At the end of last month, one of my coworkers left the company. Since she was the main translator for the team, the higher-ups looked around at us and went, "Well, somebody's got to fill this slot, I guess..." Which meant last Friday both me and the new guy had to do an impromptu translation exercise. We got volume 5 of the manga, and with previous volumes for reference we took a stab at translating as much as possible.
My coworker very nicely explained to me that this wasn't a test, we weren't competing against each other or being graded, she just wanted us to get a feel for what the job would be like...Which of course made me EVEN MORE nerve-wracked than I already was. We went back and forth for a while on "It's a test!" and "No, no, it's not a test..." But anyway I tried to be positive and said, "Honto ni, Kyoumi ga arimasu. Tanoshisou ne..."
One hour never went so fast. I did the introduction and a dozen lines before I had to stop.
Then on Monday my coworker came to me and said, "Thank you for trying the translation on Friday. As you know, both you and Chris tried, but in the end we decided that since you're a girl and the manga is for teenage girls, it's better for you to do the translation. Also, you said you were interested. So even though the quality of the translation was about the same--it wasn't a test!--we're going to ask you do be in charge of the translation."
This week I started training, which means I've been reading manga at my desk at work! As part of my job!!!!!! It feels like cheating...
What I learned from this incident was that the important part of the "test" wasn't actually the test they asked me to do. The thing that my coworker remembered was not the quality of my translation but that I smiled and said I was interested in doing manga translation. (Or maybe I just lucked out that my company is translating a shoujo and not a shonen manga.)
Sometimes asking a question or making an observation at the right time can help you more than a lot of preparation.
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