![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'd forgotten how tough it is...
Nov. 30th, 2006 10:57 pmToday's assignment was to work the space-to-ground (S/G) loop for the Russian sim team. It's a function that's been done in simultaneous mode for several years, now, and in real life, consists in interpreting whatever is communicated from the station to the ground (and back) into the "other" language, thus giving each side insight into what's going on.
Yet the value the interpreter brings to the microphone is not just the ability to interpret voice comm more or less simultaneously during a scripted operation, but also the ability to follow and make everyone understand what's going on when everything is going wrong. I still remember the afternoon I was called, back in February 1997, to come in to JSC and immediately start to make sense of a recording made of the exchange between the Mir crew and the MCC in Moscow, where the on-orbit crew reported a fire. For the next few days, interpreters listened in at every scheduled opportunity, and every comm pass with Moscow was recorded, transcribed, and translated for consumption by program management.
If it wasn't for the fact that today, NASA provides oodles of support data to give the poor interpreter a fighting chance to prepare for likely subjects to be discussed (the daily plan is a key document, as you might imagine, as are flight procedures, radiograms, flight notes... you name it, they've got it), the job would be many times tougher to do. As it is, I hadn't done this kind of work at this level of intensity for some time, and it was physically tiring (even though I was only interpreting for the Russians), sort of like playing an intense game of chess or taking a comprehensive exam of some kind. The good news was that, despite all the petty errors I knew I made (mostly in terminology, which will improve with time), the Russian lead said I did a good job. Moreover, afterward, I managed to get about 2,400 source words done of the job due Sunday.
As everyone has heard by now, Houston got blitzed by an arctic weather front that came through like an icicle through warm butter and dropped temperatures at a rate that was measured at 2 degrees per minute at some local media weather station. When I got out of the sim, at around 3:30 pm, not only was it bitterly cold, but the strong wind almost made it impossible to ride my bike from Building 30 to the gate, where Galina picked me up. Later, coming home from shopping, I observed a car getting forced very nearly off the road by the wind, unless there were other factors in play (which I don't imagine to be the case).
Galina has been taking me and my bike to JSC the past couple of days, so that I could expedite my arrival at the MCC. On other days, when I'm working at Building 4S, it takes only a minute or two to walk from where she drops me off to the room in which I work, so I don't need wheels. (As you may imagine, one simply doesn't get into JSC without an ID, and I'm the only one in the family with one.)
Time to wind down and go to bed. It's been a very full day.
Cheers...
Yet the value the interpreter brings to the microphone is not just the ability to interpret voice comm more or less simultaneously during a scripted operation, but also the ability to follow and make everyone understand what's going on when everything is going wrong. I still remember the afternoon I was called, back in February 1997, to come in to JSC and immediately start to make sense of a recording made of the exchange between the Mir crew and the MCC in Moscow, where the on-orbit crew reported a fire. For the next few days, interpreters listened in at every scheduled opportunity, and every comm pass with Moscow was recorded, transcribed, and translated for consumption by program management.
If it wasn't for the fact that today, NASA provides oodles of support data to give the poor interpreter a fighting chance to prepare for likely subjects to be discussed (the daily plan is a key document, as you might imagine, as are flight procedures, radiograms, flight notes... you name it, they've got it), the job would be many times tougher to do. As it is, I hadn't done this kind of work at this level of intensity for some time, and it was physically tiring (even though I was only interpreting for the Russians), sort of like playing an intense game of chess or taking a comprehensive exam of some kind. The good news was that, despite all the petty errors I knew I made (mostly in terminology, which will improve with time), the Russian lead said I did a good job. Moreover, afterward, I managed to get about 2,400 source words done of the job due Sunday.
As everyone has heard by now, Houston got blitzed by an arctic weather front that came through like an icicle through warm butter and dropped temperatures at a rate that was measured at 2 degrees per minute at some local media weather station. When I got out of the sim, at around 3:30 pm, not only was it bitterly cold, but the strong wind almost made it impossible to ride my bike from Building 30 to the gate, where Galina picked me up. Later, coming home from shopping, I observed a car getting forced very nearly off the road by the wind, unless there were other factors in play (which I don't imagine to be the case).
Galina has been taking me and my bike to JSC the past couple of days, so that I could expedite my arrival at the MCC. On other days, when I'm working at Building 4S, it takes only a minute or two to walk from where she drops me off to the room in which I work, so I don't need wheels. (As you may imagine, one simply doesn't get into JSC without an ID, and I'm the only one in the family with one.)
Time to wind down and go to bed. It's been a very full day.
Cheers...
