My 4 days factory adventure January 29, 2009

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me if I could help her. She owns a translation agency and she needed a German-Romanian interpreter for a technical training. She didn’t know too many details, and I didn’t ask too many questions. I just said YES.

I liked the idea of a new experience and it was not a 100% unknown field, since i have done training interpretation many times before. So i just went for it:)

The short story is this: for 4 days i was interpreting a training about a precision welding machine. The high-tech of that machine fascinated me and the cold, the smell, the noise and the oily atmosphere from the production platform drove me crazy. I can say that now I know a lot about the latest technology in precision welding. I even know how to use that machine. I stood up and walked around the machine for 9 hours per day, dressed-up as if I was going on a mountain trip (and I still caught a cold).

The long story is this: I got to meet really nice people that were not very educated but had so much good-sense that not even a Ph. D. could overpass them. These guys were amazing – all they wanted to know was what they should do to do their job best. They were the most proactive participants i have ever seen in a training i have been in. They asked all the possible questions, trying to get as much know-how as possible in the flat price the training was delivered for. They were also very stubborn. They knew some English and insisted in making themselves understood instead of waiting for me to translate. The trainer was a really cool guy who happened to be from Frankfurt am Main – a town with tons of memories for me – so we went for a drink afterwords and exchanged some opinions about cars, cheese and the Romanian culture. I also learned a lot of technical terms (industry related) in German. The last day was the most amazing though: I woke up as usually and felt sick. I almost felt like not going but I thought I would push my limits. Again, the cold, the noise, the machine and its functions, and in the end i came back to town by bus not by train. I set by a very interesting lady. She was so simple and so amazingly interesting. She was working for that company since she finished high school and she had 3 kids one more wonderful than the other, and she kept talking about school, about the old times, about all sorts of things, and i kept listening. The trip is about 30 minutes. We got to town and we said good-bye, no names exchanged or anything…as if i was working in the factory since forever and we were going to see each other in the same bus again. This reminded me of my mother’s youth – she also used to work in a factory for about 20 years until she got sick and she retired. I almost felt like i lived a day of her life from about 10 years ago.

All in all it was amazing to connect with these simple people for whom family is so important, doing a good job is all that counts when at work, no matter the salary or the working conditions, and that huge “amount” of good-sense…

So, yes, i got a cold and a strange dizziness but it was a great experience.
My dareberry for today is: no matter how many years of school you have, or how many countries you have seen, or how much money you make or spend per month, try to meet simple people and let yourself charmed by them. They are not hard to find and listening to them is always a win-win.