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Burning bright, but at a cost...
Dec. 21st, 2000 08:22 pmThis seems to be my week to wax eloquent about telecons. This morning's assignment was a so-called "MMT" telecon, which stands for "Mission Management Team." These are, as a rule, high-level discussions to review recent program developments.
It was the first time I'd done this particular telecon, since it concerns the space medicine aspects of the program, and I as a rule don't work too many medical meetings. ("I are an enginir.") My work with the execute package helped my performance in this telecon, as the participants reviewed activities that were part and parcel of the documents being developed and translated for the execute package.
I was impressed with the briskness of the meeting. As opposed to some operations telecons I've attended, folks delivered their reports in one-two-three order, with a brief pause for questions in between. It was also good that pretty much everything had gone according to plan over the past week, with all results falling into the "nominal" category.
I apparently made a very good impression on both sides when I was forced to do one of my patented "reconstruct-the-past-several-minutes-of-exchanges" interpretations, as a couple of the major participants sort of started to run away with the thread of the discussion at one point. While the impression was good, doing this kind of interpretation, and in this way, is very stressful.
First, in order to perform like this, you have to - absolutely have to - take notes while the speaker is speaking. When I first started in the business, I worked the way I saw many other professionals work, and that was to stand by while the speaker expressed a thought - remembering the salient points - and then to render them in the other language when the speaker paused. Occasionally, you'd run into a speaker who'd tend to say too much in one utterance, and I noticed that the way others handled such situations was to literally interrupt the speaker to do the interpretation. This tactic works, but it does tend to put off the people you're working for, if they are so inclined..
At any rate, a couple of years ago, I met a fellow who was pretty religious about note-taking when doing consecutive interpretation. At first, I didn't see the sense of the idea, but I soon warmed to it when I noticed that it was actually easier to work when you could refer to notes.
The notes are nothing special. They are certainly not of a caliber that would allow you to reconstruct the conversation even five minutes later. They basically serve as short-term anchors to remind you what was said, a combination of a notehand (I wd lk 2 sa u r vry intlgnt prsn) and some symbols that I developed for often-encountered phrases (e.g., "I don't know," "I understand").
What nailed the technique for me was when I was in Moscow supporting a high-level commission on safety, during a joint meeting of the entire commission. One of the Russians rose to speak and said his piece. Almost as soon as he sat down, and before I could open my mouth, another Russian began to argue with him. A third joined the argument and they went on like that for about five minutes.
When finally they paused, there was an uneasy silence as everyone - on both sides - realized that way too much had been said by too many people for me to have kept up.
Heh-heh.
It was one of those rare moments in life when you get to really shine! I proceeded to reconstruct the conversation pretty much word for word, and at the end there was another uneasy silence as everyone realized that somehow, I had kept up.
In retrospect, it's funny, though...that admiration soon turned to an expectation, and pretty much from that point on, folks didn't feel pressured to pause to let me work, as they figured I was keeping up anyway. ("Hey, Vladimir," interrupts a voice, "give the interpreter a chance to interpret." "Don't worry," comes the reply, as an aside, "he's writing this all down. As I was saying...")
And that resulted in, overall, a more stressful meeting for me, but I like to think I made some heads turn.
The group today was also duly impressed with my performance, but they did not act in the same manner. I got the feeling - work aside - that these folks were very methodical and cultured in their approach to the task at hand. Nonetheless, the nature of the meeting alone made it a stressful telecon, and I was happy when it ended.
Cheers...
It was the first time I'd done this particular telecon, since it concerns the space medicine aspects of the program, and I as a rule don't work too many medical meetings. ("I are an enginir.") My work with the execute package helped my performance in this telecon, as the participants reviewed activities that were part and parcel of the documents being developed and translated for the execute package.
I was impressed with the briskness of the meeting. As opposed to some operations telecons I've attended, folks delivered their reports in one-two-three order, with a brief pause for questions in between. It was also good that pretty much everything had gone according to plan over the past week, with all results falling into the "nominal" category.
I apparently made a very good impression on both sides when I was forced to do one of my patented "reconstruct-the-past-several-minutes-of-exchanges" interpretations, as a couple of the major participants sort of started to run away with the thread of the discussion at one point. While the impression was good, doing this kind of interpretation, and in this way, is very stressful.
First, in order to perform like this, you have to - absolutely have to - take notes while the speaker is speaking. When I first started in the business, I worked the way I saw many other professionals work, and that was to stand by while the speaker expressed a thought - remembering the salient points - and then to render them in the other language when the speaker paused. Occasionally, you'd run into a speaker who'd tend to say too much in one utterance, and I noticed that the way others handled such situations was to literally interrupt the speaker to do the interpretation. This tactic works, but it does tend to put off the people you're working for, if they are so inclined..
At any rate, a couple of years ago, I met a fellow who was pretty religious about note-taking when doing consecutive interpretation. At first, I didn't see the sense of the idea, but I soon warmed to it when I noticed that it was actually easier to work when you could refer to notes.
The notes are nothing special. They are certainly not of a caliber that would allow you to reconstruct the conversation even five minutes later. They basically serve as short-term anchors to remind you what was said, a combination of a notehand (I wd lk 2 sa u r vry intlgnt prsn) and some symbols that I developed for often-encountered phrases (e.g., "I don't know," "I understand").
What nailed the technique for me was when I was in Moscow supporting a high-level commission on safety, during a joint meeting of the entire commission. One of the Russians rose to speak and said his piece. Almost as soon as he sat down, and before I could open my mouth, another Russian began to argue with him. A third joined the argument and they went on like that for about five minutes.
When finally they paused, there was an uneasy silence as everyone - on both sides - realized that way too much had been said by too many people for me to have kept up.
Heh-heh.
It was one of those rare moments in life when you get to really shine! I proceeded to reconstruct the conversation pretty much word for word, and at the end there was another uneasy silence as everyone realized that somehow, I had kept up.
In retrospect, it's funny, though...that admiration soon turned to an expectation, and pretty much from that point on, folks didn't feel pressured to pause to let me work, as they figured I was keeping up anyway. ("Hey, Vladimir," interrupts a voice, "give the interpreter a chance to interpret." "Don't worry," comes the reply, as an aside, "he's writing this all down. As I was saying...")
And that resulted in, overall, a more stressful meeting for me, but I like to think I made some heads turn.
The group today was also duly impressed with my performance, but they did not act in the same manner. I got the feeling - work aside - that these folks were very methodical and cultured in their approach to the task at hand. Nonetheless, the nature of the meeting alone made it a stressful telecon, and I was happy when it ended.
Cheers...
