I have tried interpretation myself, be it simultaneous or consecutive. It feels as if you are a split person, having the left side working quite differently from the right side of your brains! The ears would listen in 1 language, and the mouth would reproduce the words in another language, almost at the same time.

A good interpretor does not allow for a lag in the speech. He or she will start almost at the same time as the speaker. It is as if the interpretor is the speaker! It takes a lot of knowledge on the topic as well as understandingof the speaker. If the interpretor has worked with the same speaker for some time, he or she will be able to guess what the speaker want to say in the next sentence. This takes a lot of practise, and not to say, much more energy and concentration on the matter.

Why more energy? A good interpretor not only translates verbally the words, he or she would transfer the emotions of the speaker to the audience too!

Not all translators can be interpretors. For translation, you have all the time in the world to slowly “digest” the source and “spit out” the translated words. It is not so for interpretation. Even for consecutive interpretation. You would only have that sentence length of time to process the source and form the correct words.

It is a very challenging job and I did enjoy my experiences as an interpretor. So, for those who would like to try out interpretation, you can start with listening to some audio and translate on the spot. You can record what you have interpreted, so that you can check back on your translation later on.

Have fun!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfPjWQQDu3c&feature=related

Have you had mornings where you just can’t seem to get out of your bed? The bed is simply too comfortable that you tell yourself you’ll sleep for another 5 minutes… and the moment you know it, you have overslept. Well, you are not alone. I have this challenge too. So I came across a website that provides tips that can help up wake up early.

21 tips you can use to wake up early AND stay up:

1.         Understand your reason for wanting to wake up early. What is it? Is it to have time to do your personal activities? To get more work done? To get a head start in your day?

2.         Make a personal commitment to yourself to achieve this goal. If you have made the decision to wake up early, then be accountable and live up to it.

3.         Create a reward for accomplishing this goal. It should be enticing enough to motivate you throughout the whole process.

4.         Plaster your goal prominently everywhere: on your noticeboard, your notebook, your vision board (if you have one), your wallpaper, etc. Spell out clearly the time you want to wake up and make it big and bold.

5.         Be accountable to others. Share your goal with friends/family/acquaintances/strangers.

6.         Cut out the stimulants that affect your sleep schedule, namely caffeine (coffee, tea, coke/soda) and alcohol. These messes around with your sleep and quality of your sleep, which subsequently affects your waking time.

7.         Make a transition. Instead of waking immediately at XXam, improve your waking time by 15~30min every day until you reach your goal.

8.         Plan a non-negotiable agenda for the next day. This agenda should starting right from the point you are supposed to wake up right till your day ends. It should be so compact that you have to wake up on time to finish everything planned.

9.         Create urgency # 1. Set up extremely important and urgent tasks as the first items of the day so you have to wake up and finish them.

10.     Create urgency # 2. Fix an appointment with someone early in the morning; it should be with someone you cannot cancel on or there will be dire consequences.

11.     Get a morning call service. Some services are: iPing and Wake Up Land. Or you can ask someone who will be awake then to call you.

12.     Sleep earlier. This one is probably the single most important tip out of the whole list. Let’s be realistic – if you target to wake up at 5am, don’t turn in at only 1am or 2am the night before expecting to be successful in waking up on time. You already are setting yourself an uphill challenge! When I do sleep early and ensure I have sufficient sleep, waking up early / when the alarm rings becomes a very easy, natural task.

13.     Set your alarm clock. Goes without saying! After you get into a regular sleeping schedule, you will likely find yourself waking up automatically at around the same time every day without need for an alarm clock.

14.     Set multiple alarm clocks (3-5) at the same or different times (5 minutes apart from each other). This is for the heavy sleepers; I’m quite a light sleeper so just one alarm clock does the trick. Multiple alarm clocks tend to backfire on me – having all the ringing makes me feel disrupted instead and the first instinct while I’m in a semi-conscious state will be to return to sleep where it’s nice and quiet.

15.     Put your alarm clock(s) really far from you (but still audible) such that you need to get off your bed to reach it.

16.     Switch your alarm to your favourite music/mp3 By the time the music finishes playing, you will be more awake and ready to get up. I have tried this before but it does seem like it will be an effective method.  

17.     Before you sleep, hold in your mind the time you intend to wake up all the way until you fall asleep. When I wake, I usually find that this intent flies into my mind as the first thought and it helps drive me to wake up.

18.     Set your alarm clock 15 minutes earlier than your designated time. When it rings, put it on snooze, and spend the next 15 minutes mentally preparing yourself so you can get up voluntarily once the alarm rings again.

19.     Get out of the bed immediately once you hear the alarm. You all know how it feels in the morning when you wake up – the voice in your head is just coaxing you to go to sleep every morning despite your best intents to want to wake up. Instead of giving it the chance to speak, immediately get your physical body out of the bed and walk out! Once you last the first 5 minutes, you will find that sleepiness wears off very quickly and the day actually moves ahead as your other days.

20.     Establish it as a daily habit. Making it a daily habit will be easier to maintain than if it’s only 5 days a week. If you keep having to balance around different timing schedules on weekdays and weekends, your body clock has to constantly adjust and it makes your task much harder.

21.     Load up a full combination of the tips above for your complete arsenal to blast this goal wide open!

Give it a try today and see which method works best for you!

Recently, I have been reading Og Mandino’s A Better Way to Live.  His books has sold over 50 million copies and has been translated into over 25 different languages.  Og remains one of the best-selling inspirational author till now.

In this book, the author features 17 simple “Rules to Live By”.  What inspires me is that each rule is so simple yet profound.  These rules are timeless principles which offer happiness and fulfillment to our life if we practise the principles daily.  I guess this is what they mean by “Happiness is always at your doorstep and all you need is to just open the door”

I  wish to share one rule from the book with my dear bloggers.  It is Rule Number 9. – Live this day as if it will be your last.  Remember that you will only find “tomorrow” on the calenders of fools.  Forget yesterday’s defeats, and ignore the problems of tomorrow.  This is it.  Doomsday.  All you have.  Make it the best day of your year.  The saddest words you can ever utter are, “If I had my life to live over again…”  Take the baton, now.  Run with it!  This is your day!

Yes, live this day as if it will be your last!  All us should strive to live out each day to our maximum potential.  We should treasure our time, our loved ones, our friends and ourselves preciously.  We should always count each passing day as our blessing.  If we have such mentality, we would pass each day with greater vigor, enthusiasm and passion.  And the problems of tomorrow would be like passing clouds, that temporarily dampen our heart but  not our spirit for all such things should pass us by.

Each new day is like a new course.  We are like a runner in this journey called life.  The “yesterday” runner would pass the baton to “today” runner…and the “today” runner would continue run the course but with greater passion and vigor than “yesterday”  runner.

Lets all make this journey a more colourful and exciting one!  Hurray!  Cheers on!

And thanks for your teaching, Og!

Seeing that translators are now becoming the up and coming industry, this shows how closely knitted our world has become. The need to communicate with our counterparts in other parts of the world has made this industry boom over the past few years.

Translation has now become a BIG part of our lives, knowing that with globalisation and migration of people, culture and businesses, it is ever so important to know other languages.

I used to learn French, and while I dragged my feet to the language school ever twice a week, I used to wonder whether I would ever need the language, since most people that I come into contact with at that time speak English or Chinese. However decades down the road, I master the courage to take up the language again, because now the need has come for us to communicate with clients overseas! Well, everything starts and happens for a reason, isn’t it?

The article in TIMES magazine has really pleasantly amazed me, and I see this industry still growing as the need to reach a wider network of people increases. Thus we are in a very exciting role, with more opportunities to translate different kinds of materials, and learn much more than what 1 culture can offer to another.

3 Cheers to the Translators in the World! 

As I was reading the latest issue of Times magazine, I came across an article that talks about “ideas that are changing the world”. One of them would be our jobs being the new assets now.

It used to be when we are trying means and ways NOT to work, and making passive income and investments, such that we can have more free time to ourselves. Times when we talk about the new properties whether they are worth investing, or when the latest designer brand or clothing is out and comparing whether who has more collector items.

Somehow, it seems like we got more materialistic and everything we own is more of a shown off and a signification of our status. We forgot our roots and how some of us started out less well-to-do, forgot our humility that we once started with little or nothing. Slowly as we climb up the ladder we decided that we want to work less for more, and our payroll does not justify the amount of work we do. So we start to source for other means of getting riches. We start investing on bonds and properties, and thinking that one day we can depend solely on investments we can stop work for good. We think we were smart, until the collapse of the economy. Now it seems that those who are still hold a job are having the last laugh.

Many times we fail to realize that our greatest asset is ourselves. We have knowledge and skills that cannot be taken away from us until the day we die. Upon discovering that, we begin to look at our jobs differently. What we do now could be our only source of income. We need to relearn what we have learnt, back to where we began. Only this way will we be able to look at our jobs from another angle, learn to appreciate and enjoy what we go.

After all, simplicity makes one more content with what is laid on the table for them.

Last Sunday, I was watching the movie Matrix in my television.  Yes, the movie in which Keanu Reeves acted as the computer hacker, Neo. This is a 1999 blockbuster that draws rave review from the audiences.

The film describes a future in which reality perceived by humans is actually the Matrix: a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies’ heat and electrical activities are used as an energy source.  Upon learning this, computer programmer Neo is drawn into a rebellion against the machines.

As I was watching the movie, a particular scene gave me a deep insight.  Neo is given a chance by his “mentor” – a mysterious character called Morpheus (named after the Greek god of dreams and sleep) to choose to live a different “life”.

When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question “what is the Matrix?” and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before.   As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

The greatest birth right given to mankind is freedom of choice. The choice to do whatever he wants to achieve (within the legal and moral rules of the society).  But I guess many of us do not believe in ourselves deep enough to make a choice to live a better life.  We would rather cling on to our old ways of life than to be adventurous and find our own life.  To choose the type of life that our heart truely desires.

If Neo chooses the blue pill, would he still be “The One” in Matrix?  I guess not.  He would be the many faces in this world passing each day and doing the same old stuff.

In my own words, the blue pill represents Security and red pill represents Freedom.  The freedom to do what your heart desires, and to do each task with great interest and passion.  Naturally, you will also become a “human magnet” and attracts greater things and friends int your life.

If everyday is a chance to make a new choice,  which pill would you choose?

Have you attended wedding dinners before? Ever wondered what the usual programs or activities are during the dinner? It is usually the emcees doing the opening, then introducing a video clip of photos of the bride and groom from young till now, before the couple into the ballroom. This is a typical kind of opening for a wedding dinner.

Last night, I went to my cousin’s wedding. Her husband and her are quite “arty farty” kind of people, so instead of doing the photo collage, they came up with a comic strip – hand drawn by themselves. It was based on the lyrics of a song. As the song went on, the story develops. It was a different feel although I reckon that our elders understood what the comic strip was talking about.

It got me thinking, does a picture really paint a thousand words, like how the song goes? Somehow if you put many pictures together and have a song with the lyrics to go them, it does paint – well, maybe not a thousand words – but at least a story that everyone is able to relate to. Just like translation.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToEPFDIzhNA

I had lunch with my friend yesterday.  As usual, our topics are on global economics, people retrenched from their jobs, countries export figures getting lower, banks are not lending money etc etc.  Being a normal citizen, we could not do too much about it.

At the end, my friend sighed and told me that he was lost.  For a moment, I am speechless.  I could find no words to console him.  I could just muster a smile and acknowledge his feeling.

A thought flashed into my mind.  Suddenly, I remembered what I had read from Paulo Coelho’s “The Fifth Mountain”.  I began to share with him what I had learnt from this book.

Basically, all of us brought with us a gift when we come to this world.  This gift could be the joy, humorous, abundance, peace, love, humanity etc etc.  Some of us choose to share this gift with the people around us and hence living out their higher purpose.  But many of us choose to deny this gift…perhaps due to the pain, fear, disencouragement and guilt we encountered along the way.

By choosing to live out your higher purpose, it could take you on a path less traveled by others.  This path will definitely be adventurous and full of challenging obstacles.  But not all of us will accomplish what we are born to be. Most of us will be disheartened and gave up along the way.  But for those of us who are focused and persevered on, we will live out our higher purpose ultimately.

Now, what is our higher purpose?  I would said that it is solely based on individual’s definition.  Some would define it to building a wealth foundation for the poor, leaving a legacy for their future generation, travelling to exotic places, volunteering in some charity organisation etc.  Or it could be as simple as just giving one true self and love to your loved ones each day.

I do know is that when we are walking on the path towards our higher purpose…the Universe will align and magnifest itself to achieve what we want.  I truly feel it is happening to me  and every day is like a miracle to me.

Mother Theresa once said,” I could not do great things but I can do small things with great love”

I did not know what my friend think after he heard my sharing.  But I could sense that he felt much better.  I hoped that I have touched his life.

This will sound similar to the words of Master Oo-Gui from the Kungfu Panda. One of his many famous statements: “Quit? Don’t quit?”, “Noodles? Don’t noodles?” So do we “Copywrite? Don’t copywrite?”

Of course it is definitely cheaper not to copywrite your piece of advert, that is, to only directly translate the source copy into the targeted language, without any thoughts of whether the copy would attract anyone to read it.

There has been more and more needs to produce good copies, since there is an ever increasing amount of lines of products and services, and who is to say which one of them is better than another? There are different kinds of consumers. Some are loyal, whereby they stick to one product to the end of their lives. Others, are simply product-hoppers. So it is very important to even let these people take a quick glance at your poster or flyers! So first impression counts a lot.

It is therefore not easy to capture the attention of your audience, given that there are so many advertisements out there aiming to do the same thing. As a copywriter, it not only takes a creative mind to come up with a good copy, he must also understand the needs of the consumers. Consumers needs can be created or they can be already present. For a copy to attract, it must address the needs and create an everlasting impression. It must be able to jump out from the 2D poster or billboard or TV screen and scream at the audience to “BUY ME!”

You don’t have to be a total language expert. But you need to be a whiz with wordz.