Have we settled into a routine, yet?
Nov. 13th, 2000 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpThe night shift eventually came to an end, marking the first time in some months that I've done simultaneous work. I give myself a "B" for the evening; I caught enough to be useful, but some details got by me.
I still remember my home-grown efforts to learn to do simultaneous interpretation. This was back in 1995, and I'd just been offered an opportunity to come to Houston and work the STS-71 mission, but only if I agreed to simultaneously interpret press conferences and other Public Affairs events to be broadcast during that flight. I said okay, and then set about figuring out how to acquire the needed skill.
Simultaneous interpretation requires the same mental techniques as acquiring a high level of proficiency at Morse code (yes, I'm a radio amateur - KD6JJA, if you must know). You've got to split yourself into basically three parts: one part is listening to what is coming in now; the second is "processing" what has been remembered a second or two ago; the third is outputting the processed result. When it comes to either "copying" Morse and simultaneous interpretation, the key - besides having a good grounding in the basics - is practice. I'd gained some facility with Morse at one time, so I knew that I could do the same in the area of simultaneous interpretation.
I started out by simply trying to repeat what an announcer was saying on the radio, in English, without attempting to do anything to the speech, just repeat it. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult at first, and tiring. After a day or two of application, it gets easier.
I then borrowed a couple of films, with Russian dialog, from my friend Feht. My idea was to listen to the dialog and attempt first to simply repeat it, and then - after a few days of practice - to start to try to interpret it.
The first film I tried to do this with was Divorce, Italian Style, with Marcello Mastroianni.
Big mistake.
Realize that, in order to properly dub the film, the pieces of Russian dialog had to match the pieces of Italian, timewise. Since it typically takes more words in Russian to say what is being said in Italian, and since the Italian is pretty rapid-fire to begin with, it turns out that the artists dubbing the Russian had to talk almost as fast as - if not faster than - the fellow who spoke at Mach 3 on the FedEx commercials from a few years back.
I sat back to enjoy the film.
Eventually, unable to find any Russian dialog that was slow enough for me to work with, I enlisted my wife to read passages from books into a tape recorder, and I used the tapes to practice. It was pretty discouraging work at first, but I managed to acquire enough skill to acquit myself for the STS-71 assignments. Other assignments followed, and the rest is history.
Enough reminiscing...I go back on console in a little over two hours, and there are things to take care of around here.
So here's the answer to today's question:
My erratic sleep schedule prevents me from saying I've settled into a routine. Today, I could not help but nap for a few minutes around 9 am while I waited for Galina to get dressed so we could go inspect the Pearland house. The house, by the way, is coming along nicely. We need to do some sheet rock work inside and dispose of the small mountain of junk that's accumulated in the back yard as a result of the renovation.
I formally went to sleep around 12:40 pm, slept soundly, and woke up alert and not wanting to sleep any more at 5:30 pm.
Cheers...
I still remember my home-grown efforts to learn to do simultaneous interpretation. This was back in 1995, and I'd just been offered an opportunity to come to Houston and work the STS-71 mission, but only if I agreed to simultaneously interpret press conferences and other Public Affairs events to be broadcast during that flight. I said okay, and then set about figuring out how to acquire the needed skill.
Simultaneous interpretation requires the same mental techniques as acquiring a high level of proficiency at Morse code (yes, I'm a radio amateur - KD6JJA, if you must know). You've got to split yourself into basically three parts: one part is listening to what is coming in now; the second is "processing" what has been remembered a second or two ago; the third is outputting the processed result. When it comes to either "copying" Morse and simultaneous interpretation, the key - besides having a good grounding in the basics - is practice. I'd gained some facility with Morse at one time, so I knew that I could do the same in the area of simultaneous interpretation.
I started out by simply trying to repeat what an announcer was saying on the radio, in English, without attempting to do anything to the speech, just repeat it. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult at first, and tiring. After a day or two of application, it gets easier.
I then borrowed a couple of films, with Russian dialog, from my friend Feht. My idea was to listen to the dialog and attempt first to simply repeat it, and then - after a few days of practice - to start to try to interpret it.
The first film I tried to do this with was Divorce, Italian Style, with Marcello Mastroianni.
Big mistake.
Realize that, in order to properly dub the film, the pieces of Russian dialog had to match the pieces of Italian, timewise. Since it typically takes more words in Russian to say what is being said in Italian, and since the Italian is pretty rapid-fire to begin with, it turns out that the artists dubbing the Russian had to talk almost as fast as - if not faster than - the fellow who spoke at Mach 3 on the FedEx commercials from a few years back.
I sat back to enjoy the film.
Eventually, unable to find any Russian dialog that was slow enough for me to work with, I enlisted my wife to read passages from books into a tape recorder, and I used the tapes to practice. It was pretty discouraging work at first, but I managed to acquire enough skill to acquit myself for the STS-71 assignments. Other assignments followed, and the rest is history.
Enough reminiscing...I go back on console in a little over two hours, and there are things to take care of around here.
So here's the answer to today's question:
My erratic sleep schedule prevents me from saying I've settled into a routine. Today, I could not help but nap for a few minutes around 9 am while I waited for Galina to get dressed so we could go inspect the Pearland house. The house, by the way, is coming along nicely. We need to do some sheet rock work inside and dispose of the small mountain of junk that's accumulated in the back yard as a result of the renovation.
I formally went to sleep around 12:40 pm, slept soundly, and woke up alert and not wanting to sleep any more at 5:30 pm.
Cheers...
