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.