maxiewawa

You know what’s really annoying?

I was just watching “Border Patrol”. It’s a tv show made at various international airports in Australia. They show real life situations where suspicious people are stopped at customs. Sometimes they are carrying drugs, money or contraband, sometimes people are detained or questioned.

Interpreters show up often in Border Patrol; when someone’s interviewed for any reason, they often need an interpreter to facilitate communication.

The annoying thing was that it was nothing like my test. I think that if someone from customs called me today and asked me to interpret for them I could do it. I could have interpreted into Mandarin/English any of the conversations that went on in the show. Furthermore, the conversations were nothing like my test.

Instead of cold, emotionanless conversations like this, which is what was in my test:

“Hello, please sit down. How is your pregnancy? It has been ten weeks, hasn’t it? Has your morning sickness eased, or is it as bad as last time”

The conversations were more natural:

“Ok, so we’ve found money on ya, so what we’re gonna do is upgrade the search, ok? Are you right with that?”

Aaargh! I could interpret in a real situation, but when I’m in an exam I bugger it up.

Anyway, I don’t want to get all bitchy about the situation, that’s not going to get me anywhere.

Mood: Happy Happy Joy Joy

跟华人去吃饭的时候经常发生很尴尬的事 － 结帐。在我们这里的话，最常见的是AA制，就是说把总计除以人数，每个人付的是一样，公平多吧。可是华人习惯一个人请客。最近我跟三个人一起吃饭，一共四个人，可不是AA制，反而是一个人付我们四个人的费。 我其实觉得是太过分，我跟爱香愿意付一半，可是没办法。而且他上次也请了我一次课。这个人请了我一次，我今天还想今天请他。可他不听！ 我今天说了：下次我请你。可是我相信，下次还会老样子。我真的想请他，但他怎么总不愿意？我不付的话，是对我有一点耻辱

I’ve been telling everyone I know in real life, and you might have got the impression yourself, that I was doing a course in interpreting at TAFE this year. Unfortunately that’s not the case.

I don’t know why I assumed that I’d get in without actually knowing, but I got to TAFE today to have a look at the results, and my name wasn’t there. I was gutted (Australian for ‘very disappointed’). I guess it’s my own fault for just assuming that I was in.

So what now? Well there’s another course in interpreting at a place in the city. It’s a bit more expensive, and might not be available part time, but I think places are easier to get.

So I hope to enrol in that other place. That’s what I hope to do next. That and practice. My mandarin was probably where I came unstuck in the first place, so I’d better get it up to scratch.

On the up side, I got into the translator’s course. (If you didn’t know, translating is written where interpreting is spoken.) I’m not so interested in doing it though. The subject matter of the tests seem to be easy enough that I think I could pass the NAATI accreditation test without taking a course.

I’m much more keen on interpreting than translating. I see it as a way to travel around the world, while doing something that I am really interested in. It’s hard to get knocked back like I was but I can’t just sit and whinge about it.

EDIT I made a video about it.

Technology is a wonderful thing.

Imagine I told you that you had to remember that the bone at the base of your spine, part of your pelvis, was called the sacrum. On top of that, imagine that I had to tell you that the Chinese word for it was 骶骨.

Hard right? Well when I get tricky stuff like that that I have to remember, I just consult Wikipedia.

Type in 骶骨 to Chinese Wikipedia, and you get some helpful info. The 骶骨 is triangular, and there are some pictures of it.

As a native English speaker, I always click on the link on the left that says “English” though.

I then read through the article, getting little bits of info on sacrums. At the end comes something particularly helpful.

The name is derived from the Latin sacer, “sacred“, a translation of the Greek hieron (osteon), meaning sacred or strong bone.^[1] Since the sacrum is the seat of the organs of procreation, animal sacrums were offered in sacrifices. In Slavic languages and in German this bone is called the “cross bone”.^[2]

That’s useful! It helps me remember that it’s cross shaped, and even helps me remember the name.

I have to come up with some kind of mneumonic that can help me remember 骶骨 though. In case you didn’t know, a mneumonic is a way of remembering some kind of rule.

The first syllable of 骶骨 sounds like “low”…. it even has part of the character for “low” in there…

Hmmm… I come up with a picture of a Satanic rite in ancient Germany, where some chieftan is covered in blood. He’s just extracted the SACRUM/骶骨 of some poor unsuspecting animal. He takes this cross-shaped bone and laws it on the ground, BELOW a huge bonfire that is raging in front of him. Other pagans are jumping around dancing and singing.

我刚刚注册了一个QQ账号。我希望通过它，能够提高自己中文水平。

哇，最近有一个网有留了言，让我在此blog用更多的中文。可惜的是，不知道该写什么。

大家可能早就发现了，除了关于语言，翻译，我可没什么话讲。真的是sorry。下次希望可以写更精彩的内容给大家看。

有QQ账号的读者请加我！maxiewawa!

Mood: hungry.

I’ve made another post at ChinaGeeks.

I always thought that the Chinese internet was quite free. Just like the Soviets could show their displeasure at Reagan at the Kremlin, we can not only do the same at the Foreign Ministry…

It was really hard. There were lots of strange cultural references (like the one above) but it was a bit of a rant, so he’d start sentences only to branch off in other directions without finishing his original thought!

My Mood: Lobotomic. I’ve been working at the area that I struggled the most in the interpreter test, the sight translation, by just reading the paper, and saying aloud my translation of it. Hard. Why an interpreter would ever be asked to translate a newspaper article into another language I’m not exactly sure, but it came up in my exam, so I’m working on it. In any case, it’s been doing my head in, hence I feel like I’ve been lobotomised.

Also working on my shorthand. Have put Gregg to one side, giving Teeline a go (I hear it’s easier).

Here are some sites that have piqued my interest of late. Perhaps you’ll find them useful:

Gregg Shorthand
The Simplified Gregg Shorthand Manual
Gregg Shorthand Anniversary Dictionary

If I’m going to be an interpreter, I’m going to have to learn shorthand. It’s like a whole other language!

VITS Survey Of Interpreters

An organisation called VITS (not sure who they are, haven’t finished reading it all actually) surveyed some interpreters a while back. A lot of interesting stuff. Quite long though.

I found out that most interpreters are migrants. I’m not sure why, the more I learn about interpreting the more I find that not many people whose first language is English are very interested in it. Strange.

There’s no polite way of putting this: my latest ChinaSMACK story is about toilets.

Men always have all the time in the world to use the bathroom, while women line up, anxiously waiting for their counterparts.

You might not think that such a story would give you any great insight about China but I think that it does.

Firstly, the reason I translated such a weird article was that I couldn’t find anything on what I wanted to write about. You see, stories are often censored or “harmonized” on the Chinese language ‘net, and in their place weird pieces like these appear.

Another important point is that people know that something’s up. There are quite a few comments to this story from people who are disgusted that their political representatives are wasting their time on an issue like this. A friend said to me that she had no idea that the Chinese populace were so willing to speak up when they weren’t happy with something.

But thirdly, and most surprising of all, is that some people are willing to defend such a study. Many are of the view that any attempt to make society better should be applauded. And why not?!

One of my goals this year (and onwards) is to become an accredited interpreter. I’ve heard that they travel the world, earn good money, and find the subject interesting, so I have applied for a course. Not just anyone can do this course though, you have to sit a test before they let you in. That test was today! I turned up at TAFE College’s campus at Petersham this afternoon to take it. (TAFE = Technology And Further Education. Basically a technical college.)

For some reason, every prospective student except me was Chinese. – First language Chinese, second English. I think I was the only one the other way around. Not sure what that means… good for me because I’m a special commodity? Bad for me because the course will be tailored to Chinese speakers? Not sure.

They first had a test for our English ability. Needless to say I passed. But then they had a real challenge: a lady read a passage at natural speed, which took about two minutes, during which I had to take notes. Then I was required to repeat what she had said as closely as I could, referring to only my notes. Phew, that was hard! After the 2 minutes was up I looked at the frantic scribble in front of me and tried to piece together what she’d said. I don’t think I did too badly, but not too well. I try to console myself with the knowledge that hardly anyone would be able to do it without any practice. I have seen in my research on interpreting that shorthand is a good skill, and after that bit of the test I can see that it’s essential.

Next was our interpreting test. Oddly there wasn’t a standalone mandarin test. Like I said, 99.9% of the applicants are from China so they assume that they can speak Chinese. This was with a different examiner to the English ability test.

When I walked into the room for my Mandarin test, the first question was which level I was applying for. Now, level 3 is a professional level interpreter, level 2 is paraprofessional (ie ‘not-quite-professional). The lady giving me my English test said that I should try for professional level, since my English was obviously up to scratch, and that I have spoken Chinese since childhood. So when the Mandarin tester asked me which level I was going for, I said I wasn’t sure, but that I wanted to give level 3 a shot.

The interpreting test consisted of a conversation that might happen in a real professional context. A woman is in a real estate agent’s and she’s asking about renting/buying a house. It wasn’t a difficult conversation but the hardest part was remembering everything that was said. I’m usually good at this, when I interpret in an informal setting I can remember most of what’s said, but this was another level of difficulty. I didn’t know some words (I didn’t know the Chinese for “flight path”) and am not sure if I remembered everything. What was frustrating is that I could have probably translated simultaneously, which is when you translate what’s said without waiting for the person to stop. – This means that you don’t have to remember as much as one time. But as soon as I started doing that my examiner asked me to stop. So I had to wait for her to finish speaking before I replied with my translation. What’s also hard is that we weren’t actually in a real estate agent, so all the “cues” and “reminders” that come from actually being there weren’t. I don’t think I did too badly in any case, and considering that I had just come in cold, off the street, I did alright.

After that I had to do a sight translation. She gave me a written passage in English, and I had to just do a translation on the spot. So I just had to make it up on the spot. I found that really difficult. If you didn’t know, translating into your first language is easier than the other way around, so I was automatically at a disadvantage, translating from my first into my second. Add to that the fact that it wasn’t a conversation, but an article and I really had trouble. I haven’t done much Chinese writing (other than MSN which doesn’t really count since everything’s so short) so I struggled.

It was clear that I was having trouble. I was speaking Chinese, trying to translate the article in front of me, and at one point the examiner said “hang on, where are you up to?” which I took as a sign that I was really stuffing it up!

So anyway, I finished and felt pretty bad about it. I told her that I wanted to try level 2, and she said ok. I did a conversation again, this time between a teacher and parent, and there weren’t as many tricky words like “flight path”. I didn’t have to do a sight translation for the level 2 test, which was a relief!

Afterwards I didn’t feel so great about the test. There were a few parts that I wasn’t expecting at all (having to recite a 2 minute speech back exactly) and some other googlies I had to deal with (having to remember so much and sight translation). I was a bit bummed, but consoled myself that I hadn’t done too badly. I am hoping to get into the paraprofessional level (level 2) and it was only because my english examiner suggested I try the level 3 test that I did; I shouldnt be surprised that I found it difficult.

I find out if I got in or not next week, so wish me luck!

I’m on ChinaGeeks!

I totally support the spokesperson’s point of view. But I think we need to apply this lawful supervision not only to obscene sexual material…

I did a translation of Liu Xiaoyuan’s response to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ma Zhaoxu’s response to US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s speech about the internet. In it she responds to Google’s news that it might pull out of China.

CCuster of ChinaGeeks was kind enough to give me a spot. I’m probably not going to go into as much analysis as he does, but keep posted for more!