Long week

I spent this week translating and checking translations of a price estimation and configuration guide. It was interesting at first but having to translate the same thing with just a slight difference gets old after a while. Luckily for me the software I am using helps me out a lot. In other words it is making me lazy. Since everything is pretty much the same it just shows me the similar sentence and I just have to change the few words that are different. The good news is that my boss gave me a new job today that will take priority. I need to translate some software integration scenarios into Japanese. So far this has been more interesting than I thought it would be. But I am probably just sick of working on the manual. I like translating from English more I have realized. It is just so much easier to understand what the person actually means. I can’t believe that it is the end of June already. Just a month and a half left until it is time to go home. I hope everyone else is learning a lot. Don’t let the heat get you down. Later.

A busy week

Today was an interesting day. We've been having weekly meetings with all the other interns where we have lunch and someone comes and speaks to us. Today, a headhunter from A.T. Kearney came and talked about career development. Turns out he was a mission president in Nagoya a few years back and a former BYU teacher. I liked the presentation. It was pretty interesting.

This evening there was a reception at Goldman Sachs. Also very interesting. I talked to people in varioius divisions of the business and enjoyed their building on the 47th floor of the Mori Building in Roppongi Hills.

We are going to a baseball game on Thursday, Swallows vs. Dragons with the interns.

As far as the actual work, it is going good. I compare my job to a person who learns about cars by being a repair mechanic rather that someone who learns about them by assembling them in a factory. I see all the things that go wrong, and have to understand why they when wrong and how to fix them.

I went to Kamakura with Omar and my wife's sister and brother in law. Good times. I went to Karaoke for the first time. It was this really cool, quirky, fun room in a Shidax. We belted some tunes. I really love this city.

Week something or other

June 19 – 23, 2006
This week was basically more catalog translation. I was also given a deadline of July 5th. I have about a week and a half left. Thirty pages left to translate and about that many to revise. I’m thinking it will be busy but doable.
I had a few meetings with the Product Development Department and Sales Department heads to go over and finalize the License Agreement. I realized I have way too much pride in my work, because despite all the time I spent on drafting it instead of translating, I was still angry when they made me change my translation back to Japanese-ish ways of speaking. I realized half way through these meetings that the Germans who will read that document have about the same reading level as the Japanese do, (well, actually a lot better in some instances) so I was left to ponder as to why they wanted me to fix their English if the original was what they wanted anyway. I guess in that respect I had too much pride because I dumbed it down a lot and wasn’t very happy about it. Maybe that’s a cultural difference and maybe it would be frustrating for anyone, who knows?