My mission was to travel to a manufacturing plant in Philadelphia and explain employee benefits for next year to the company’s Russian speaking workers. Given that employee benefits (things like health and life insurance, other insurance) can be confusing topics anyway – trying to articulate them in Russian was very intimidating.

Overall it went well.

I was presenting the information together with the VP of HR of the parent company, and her original plan was for me to do a parallel translation. Which means that, she was say something in English – and then I would translate. Then she would go again – and I would translate.

It turned out that parallel translation is not something I should have attempted, because it is much more difficult trying to translate something on the spot than trying to explain the same idea yourself. There were many instances where I simply had no idea how to say certain words in Russian, and I had to improvise my way out of it. It didn’t help that about half of the Russian audience spoke English perfectly well and could tell exactly where I wasn’t effective at translating.

So the for the next presentation, I convinced the VP that I do the presentation myself, all in Russian. It was like night and day – when giving my own presentation everything seemed to flow smoother and I made considerably less of a full of myself.

Lesson: read more Russian to build a better vocabulary.

I guess it doesn’t matter which test I take (though I am inclined to take both), as long as I continue to study. And I’ve been able to keep up my studying thanks to a great website with interactive memorization flashcards.

In related news, I’ve volunteered to give a public presentation in Philadelphia for work… in Russian! Now, it’s true that I grew up speaking Russian and speak Russian to my mom and grandmother – but I’ve never used it at work before. Wish me luck, because I only have a week and a half to prepare.

The next step is to create a plan of study I can execute before the day of the test.

It’s hard to believe that it has been 11 years since I seriously studied Japanese, and 12 years since I left Japan. During this time, I felt the language slowly wither away – every time I would watch a Japanese movie or TV I would notice that I understood less and less.

It would be a tremendous loss if I don’t take advantage of my luck, of having lived there as a child for 3 years. So, I have decided to seriously begin studying it again.

The Plan

Every year the Japan Educational Exchanges and Services and the Japan Foundation administer the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験, nihongo nōryoku shiken) or JLPT. The JLPT is a standardized test to evaluate and certify the language proficiency of non-native Japanese speakers. It is held once every year, on the first Sunday of December. The next test will be on December 2nd, 2007. I intend to take it. The JLPT has four levels beginning at level 4 and progressing to level 1 – the most difficult:

I honestly have no idea where I would fall in the ranking above were I to take the test today. I don’t have enough confidence to even say that I would pass Level 4. So, my first order of business: take a practice test and find out how much Japanese I really remember.