When I was in college, I used to do interpretation for the students who were just arrived at the campus. Most of them were from Africa, so a little bit French was also useful for the communication between us. At that time, we were having French classes, the teacher was from Shanghai, his surname is Xu.

He was a very nice person, so I often quit his class and went to work with a small group of people, including teachers, drivers and clerks. We went to the airport to welcome the foreign students who were first coming to Beijing.

In the process, I met people from all over the world, some of them were from Romania, they travelled across the continent by train, it tool them more than a week to arrive in China. The major of these students were mathematics. Some of them were from Palestine, who lived in a small hotel near the university.

The rest of them were from Africa, some even wanted to thank us by inviting us to dinner with them. We drank Sprite and shared preserved eggs and fried rice together. They dared not eat the preserved eggs, because it was black and seemed not fresh, however I found it quite tasty and enjoyed eating it.

The interpretation job for the students was quite simple and casual. We just needed to understand what they said about their trips and put it into Chinese, and explained to the driver of the places we need to go from the airport. Some of them were even required to travel to other southern Chinese cities.

So we have to send them to the train station and to wait in the VIP waiting room. We have to pay attention to when the train would set off from Beijing and to remind them not to miss the train. In the waiting romm, we also need to do some interpretation job, communicating with the waiters there.

After graduation, I did a Chinese-English translation job for Broad Air Conditioning Company. I translated the website from Chinese to English, it was not a very big website, so to finish translating the contents in it was not that difficult.

It took me 3-4 days to finish the job. As a reward, I got a free dinner at home of one of the company’s employee, and he also gave me a electric razor as a gift, which was still being used by my father after over then years. At dinner, I ate fried chicken lobsters, the host had careful washed the lobsters with brushes to ensure it’s clean enough to eat.

When I was working in Qingtong Translation, I also translation some Chinese contract into English, it was about the stock transfer after the acquisition of another company. And we also translated the unmarried proof for the Chinese who wanted to marry foreigners, some of them were from the states, some were from India.

The age of the to be married couple varied a lot. Some of them were in the twenties, some of them were mid-aged. Since they were to get married, both of them were required to prove that they were unmarried. The proof was provided by the Department of Civil Affairs of Hunan Province, which was not very far away from the translation company.

We also translated lot of Standard of the European Railway System, China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation Limited wanted the material to be translated into Chinese, Russian and German. We hired some freelance translator to do the job.(the End)

Read Also: How to translate Chinese Sentences without a Subject

Take a look at how we helped our client by localizing their project for Chinese language. Click here to read the complete case study