Olympics2: work

Olympics2: work

You can read about the background, the opening ceremony, and the significance of all the 8’s elsewhere. From my perspective, we got the first TV broadcasts off in Japan without trouble and I can relax a bit. I am working as an interpreter for one of the Japanese camera/tech crews but my services are needed only on occasion (this may bear witness to a brief surge in blog postings…). So I have scattered points of intense activity followed by lulls of recuperation and waiting.

When things are getting set up at a certain venue, I am the interface point between Japanese and Chinese staff. My job is to be out of the way but instantly able to leap in and help resolve whatever trouble may arise. But once things are rolling, my job is merely to stay out of the way (and be prepared to leap into another 30-minute adventure).

This is by far my longest exposure to the world of interpreting, and it is far more exciting and stimulating than that of translation. In fact my skills as an interpreter are limited, yet to be honed. There are a couple members of the Japanese media team who are pros. They are the ones down on the floor, interviewing non-Japanese athletes for the press.

Another part of my job is simple human relations, doing what I can to ensure smooth workings among people from many nations and cultures. English is the de facto universal language here. Most native speakers don’t know to effectively communicate with non-natives (this does not mean speaking loudly and with a very few words, as most seem to think). Many non-natives (some with quite high levels of English) don’t know how to ask the natives to change their speaking style (a numbered, bullet-point style is good; avoid idioms; occasionally stop and check that the listener understands the message; etc.)

We have the entire range of accents going as well: Japanese English, Chinese English, French English, and so on, each speaker with their own ability level. Put all this together and add in people from different teams with different objectives/concerns and things easily get tense when communication fails. Throw in some specialized vocabulary (never thought I would be talking about coaxial cables in Japanese…), add obnoxious background music being blared inside the stadium, and matters are made more difficult.

So I am collecting names, building relationships, initiating conversations I would never have otherwise – all of this quite awkward and forbidding for the socially impaired introvert that I was.

But no more! A bold and bubbly new being is emerging out of my staid old shell. Eyes and ears (and mouth) open, exploring a new world and seeking new challenges. The strangest part of all this is that I am not, have never been, an athlete or even interested in athletics.

Remember the geeky kid with glasses who sat in the front row of class, attentive to the teacher’s every word? That was me. Recall the loose group of outcasts who didn’t fit into any other group and certainly didn’t play any sports? I was there. How about the kid who played right field in that long year of softball in elementary school? That was me.

I rose to some minor fame as a goalie in my brief junior high school soccer career and even scored a goal when we put the squeeze play on some team we beat mercilessly. By high school I ventured onto the cross-country running team for a year and came in dead last every practice except that glorious day when my nemesis – Chris, who always came in second-to-last, and who stood a full head shorter than I – had a cold.

I matched his pace for a while but the lust for fame overtook goodwill and I turned it on, my long-neglected legs and lungs given full vent at last. I left him in the dry Texas dust and claimed the Second To Last position for a day. That was the day, the only day, that I tasted what it is world-class athletes must know when they perform well. It was not that I had beaten Chris; it was that I had pushed myself and attained something I had not previously known.

That is the same feeling which captured me during my first karate classes as a university student, and which has continued to move me through the years as a martial artist. I have never had much interest in “normal” sports like basketball or football, and have instead been rather over-focused on Japanese and Chinese martial arts.

And I have somehow ended up in the midst of the world’s foremost athletic competition (and reputedly the biggest in Olympic history, by every measure), surrounded by athletes of all nations. I will learn more about sports this month than I have in my entire life. I may not ever do any of these sports, but I will finish my work here able to converse with sports fans from around the world.

Don’t worry, some things can’t be changed. When not cramming baseball or wrestling vocabulary in Chinese, I am running through tai ji quan routines upstairs as the crew works their technical magic downstairs. Things look good today – no troubles below means more free time for me above. And when the day is done, I am out the door, off to get in some martial arts training in the park.