Viet Nam 2010: Workshop impressions

The workshop is okay. I’ve done this before. Though not through translation (simultaneous interpretation, that is), and I find that hard. It’s not just having to speak less, though I admit that I find that hard as well. ;-) I have to keep my sentences short and simple, to reduce the amount of content which gets lost in translation. But it’s not just meaning which gets lost in translation; it also takes a heavy toll on esprit, on engagement with the audience.

Asking questions of the audience and getting them to respond is never easy at the beginning of a workshop. But usually it can be done – I ask a really simple, very nearly rhetorical question while looking at someone who seems to have been alertly following my last two sentences and start nodding with him or her the moment (s)he realizes I’m looking for confirmation. Do that once or twice, and members of the audience will at least openly nod or shake their heads in answer to questions. Next a question on “who’s ever been told to do something by a boss and been left head-scratching and wondering ‘sure, but how?’” which invites a show of hands by a few people without requiring them to really step out and, usually, this puts me into the sort of rapport with the audience where asking questions works. But with translation, even supposedly simultaneous interpretation, this doesn’t work. I ask a question, and then have to wait for the translation to finish. So no one is speaking out loud while everyone waits for the translation on the headsets, the interpreter often rephrasing what I just said to make sure (s)he ends with a proper question, and an expectant hush settles over the audience. Into which nobody wants to venture, of course. Supposedly funny remarks also fall flat, either because they’re not funny (I admit that happens), or because the humour does not survive translation or because the interpreter chooses not to translate it at all (he admits that happens, he thinks this is serious work).
So that part is frustrating. But the group exercises work, and of course it’s always good to get the audience engaged, so I make a few changes on the fly – in the end I make the audience discover many of the legal obligations in their new law for themselves, along with how to check for it. I’m quite happy with the result, because I actually think that these people could, if they were asked to perform an on-site inspection starting tomorrow, do a credible job of it. Which is more than I’d hoped, given the inauspicious start.
It’s not just translation which is weird, though. People walk in and out of the workshop at times. We start with the advertised twenty, then it goes down a bit. I don’t know to what degree this is culturally accepted behavior, so I don’t remark on it, but wonder if they think “hey, this is just a flake from the World Bank, we can probably get away with murder”. And then remind myself that our English teacher used to say “if you don’t want to be in my class, I’d much rather you don’t come”. I’ll just make my workshop as good as I can and hope that it’s good enough to keep people here on their own volition.

And then there are the downright weird things which happen because this is Vietnam. It starts with Monday being International Women’s Day. I knew this. But I didn’t know this was very close to an official holiday in Vietnam. The State Bank of Vietnam’s employees are about two-thirds female, and of course the socialist states were (and apparently the remaining ones are) big about recognizing women’s contribution to society. They work hard, and of course like in most societies, they are also still responsible for maintaining the household. At lunch one guy goes around toasting every individual woman (and making her have a shot of whatever this is we were given as well). I’m told this is a day for the men to show their appreciation of women, and see that this is also a day for certain men to get drunk out of their skulls at work (while the women go back to work after lunch).
There’s a ceremony in the conference room next to ours, which includes what I would have to call a Karaoke performance. I would have taken the singers to be professionals (I thought all of the music came off a CD before I glimpsed live singing through an open door), but am told they are part of the State Bank of Vietnam’s singing team. I’m also told the amount of time in which we can’t talk in our workshop would be limited to half an hour or so, so we have a long and early coffee break. Nothing wrong with that, really, they served up some decent pastry…
During the course of the days, sometimes there are sudden snatches of sound blasting out of the conference room speakers. Sometimes it’s music, another time I’m told it comes from a nearby school. Boy, that teacher must be really angry at someone, I think.

On the third day we start an hour early so people can go to a wedding party/reception apparently held at the State Bank of Vietnam for an employee in the lunch break which we extend accordingly. An interpreter and I take the opportunity to spend roughly three hours taking cabs from one bank to another in order to effect a cash advance on my credit card. This is clearly asking a LOT. We’re sent from one branch to another, one bank to another and finally arrive at a bank’s head office, which is currently on its lunch break. The doors are open, but inside, on two desks standing next to another, lie three women covered by a blanket, with another one next to them telling us no, we need to go somewhere else. A discussion ensues between the women supposedly napping on the desk, the one standing and my interpreter which is probably the most surreal experience I’ve had working for the Bank so far.
But we get the money in the end. All’s well that ends well.