Portuguese.

So we try to speak English, but we are too lazy, so we usually speak Portuguese. So she learned your native tongue and you didn't for her? Yeah, but she came to Brazil. She loved Brazil before meeting me, so she already liked Portuguese before me. I'm telling you something right now, Wallisyn. You owe it to your... What's your wife's name? Alessia.

You can call her Alisha. Okay. You owe it to Alisha to become fluent in Russian. You must. I know. No, listen to me. Look at me as you say it. You know I'm speaking the truth here.

You owe it to her to become fluent. You need to memorize whole pages of Tolstoy. No, I think you need to play some video games or you kill some Russians. Yeah, it's usually the best way. Video games and music. Well, I think... I don't know. I'm concerned.

I want for the future of, I mean, someday down the road, do you have kids? Yeah. We have a daughter. Okay. Does your wife ever speak Russian to your daughter? Yeah, sometimes. Okay. But she's only one and a half, so she has time.

Right. Right. So she's just saying googoo gaga in Russian. Which is googoo verga. Yeah. No, it's actually googoo gaga. It's a little different. But it's...

Sorry, Wallace, and this is degenerating quickly. And I'm just curious. Do you have a question for me, Wallace? Yeah, I know you are a history buff, so I would like to know what is your favorite controversial historical figure, Genghis Khan, Mussolini, I don't know. And if you were to become a dictator with limitless power, what would you do? Well, first of all, I'm going to take the second question first. I know what it's like to be a dictator with limitless power because I'm the host of a

podcast with my name on it. There's pictures of me all over this building. Everyone has to do exactly as I say. It's fantastic. And everyone around me will tell you that I would abuse my power. I would make people laugh at my jokes, I think. I would pretty much...I think I'd become unhinged immediately. You know the way they say power corrupts, but it takes a little time with me, it would

happen immediately. Yeah. I would completely... You would become unhinged? You are. You beat some of the people who work for you in a loving way. I don't beat them. You punch play on a regular basis.

He's a big guy. You can take it. And they're not allowed to punch back. No, no, they just take it. Yeah. No, really, that's character building for them, I think. So, yeah, I think I would lose it. Favorite...I mean, I don't know...controversial historical figures, every historical figure

eventually is controversial because over time, anything they've done. So you could say Churchill, Winston Churchill in 19...you could say that answer in 1950 and no one's going to have a problem with you. No, he means the big guys like your Stallons, your Hitler's and things like that. Well, I am not on this podcast going to swear fealty to any of those guys. But you are pretty interesting to the Stalin. I've heard you... I...Stalin's an interesting guy.

Yeah, maybe interest is more the way. Yeah, he's more interesting to me because he was a seminary student, you know? And he's also from Georgia, which is a very...I mean, to think that he climbed to the very top when he came from a very...a part that many Russians don't even consider to be Russia and was briefly a seminary student and I don't know, I find him to be kind of wacky. But he did... Wacky. Never been used to this kind of stuff.

Wacky. Yeah, but I mean, you know, a lot of problems with that guy, a lot of problems. And I know that's a controversial thing to say, but I find Stalin to be a little problematic. Someone finally had the balls. Someone finally had the balls to say, Stalin a little problematic and I don't care. We're taking your calls right now. Call in right now if you agree. Wow, this board is lighting up.

How dare you? How dare you, I knew Stalin. Someone was my friend. You serve our new Stalin! Well, Wallisyn, you've made me a promise that you're going to learn fluent Russian and you have to begin immediately, okay? Okay, I'm gonna do it. Yeah.

And you're right. I mean, Matt brings up a good point. If you know, if you're fluent in Russian and you're also fluent in Portuguese and you're fluent in German, you could become an international spy. Or maybe you already are. Are you? Are you? Would you tell us if you're a spy?

Let it go. I don't know. Let's just let it go. Oh, he's a spy. Yeah. He's a spy with a Stalin obsession. Oh, wait. Everything you can know is behind me.

Yeah. Very good. Very mysterious, anybody have anything else? Gosh, so now I feel like you should ask him something. Okay, so who do you translate for? Like politicians or just random people who come to Brazil? No, I just translate texts. So it's kind of boring.

Yeah. Oh, that's fun. No, that's cool. I'm not an interpreter, I'm just a translator. Oh, translate. Okay. Oh, cool. What about don't you have a YouTube channel where you translate song lyrics and things

like that? Yeah, when I said that the best way to learn languages is video games or music, it's because I learned English by translating Iron Maiden songs. Whoa. Wait a minute. When I was what? When you were a child, you learned English by translating Iron Maiden songs? I was 12, not a child.

I'm sorry. Wow. You took a fence at something very strange. I considered myself a child until I was like 37 while I was there. He already had two kids at 12. Yeah. No, you were judging me for listening to Iron Maiden when I was a child, but I wasn't so small.

Okay. What language were you translating Iron Maiden into? Portuguese? Yeah, Portuguese, my native language. And so I had no internet, so I took a dictionary. So I was translating the lyrics word by word. At the end, they made no sense, obviously, but I learned English. Yeah, I don't really, I'm not familiar with the word.

The work of Iron Maiden. I am. You are? It was my first CD was Iron Maiden. Really? So give me some Iron Maiden lyrics. Oh, I also understand we're living in this wasted land, Aces High, there's a lot of World War II imagery.

They have that eddy, that creature that would be on other album covers, remember that? Yes, yes. Yeah. Remember that. Yeah. Aces High, Wasted Years. Yeah, but as Conan likes history, they talk a lot about history. Yeah.

One of them is a studied history, so they talk a lot about it. Well, you know, this is inspiring me to learn more about world history by listening to Iron Maiden and then translating it into another language. Yeah. How would it sound in German? That'd be rough. Yeah. Interesting.

I took German in high school because I loved World War II movies so much, so I kind of want to understand what you're saying, but it's still felt, feels like a coarse language kind of, you know? Yeah. And you exclusively learned how to say, you know, dive you both, dive. Yeah. Schnelle Akton. Schnelle Akton.

Schnelle Akton. Schnelle Akton. Schnelle Akton. Schnelle Akton. Schnelle Akton. I studied literature at the university and I created a YouTube channel to talk about lyrics. Cool.

Because no one was doing it. So to answer your question, cool. Well, very good. Well, it was very nice talking to you, Wallacein. Wish I could say to you right now in German, of Wiederschein, I think that's really one of the only words I know. Yeah.

Of Wiederschein. Of Wiederschein. And I promise me that you are going to learn Russian. Okay. Okay, I will. You will? I don't think you're lying to me. I think you're lying to me right now.

I think you're... I don't trust you. You have no background. We don't know where you are. We don't know where you are. I think you're in the next room. They told me to agree with you. Yeah.

That's all. Oh, you must work for me then. All right, well, Wallacein, thank you very much. Take care. Okay. Bye, I was talking to you. Bye-bye. Konan O'Brien needs a fan.

With Konan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Saks, Joe Anasola-Taroff, and Jeff Ross, a team cocoa, and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Music by Jimmy Vivino. Supervising producer, Aaron Blair. Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples.

Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Please rate, review, and subscribe. To Konan O'Brien needs a friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. Music This has been a Team Cocoa Production, in association with Stitcher.