If you want to try something wild, or if you want to know how many potentials in your personalities, why not try to work with foreigners, who cannot commuicate with you and often make misunderstandings?
Well, the post will be looked like a very long complaint, rather, you could consider it's a foreign worker's observational journal about the language barriers. Enjoy the writing and always welcome to correct my poor Vietnamese words since my coworkers cannot do that mostly!
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After working, I couldn't help but thinking about the sentences I failed to express to the two young Vietnamese coworkers and the language desires always fire fierecely on working and become faint after that! I am tired to get involved and get through the working phrases in a tired day.
And the next day often feel tired to hear those unfamilar VN words, then all of them make me more tired too!
The things I wanted to convey like: (I have to say sometimes it's even uneasy to express in Chinese or in English quickly.)
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Related to tasks on computer:
* In my mind in English or Chinese: ''Rename the files as...''''The begining is xxx, the middle is yyy, and the end is zzz.''
InVN words : ten o day giong...(I showed a piece of paper,) ge nai (I don't know why I often used it and is it a VN lang?) la (I pointed the part of paper) xxx, ge nai la yyy, ge nai la zzz.''
(often more than 20-second speaking in my extreme poor VN words cause stomach nerves.)
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* In my mind: ''You see the paper here is xxx, so you add a new file named as xxx. There are x1, x2, and x3 in xxx, so you add three different files in xxx.''
InVN words : ''Em tay ge nai xxx (pointed the paper), ge nai giong (clicked the mouse), ge nai o day x1, x2, x3, em giong... ''
* For the coworker's problem in serching on Excel sheets
In my mind: ''When you cannot find the words you want, maybe it's locked in a grid. You have to use mouse to click in any other grid, then it can work. ''
InVN words : ''(similar as above) '' I clicked and showed to them and thought it was easy. They couldn't understand at all and needed the other coworker's translation.
There are many similar situations and feel very crazy everyday.
* I asked one of them A to cut piece of paper like a kind of size. Of course I showed her.
She said, ''Giong day, dung k (like this right?)?'' I said, "Dung (Yes)." But I didn't know why she folded the papers smaller. ''Ge nai ok (It's ok.)'' I said, since it's still acceptable. However, than she folded it much smaller so that all of them couldn't be used!
* I asked A and B to find some data. Some were not found. A kept telling me, ''K biet, k biet...(I don't know...)'' I was a little angry because we just did similar task for searching. I told the coworker, a helper for translation, without facial expression, ''You tell A don't keep telling me she doesn't know. It's because we don't know, so we have to do the search!!'' She seemed to know I was unhappy and felt a little embarassed and didn't translate. I gave up and felt better after speaking and expressing (eventually) in Chinese.
* When I asked B to deal with some numbers. Most of time I spoke numbers in VN words. Very few time I would utter in Chinese by myself and he always repeated that and I knew he wanted to learn. That' fine but I felt quite noisy when he tried to repeated several time in incorrect Chinese. I have to say it's nice to learn langs. in working but not suitable for such a busy working moments at all!
* It's a challenge to answer their ''Tai sao (Why)?'' . Sometimes I can make them understand in very silly and simple words. For example, ''Bay gio em lam... (Now you work for...)', and they asked ''Tai sao (Why?)'' , I can reply ''Neu nhanh nhanh (Because quick quick)! '' (Obviously a wrong word). And many time just reply ''Chi k biet noi la gi (I don't know how to say). '' It's really difficult to explain many things for poor vocabularies. I am sorry that I often cannot satisfy their wants about the tasks.
In these days, I also found some roles we are playing:
* For A, B, and C, the coworker as translator, they easily speaking something funny or jokes duing work. Some are related to me, but most of time I don't understand at all so I just can see they laugh and feel like an outsider. A film is named ''Lost in Translation,'' (Its Chinese title is Love Doesn't Need To Be Translated), I could said a joke doesn't need to be translated, since you don't want to know it after everyone finished laughing.
*A often makes comments with the sentence of ''ma' streefully. I think it's a kind of term to end a sentence with a emotion, so it sounds close to the listener. I felt quite impatient to hear such a sound and expression easily...
Of course, I don't do anything, and try to be calm since it's really my own problem to face the situation: Two Vietnamese coworkers cannot speak Chinese or English and we have to work for a long time! It is realreally like in a book about Dahama, describing crazy and anxious drivers in the Los Angles road and they always feel angry to the traffic or others.
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I still remember when I ask A, B or both to do some tasks, I often can hear B asked A, "Chi noi...em hieu k? (She said... do you understand?)". Even in one second, I was too disappointed for the lang. barriers with them and thought, "I don't want to work with foreigners like them at all!!!" I could feel their confusion about me and the tasks sometimes. However, the situations are different. At least they can share their feelings with others in their mother tongue but I have to swallow all the frustrations and keep going by myself. I don't tell others about that in daily life because I know there must be two possibilities:
1. I should make efforts to learn VN words to communicate since they received my assignments and seemed very slowly to make progress for either English or Chinese.
2. They cannot work with me and I am not sure will influence their jobs.
For the former, it often makes no much senses discussing the motivation or ways to learn something, most important is learning itself. And for the latter, I like both of them can have a job without worriness. That's all.
I know I will be a special memory for them if they won't have chances to work with foreigners, and for me, I will tell others such a ridiculous experience smilingly just for fun. Both of us must have had 100000 whys to each other. The answers may come or maybe not come. They will not be so important anymore.
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