Swine flu as text

I am doing it as I type, and it's not poetry.

Swine flu as text.

Go to Interpreter Training Resources, notice the links Using the Internet to prepare.

Notice how it's stale already. Well, no criticism here. It must turn sour just like this writing will.

It must still be valid though when time is on hand.

But time is not on hand. I have an assignment, an urgent Over the Phone Interpretation request in a few hours related with swine Flu.

Actually, I am not, but let's say I am, we are under the constraint, the stress, the frill of a mission impossible kind of request, in X hour time (less than 3), you will be doing OPI for .... ummm .....

1) A financial analyst wanting to talk consult with some knowledgeable colleague in Japan about the local potential benefit on healthcare related industry.

2) (tougher one) : here the subject is around the national preparedness, state plans and medical capacity

3) (even more tougher) : medics on both sides discussing medical procedures

As you do, I have been reading in leisurely fashion about the coming flu, immune to the fact that I could die of it. I have been doing more skimming, surfing over text, audio and video, the media soup.

But now, surfing must quickly take some depth and do the submarine.

Latch closed ... diving we do.

I have the clear feeling that in 2009, you don't start reading and franticly write down a makeshift glossary. Clearly, the task is to get the big picture AND the words that come with the picture.

It's no poetry despite this RETURN.

So in 2009, you go after the glossary and bump into this one (there are others).

Reminding to the crew : all this is happening live, but you have to understand that it took a minute or less in this case since we started diving to grab that glossary.

The glossary. It's number 2 in the Google query at this time. Number one could be added, compared to it, but remember that time is the limit and it's scarce at that.

What you do from here?

Read it aloud, full speed.

Now comes the tricky one : get the same in (your B, C or Z language here).

You know what is a global language? It's a language for which you type "swine flu glossary" and you find results right away. Let's not start bickering about the imperfections of the findings. You find something quickly, so it's global.

My B, Z whatever language is Japanese. I don't want to start my standard Japan bashing but you won't find a swine flu glossary in Japanese right away. I mean, now, because it may change later, next month or next year. But right now, in the first query results, you don't find one. What you find instead are links to factual stuff, aggregations of articles, starting with Yahoo followed by the Asahi. There's a telling here that find the factuals as top query results but we are diving in stealth mode. No time for sociolinguistic considerations.

Now, the glossary in English is giving us the big picture with words, medical oriented but you have to start with something that is potentially highly technical. The collateral policies and financial related stuff, we will scoop reading the news in both language.

But we want the EN glossary in JP, right? How we do that? Any magic trick? Not magic but we could use Google translate - don't trust it today though, but tomorrow ...
we could use Jim Breen's brilliant (nay, stellar) online dic. No we can't unless with cut each words in English. Why no English -> Japanese text translation, at least to generate a list of words? am I am missing something here? Anyway, we can still do something and come up with a bilingual glossary of sort.

Next? We read in both language news, keeping in mind the coming setting and orienting the queries to veer more toward business, medical or policies at large.

Are we ready? Do we have time for something else? Maybe some TV news, maybe some podcast, anything that gives audio input.

Still some time? Read aloud a selection of clipped articles and call it ready. Have your dictionaries on hand, put the headset and here we go.

Does this make sense? Is there something more strategic, efficient to do?