Live from Toyako
I'm posting this from the International Media Center in Rusutsu, Hokkaido. This is some kilometers away from the Windsor Hotel Toya, where this year's G8 Summit is taking place. I'm part of a team that puts the details into the media information system so the reporters and photographers will know what time to get on the bus, or head down to the briefing rooms, to do their jobs.
We have four J-E translators on site, each of whom work in a pair with a native-Japanese-speaking checker/translator. Our client for this project, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has hundreds of people here in Hokkaido right now. One of them hands us a slip of paper or a USB memory stick with the details we need to get into the system, and we go to work: getting both Japanese and English entries into the text fields, making sure there are separate entries for media coverage requirements and "new item" alerts and so on as needed, checking the two languages against each other, and generally sitting there being helpful.
This job started out as an around-the-clock deal, and I wrapped up my second all-night shift early yesterday morning. As it turns out there isn't a lot of information to go out at three in the morning, so we're now on site from six each morning until an hour or two past midnight. This work isn't nearly as demanding, hour for hour, as what the interpreters working with the leaders are going through right now, but it adds up to long hours of being tired at the end of a shift. Ah, the glamorous life of an international event translator.
Security is very tight here at the IMC. We don't have to take our shoes off when we enter, but other than that it feels about the same as going through the security check at an international airport. I would have more photos up in the Flickr set I'm putting together, but my little SD card reader broke last night. I dismantled it to see if I could spot a broken circuit somewhere and threw the parts in the trash when I couldn't, and today I got word that the hotel maid taking the garbage out of the room spotted a bunch of small electronic parts (also known as bomb components) and reported it to the security staff. I may have to talk to the police later about this. Once again, the glamorous life of an . . . you know.
I would share more details about the actual translations we're doing, but they are (a) quite boring ("President of Country X arrives tomorrow at 15:00; press bus leaves IMC at 12:00") and (b) locked down in a secure site invisible to the outside world, so that terrorists can't make use of the details we feed into the thing to time their attacks on New Chitose Airport. I apologize if this makes for dull blog entries. Now it's back to work for me!
(The photo is of the media work room late on Saturday night, before the center opened up for use.)
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