Coming up to speed...
Feb. 2nd, 2007 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpThe major occupational hazard of interpreting is having/gaining familiarity with the subject being discussed. In some jobs, that familiarity, once acquired, rarely requires excursions into new realms. In my work with the space program, the element of the unexpected is a frequent ingredient of many interpretation assignments.
Today's meeting went well, all things considered. The subject was not new to me, although there was the moment when I mondegreened "we'll yellow tag it" as "we'll yell at Agate" (this Agate person being unknown to me, along with virtually all of the details of what had been covered earlier in the week, such as a certain point "G-1" of the requirements specification, but I digress...).
Consider the mondegreen my "glitch" for the assignment.
In any event, things would have to go majorly wrong to compare to what happened to me during an assignment about 8 or 9 years ago here at JSC.
As it turned out, an interpreter hired to support a safety meeting came to the office at the end of the next-to-last day of the meeting and begged off doing the last day's session (if memory serves, she actually refused to do it). She was, she said, intimidated by having to interpret for the participants of about a dozen splinter meetings she had been supporting, who were going to make a final presentation before an extraordinary session of the program's safety panel, so as to obtain the panel's formal blessing for their projects.
So, I got tapped to go in her place.
Quoting Casey Stengel: "I shoulda stood in bed."
The terminology for virtually all the splinters was all new and strange to me (I still remember trying to figure out a way to dance around/into the term "leak-before-burst test"), and felt my credibility dissolving in both real and imaginary planes over the first hour or so of the meeting, leaving me a sweaty blob of nervous exhaustion wishing for the earth to open up and swallow me.
It was about the longest assignment of my professional life.
But that was a long time ago. Been there; done that, as they say. I can even claim to have a souvenir tee shirt that has seen so much wear, that I use it to wipe motor oil from my car's engine.
* * * I received a 500-word job in the mail today, which I accepted routinely, without really looking closely at the text.
Hmmm. Geology. With place names. Yech.
Then again, I've got some time before it's due.
However, right now, I need to get back to catching up on my immediate reading.
Cheers...
Today's meeting went well, all things considered. The subject was not new to me, although there was the moment when I mondegreened "we'll yellow tag it" as "we'll yell at Agate" (this Agate person being unknown to me, along with virtually all of the details of what had been covered earlier in the week, such as a certain point "G-1" of the requirements specification, but I digress...).
Consider the mondegreen my "glitch" for the assignment.
In any event, things would have to go majorly wrong to compare to what happened to me during an assignment about 8 or 9 years ago here at JSC.
As it turned out, an interpreter hired to support a safety meeting came to the office at the end of the next-to-last day of the meeting and begged off doing the last day's session (if memory serves, she actually refused to do it). She was, she said, intimidated by having to interpret for the participants of about a dozen splinter meetings she had been supporting, who were going to make a final presentation before an extraordinary session of the program's safety panel, so as to obtain the panel's formal blessing for their projects.
So, I got tapped to go in her place.
Quoting Casey Stengel: "I shoulda stood in bed."
The terminology for virtually all the splinters was all new and strange to me (I still remember trying to figure out a way to dance around/into the term "leak-before-burst test"), and felt my credibility dissolving in both real and imaginary planes over the first hour or so of the meeting, leaving me a sweaty blob of nervous exhaustion wishing for the earth to open up and swallow me.
It was about the longest assignment of my professional life.
But that was a long time ago. Been there; done that, as they say. I can even claim to have a souvenir tee shirt that has seen so much wear, that I use it to wipe motor oil from my car's engine.
Hmmm. Geology. With place names. Yech.
Then again, I've got some time before it's due.
However, right now, I need to get back to catching up on my immediate reading.
Cheers...
