Translators

Today was quite interesting because it involved various meetings between different groups of staff at the OMEGA Olympic residence. Two of the groups of staff have their own translators for communication purposes, which led to some interesting scenes for me to take in because I understood both sides of the game.

Mr. Li, the head of security hired for this month at the venue, has a female translator (who's name has escaped my mind...buhaoyisi...), and Charles, the OMEGA Security representative, has his own translator now as well named Gilbert Wang. Gilbert is really nice, and he and I spent pretty much the entire day chatting back and forth in English and Chinese.

Today there occurred what I like to think of as the "Battle of the Translators", where both wanted to be doing their job in front of their bosses, but really only one person was necessary for the situation. Although the female translator was deemed the "head translator" between Mr. Li and Charles, upon beginning the meeting Gilbert quickly took control and started translating everything for both sides, leaving the other translator bewildered and flustered. So flustered, in fact, that she did not speak up for the rest of the day, but only silently worded the translations to herself under her breath as the meetings went on.

It was intense, actually.

I could just see the desire to translate on her face. In fact, I think she felt pretty dishonered to not be able to do her job. She kept nodding and agreeing with everything that Gilbert said, but not once did she speak up and try to translate anything herself....I guess it would have simply been to awkward for her since he was already in control.

Anyway, I'm just rambling about that.

After all of the translation work during the meetings, me and a guy names Ellis attempted to assemble some flat-screen TV stands. Unfortunately they were huge, had tons of pieces, and no manuals whatsoever, so Ellis is hiring some technicians to do it.

The good thing about trying to assemble the TVs was that I learned how to say "screwdriver", which is pronounced gai3zhui1 (numbers being the tones), which will be quite useful in the future, I'm sure.

At the end of the day we all got caught in an intense downpour of rain, and about 12 people, including myself, 8 chattering "hostesses", and three people from OMEGA, were stuck in the stuffy residence front office, which is about the size of a large broom closet.

It was hot in there, to say the very least.

Once the rain died down I gathered my belongings, grabbed a taxi home, and then instantly relaxed on the couch, drinking a cold can of coconut juice.