The shift ended normally this morning, and I'm finding (after the sims from a couple of weeks ago and today's space-to-ground session) that my simultaneous abilities are better going into Russian than into English, mostly because the quality of the Russian original is often poor, for no technical reason. I shall have another crack at the golden ring tonight, and again each night until the end of the month. It's merely a matter of practice.
Did I ever describe my self-imposed training for my first simultaneous gig?
The year was 1995, June was giving way to July, and STS-71 was going to dock with the Mir space station. I got a call about two weeks prior to the flight asking if I would be interested in coming down to Houston, to work for what is now my current client (and former employer).
The catch was this: I was to cover the PAO events for the flight (PAO=Public Affairs Office, i.e., media relations) by providing simultaneous interpretation from Russian to English during events such as the docking itself, the hatch opening, the formal welcoming ceremony, and all of the other commemmorative events associated with a "first" flight of this kind, through to undocking.
I knew I could do it, even though I'd never done it. (Actually, I seem to recall thinking initially that the description of the work was mistaken... and that the events could be covered via consecutive interpretation... don't ask me from where I derived that delusional idea...)
So, I began by simply listening to the radio and trying to repeat what I heard, English to English. If you think that's easy, try it. The first few minutes will surprise you, though eventually you should be able to echo what is being said with a delay of up to a few seconds.
The next step was to find a Russian sound track with which to practice. I borrowed some films from Feht, including a Russian-dubbed version of Divorce, Italian Style, which was an entertaining film, but a mistake for practicing simultaneous interpretation. (What must be said takes more words in Russian than in Italian, so the tempo of speech - already frenetic in the original Italian - must've nearly killed the dubbing artists, who had to talk like that guy in the FedEx commercials from several years ago... at six miles per minute. I could barely understand the Russian, much less interpret it in real time.)
Eventually, I solved the problem by reading Russian text into a tape recorder without paying a lot of attention to what I was reading, and then waiting a couple of days before listening to the tape. The feeling I experienced the first few times I tried that exercise was similar to that I felt when initially trying to echo English into English, but squared and cubed.
I arrived for STS-71 in semi-readiness for the job and managed to hold my own throughout the flight, all but guaranteeing a return engagement for the follow-on Shuttle-Mir flights. I even got better as time went by, and by the time I left the company in 2000, I was routinely doing simultaneous interpretation in both directions.
* * *Enough reminiscing. For some reason (I suspect it's: "I'm tired"), I've been dragging my butt around the house for most of the day after having come home from the MCC (I am looking forward to bedtime, which is in about 20 minutes).
Among other accomplishements, I managed to finish and send off the short item I got via email from another Houston client, did a one-pager for my primary client down here, and landed a test assignment for a completely new client, with more than enough time before the deadline. Before I hit the rack, I need to pay a couple of bills, so I should probably finish this post and turn to.
Cheers...
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