I have been an translator for the past month... I was not paid for it. (haiz...)
sometimes I need to be an interpreter to translate instantly to facilitate the communication. sometimes I just summarize what other guys have talked about. I don't really know whether they fully understood what I have translated.
Translator is not an easy job.. you have to be three people, in fact. You might feel frustrated when the conversation gets a little bit exciting. Yup! You have to split yourself into three persons. One is yourself... keep it as low profile as possible. the best way is that yourself does not exist in the conversation. (of course not physically). Then you have to be both parties involved in the conversation. word for word translation cannot really help with the conversation because the meaning might not be brought across. It's very very important for the two guys understand each other and know what they actually meant.
That means I have to put across the subtle meanings, hints etc. That's the tough part! Is that a good way to translate? because i am not doing the pure translation. My role was to help them understand each other better. If you translate, you might figure that there actually are cultural differences that make the translation really tough. It's very simple to understand that. when you talk about apple! it's easy to translate.. it's just an apple... but other people might think apple is macintosh, as a brand. or some other people will see Apple as an apparel brand in China. The background difference really matters!
If you are working in an international team, make sure you have very transparent communication! it helps the team to glue and understand one another much better. We have a team from China, USA and Singapore. We all have different backgrounds and we grew up in different environment... totally different! In the past few days, I have been the facilitator to the communication! I found people understand each other much better now. Krudos to all! ^^
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