I love Chick-fil-A. I’ll admit it. I have to drive, which I don’t do often, to get to one of the restaurants, so when I do, I stockpile. I’ll literally buy three or four sandwiches and store them in my refrigerator, eat them for, like, three meals in a row. The things are pure awesome on a white bread bun. Chick-fil-A takes fresh chicken breasts and soaks them in pickle juice or something, and I’m a dill pickle freak. Again, it would not surprise me if one day there wasn’t some kind of huge reveal à la big tobacco where the whole world learns the sandwiches are really rolled in crack before serving. There would have to be some sort of substance like that involved for a chicken sandwich to polarize an entire nation.

But really, I think we both know, dear reader, that this has nothing to do with a chicken sandwich. In fact, it has more to do with whether the chicken sandwich-eating clientele shares Cathy’s individual beliefs.

I write about macrotrends here — larger issues that impact our world as a whole — then pin them down to see how they affect translation. Now this is one issue where I can’t speak for other countries (again, I apologize that this is how we Americans project ourselves to you), but in the United States, we are having major issues right now over how we deal with differences of opinion.

Part of it might be related to election season and the preparation for new and returning politicians. But one thing definitely will not have changed in the few months between writing and press: the United States will unfortunately still be the kind of nation that decides whether to purchase a chicken sandwich, not based on the quality of the food, but on whether or not we agree with the restaurant owner. And this impacts the translation industry whether we like it or not. . .