Monday 7 January 2008

The life of an interpreter is a difficult one... You never know what to expect when you are asked to do a job, just like it happened to me today. I was asked to do translation in a group discussion meeting between 15:30 and 19:30. They told me it was about a market research.
When I got there it was in a house, obviously it was a company working home office style, in a dublex apartment. Then we all got into this small cosy room where they had a television and sound system and the aim was to listen to another group of students discussing in the next room, who did not know that they were listened to as a part of market research. They were asked questions about how they felt about the brands, etc. I remembered doing a similar focus group translation but that was simultaneous (where the translators listen to the conversation from the headphones and translate to a microphone), and not consecutive.
The biggest surprise was that they told me it was to finish at 9.30pm. 2 hours later than I was told!! I was ready to walk out as I told them that I was told something else and they could not say much as I was right. But I stayed.

May be you've had similar situations where you were expecting one thing, and something totally different happened. You don't always get what you were promised. What do you do? Do you walk away or just stay and try to make the best out of it.

Well it happens a lot to interpreters and the best thing to do is to make the best of the situation without giving any compromises.

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