This letter is dated Nov 1, but wasn't sent until Nov 30. Trent was speaking Portuguese in Brazil for 8 months, home for 7 months, and when this translating was done he'd been in Atlanta for about a month.
Nov 1, 2010
Dear Family,
Hey!! So Elder Blum has this totally awesome typewriter that I'm going to use today to write letters! Isn't this totally awesome? Of course it is. And of course you agree! So yeah, things are coming along really well here in Paper Mill. So I hope everything is going well in Granite Bay!
So I told you a little while back in an email that I translated Sacrament Meeting into Portuguese and that it was too difficult to explain in such a short time and that I would write you a letter instead. Well, here it is!
We have translation equipment in our ward. There's a little headset you speak into which transmits from the base unit to the wireless headsets that you can wear during Sacrament Mtg. So I was translating a live meeting. And it was awesome!
So this is how it went: The Bishop said welcome to everyone and that was all pretty easy. Then the ward announcements, which were a little harder because I didn't know what the word for "released" was. So I kind of had to improvise a bit there. But it worked out in the end. Then we sang a song and I had to translate the opening prayer. As I soon found out from Elder Mundt (who used to translate into Spanish quite frequently), you translate everything except the hymns. So translate I did. The hardest thing to translate was the youth speaker. Yeah, he just put his head down and read off his paper and never slowed down, so I had some trouble with that. But all went well afterwards. A married couple were the next adult speakers, and it was much easier. I gave up trying to translate word for word after a while because it's really difficult to keep up. So I would translate the first couple of words, get a feel for what they were going to say and then kind of just followed along catching most of the meaning of what they were saying. And then every once in a while they would bring up stuff like temple covenants or the Urim and Thummim, and I just ignored that and started kind of talking about something else related to their subject. Because, let's face it, temple covenants = kind of confusing to investigators. So I just continued talking about the Light of Christ (their subject) in Portuguese, and it all worked out really well. Elder Mundt tells me of times where the speaker decided to give a talk that was just awful for investigators, so he just talked into the microphone and gave the third missionary lesson. So yeah, translating -- super awesome! It was actually a really spiritual experience as well, because after a while I just found myself talking into the microphone and realizing that I wasn't even thinking about what I was doing any more. And I talked to the Brazilian investigators afterwards and they all complimented me on what "a wonderful job" I did. Elder Mundt had been translating for the last couple of weeks, and he told me he'd been having a pretty rough go -- he was originally a Spanish-speaking elder and President King switched him over to Portuguese. So yeah, Elder Mundt's the man, but I've been speaking Portuguese a bit longer. :)
Well, that's about all I've got to tell you guys at this point -- email me about this letter when you get it! Talk to you soon!
Love,
Elder McGregor
1 comment:
I couldn't stop laughing about his "editing" of the talks! Too hysterical. And awesome, jord says he wishes he could have edited out talks for his investigators... Lol :)
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