On July 1st, I took the first written test of Jiutong Translation. Jiutong Company is located in Yongkang Building in Dongcheng District, occupying the entire eleventh and twelfth floors. There is a huge golf course at the back of the building. The air is fresh, the environment is beautiful, and there are few cars and horses. It is an ideal workplace in my mind. Obviously, this is not my opinion alone. There are as many as 50 people who participated in the written test with me. I heard that there are hundreds of applicants, which is the result of the first round of screening by the HR department based on their resumes. In fact, they only need two English translators. One can imagine the fierce competition. The written test is very difficult. After the test, many people complain that they can't finish it. I barely finished it, so I can't guarantee the quality. When I came out, a girl from Beijing Normal University asked me:
"That'Shuangskin Liuyu forty yards, black color towering two thousand feet. How did you translate it?"
"The rimy bark, slippery it rain, is forty spans around. And kingfish-blue hues, high up into the sky, to thousand feet above."
She looked at me, pursed her lips and smiled: "Why use kingfish-blue? Isn't it ckness?"
"Dai color is not completely black. Dai color is actually blue black, that is, blue ck."
"Then why don't you use blue ck instead of kingfish-blue?"
I didn't answer, just smiled lightly.
"Understood," she sighed. "A showman, isn't he? Well, my translation is about the same as yours, but I didn't quite follow the word position of the original poem."
"Ancient poetry is good because of its confrontation, so I try not to change the word position. I prefer literal translation."
We walked through the promenade together, and she suddenly whispered: "Do you think this question is very strange? We were asked to translate the bidding documents before, and then we were asked to translate such difficult ancient Chinese. It's not an exam, so it's not worth it, right? "
I raised my hand: "Seriously agree. The person who made the test must be a sadist. I have never seen such a depressing test question."
After saying this, I saw her wink at me quietly and coughed in a low voice. I turned around and saw a young man in a suit and a yellow tie standing behind me, holding a folder in his hand, looking at me with a strange look.
I chewed gum and said to him, "This classmate, are you also here for the exam?"
He said coldly, "No."
Then, he ignored me, walked straight into the elevator and disappeared.
Watching him leave, the girl let out an exaggerated "Wow", acting like a nympho: "That gentleman just now is so cool!"
I smile. Although I didn't spend much time with Li Chuan, I was already immune to all handsome men. I love him so madly that I often turn on the desk lamp in the middle of the night and quietly look at his sleeping face.
The next day, the company called and informed me and nine other people to participate in a one-on-one oral interview.
My oral score is not the best, but Jiutong is very satisfied with my written test. Two days later, the last three competitors and I went to meet their general manager: Xiao Guan.
I am not very familiar with the situation in the translation industry, but I have heard of the name Xiao Guan. He was born into an academic family, and his parents were both professors in the English Department of Peking University. His father graduated from Oxford University, and his mother is the senior sister of Professor Feng Jieliang. The names of the couple often appear in English textbooks. Xiao Guan worked as a translator for a long time in the foreign branch of the National News Agency in his early years. After that, he went into business and established this company. Hearing that the business was prosperous, he launched it within a few years. Of course, in addition to translation, with the support of his uncle, a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, he also dabbled in other investments such as real estate. At present, Jiutong has 17 branches all over the country, and its performance is very outstanding. He was one of the top ten outstanding "young entrepreneurs" in the city last year.
When I saw Xiao Guan for the first time, I was secretly discouraged. It turned out that he was the one who stood behind me and looked at me that day. He looked twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old, solemn, steady, with a relaxed demeanor and a bookish face, not quite an entrepreneur. As Mr. Feng said, he is in the cultural business.
"You are Xie Xiaoqiu," he said slowly while sitting on the executive chair, "Professor Feng called twice to recommend you."
I don't know. I just told Mr. Feng that I wanted to join Jiutong in a small chat, and he quietly helped me out.
I looked at him and knew that the papers for the written test must have come from him, so I thought in my heart that I still had some hope. Quickly defended: "I have no intention of going through the back door."
"Professor Feng said a lot of good things about you, but he also reminded me that your profession is excellent, but you have some personal flaws. He won't say what the flaws are. But he said, I'll know when I see you."
I know that Xiao and Feng are family friends, and their fathers went through the Cultural Revolution hand in hand. Feng Jing'er has been chasing Xiao Guan to call her elder brother since she was a child.
"There's nothing wrong with me," I said, "and you can put up with my faults."
He stood up from his office chair and looked at me: "Did anyone tell you what to wear to the interview?"
I was wearing a casual suit. It's actually the most expensive outfit I've ever bought. The color is brighter, and it matches with the wool dress below, very similar to Sanmao who wrote "How Many Flowers Fall in Dreams". I think it's pretty bohemian, which I like. In fact, I wore a serious suit a few times before, but this time, because I have to compete with the last few top students from prestigious schools, my qualifications and level are not particularly outstanding compared with them, so I made this risky strategy, hoping to win by surprise .
"Director Wang from the personnel department said that the main work of this position is translation, and everything is done on the computer, basically there is no need to deal with customers face to face. Besides," I bit my lip, "I only have one suit, which I wear every time. It. Don’t you get tired of watching it every day?”
He probably felt that my explanation was very solid, so he dropped the topic.
"Also, why do you need so many earrings for your ears? It's troublesome for me to look at, don't you trouble wearing them?"
Are you a talent or a beauty pageant? The words rushed to my throat and I swallowed them. My answer was short and to the point: "I've had bad luck in the past few years, and my fate has been very difficult. I asked someone to tell my fortune, saying that the five elements lack gold."
He was silent for a moment. I thought he could finally spare me, but he said again: "Who told you that you can chew gum during the interview?"
"I am nervous."
"You, nervous?" He said nonchalantly, "You hand in the paper first, right?"
These words hit me again. It was clearly stated on the test paper that the test time would be 120 minutes, and I handed in the paper when the time came, even though I knew in my heart that many answers were incomplete. Unexpectedly, the rest of the people said that they were not finished and refused to hand in the papers. As a result, the actual time for handing in the papers was delayed by more than ten minutes.
"I just handed in the paper on time." I hated myself in my heart, I was really sick, why did I have to hit him with every sentence
"Okay," he said, looking at his watch, "other than that, what's wrong with you?"
"Gone."
"You know," he said after a pause, "the last four people have almost the same academic qualifications and levels. For us, we can choose anyone. Of course we will choose someone who is easier to get along with."
"I'm so easy to get along with," I said, "I swear to you. I'm cute, except for my weird clothes."
"Yeah." He nodded, walked back to his chair and sat down, and drew on my folder with a pen: "You come to work tomorrow, we just received a few contracts recently, and the English department is particularly short of people. You Do you have an English name?"
"No."
"All English translators working here must have English names, especially those with 'X' and 'Q' in pinyin."
I am XXQ.
"The word Xiaoqiu is not difficult for foreigners to pronounce, right?" I don't like to have any English names, and there is a bit of begging in my voice.
"No." He said firmly.
"Then would you please give me one?"
"Annie, how are you?"
"OK."
My office is at No. 1107 on the 11th floor, English Department. The one who shared the room with me was another girl who joined the company at the same time as me, Tang Yulian. Although there are only two of us in this room, facing the window, and the sound insulation is good, but the entire wall of the house is made of transparent glass. So, no matter what you do, people outside can see it.
Tang Yulian is not tall, but her facial features are exquisite. I think it's a bit like Yi Nengjing.
I teased her: "Hi, are you Yi Nengjing's younger sister?"
She smiled, showing her white teeth, with two small dimples on her face: "I hate Yi Nengjing to death, everyone says I look like her. They force me to sing her songs during K songs."
"You look no worse than Yi Nengjing," I turned on the computer, "Really."
"The training in the morning was really tiring. Our Mr. Xiao can really speak! I wanted to go to the bathroom a long time ago, but seeing his serious face scared me so much that I didn't dare to go, it really tortured me to death." She complained persistently.
"Me too. I kind of want to wear headphones to listen to music, but after thinking about it, I don't dare. By the way, the director of the English department is really a beauty!"
"She is Xiao Guan's current girlfriend. You have to behave well, otherwise people will blow the pillow."
"Current girlfriend?" I asked, "You just came here, how do you know?"
"I have a classmate in the French Department who often gossips. Xiao Guan is young, wealthy, and suave. He has girlfriends of N years, and most of them flirt with him. Even Director Tao Xinrutao is chasing him very hard. Mr. Xiao was hospitalized with a stomach ailment some time ago, Sister Tao is not from Cantonese, she learns how to cook soup for him every day, alas, I hope it’s not because the flowers are falling on purpose, and the water is ruthless.”
"No wonder I didn't see you at lunch, so I went to listen to gossip." Thinking that scholars have the habit of taking a nap, but Jiutong stipulates that there is only one hour for lunch at noon, so I said, "I have Nescafe coffee, come here A pick-me-up?"
"Okay, okay, let's start working quickly." She handed me the stack of manuscripts she was holding in her arms, "This is for you. You have to deliver the manuscripts on time, and if you don't finish it, it will be considered a breach of contract."
I didn't sit down and went straight to make two cups of coffee.
When she came back, she saw Tang Yulian typing quickly on the computer. I pulled a huge copy of Webster's Dictionary out of my bag and asked her, "Don't you want a dictionary?"
"I have the latest version of Jinshan Ciba, and my computer is full of various translation software."
I want to beg her to give me a copy too. After thinking about it, I didn't open my mouth. When you meet for the first time, you don’t know the details, so don’t ask for help casually. Unexpectedly, she pointed to a USB flash drive on the table and said, "Here, it's all here, you can install it. Believe it or not, it works pretty well."
"Thanks."
She has a very small Sony laptop. I don't have a laptop, and I always go to the school's computer room or Internet cafe to surf the Internet. All my homework is handwritten. Yes, I am still stuck in the era of manual workshops. As soon as I entered Jiutong, I was overjoyed to see that everyone was equipped with a desktop computer.
After opening the folder, I finally understood why that Xiao Guan would come up with these maddening ancient Chinese test questions. My main job is to translate auction brochures for auction houses. It is full of Chinese antiques: calligraphy, paintings, porcelain, seals, furniture, jade, bronze and so on. Each lot is accompanied by a detailed description of the item's provenance and value. It is inevitable to quote a lot of classical Chinese of Qijue Guao in the explanation.
I couldn't help raising my head and asking, "Hey, Yulian, what are you looking for?"
She typed furiously without raising her head: "Bids. Engineering bids. What about you?"
"The auction house's manual, seriously depressed."
Translating bid documents is actually a relatively common job here. I also inquired about it beforehand. When applying for a job, I deliberately added a lot of engineering vocabulary.
"Fortunately, this job was not assigned to me." She said, "My ancient Chinese is not good. I don't understand the Chinese side. How can I translate the English side? I heard that these manuals were first translated by the people below. Review, and then hand it over to Mr. Xiao for the third review. It can be seen how worried he is. Other documents, bid documents and so on, can be submitted after the director of the department reviews them."
I finished my half cup of coffee and started translating the first manual. A total of ten antiques. Bada Shanren's paintings, Song Huizong's flower and bird paintings, etc. The first is a set of Ishida jade seals of Emperor Qianlong. Each seal has inscriptions on all four sides. I have been translating all morning, and I have searched through "Ciyuan", "Chinese Dictionary", "Dictionary of Chinese Allusions", and Lin Yutang's online dictionary before I can translate one of them.
According to the contract, the translation will be completed within 15 days. I had ten days to submit a first draft for review.
In the past ten days, I only slept an average of four hours a day. I was so nervous that I didn't even have time to take a shower. On the morning of the tenth day, I handed over the electronic and typed drafts to Tao Xinru, the director of the English department. She spent a whole day correcting it for me, and asked me to correct it before handing it over to Xiao Guan for final review.
Tao Xinru didn't change much. She changed some of my adjectives to be more quaint. As expected of the director, he really has skills.
I sent the corrected manuscript to Xiao Guan. An hour later, he emailed back the first page, with a lot of words, sentence patterns, and changes.
Xiao Guan called and said: "I only edit the first page, and you study what is wrong with it yourself. Then, edit the rest one by one. Send it back for me to see."
I spent the night studying his way, spent another day revising it, and then sent him the third draft. The third draft came back quickly, and he made a lot of changes on the second page I translated. Then say, modify the next few dozen pages according to this method. I changed it until the penultimate day when the contract expired, and changed it five times before it was considered passed.
Seeing him at lunch the next day, I was all green in the face.
"Now you understand what my standards are?" he said, looking at me idly.
"Your standard is perfect." I replied listlessly.
"You have a good foundation in ancient Chinese, have you studied Chinese?"
"My father graduated from the Chinese Department of Fudan University."
"So, it's homework?"
"Not to mention, a little bit."
He stared at my face, and finally said something warmer: "I'll give you a day off, go back and have a rest."
"Will the salary be paid?"
"There is also a bonus." He patted me on the shoulder generously: "Annie, ell done."
I translated the auction brochure for two full months, and I had to revise several drafts each time, feeling like I was going crazy. The most difficult to translate is ceramics, which contains a lengthy introduction to the firing process of Song Dynasty porcelain. I didn't dare to refuse in person, and complained endlessly in private. Every time I encountered a difficulty, I was so depressed that I ran downstairs to the garbage place by the back door to smoke to relieve my worries.
Looking back at Yulian, she was translating tender documents and contracts with ease. The car is familiar with the road, fast and good; the hands are typing on the keyboard freely, and the sound is in the ear.
After two months, I finally had a turn of events and started translating bid documents and contracts. These documents have legal effect and have extremely high requirements for accuracy. After translating for two months, I am quite familiar with the vocabulary in it. One day, Tao Xinru suddenly called me to her office.
"Annie," she motioned for me to sit down, "You have performed well at work. Mr. Xiao personally proposed yesterday that you be made a full-time member in advance. From now on, you will no longer get the salary of the probationary period, but enjoy all the treatment of a full-time employee here. "
I said, "Thank you, Director, for your care."
She hesitated for a while, and then said: "Mr. Xiao is negotiating a big deal recently. A company needs to hire a few permanent translators from us. The personnel relationship will stay in Jiutong, and the salary will be paid there. They are in urgent need of employment. They gave us a very good price. Of course, they also have high requirements for translators, and the remuneration they give is quite considerable. We didn’t want to let people go, so we proposed to work there five days a week, three days, two days They did not agree to return to the headquarters to work. The reason was that it involved the commercial secrets of the translated documents, so they proposed to stay for two years, and the translators were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
"For English, Mr. Xiao recommended you." She said lightly, "I'm very reluctant, but the company doesn't want to spoil the brand. Are you willing to go?"
"Um-"
"The salary over there is 1.7 times that of here. You enjoy all the benefits of regular employees over there: free Chinese meals, taxi reimbursement, medical insurance, etc., and 15 days of paid annual leave a year."
For young people who are just getting started, Jiutong's treatment is already very good. What an attractive condition!
Just as I was about to speak, Tao Xinru said again: "Of course, we also hope that if you have time, you can take care of the business here. We may trouble you with some important documents. Not many, we will pay double the translation fee. After all You are still one of us. After two years, you don't have to worry about where you will go, and you can come back at any time."
I thought to myself: I just came here, no matter how good the business is, it will not be strong enough to represent the company. This is a fat job, not a bitter plum on the road, and everyone will fight for it. Why must I be the one to send out
"Would you like to go?"
Of course I nodded: "Yes." Then, I suddenly remembered a key question: "By the way, what kind of company is it?"
"A Swiss architectural design company, CG Architects. Their original English translation got married and went abroad, and now they are waiting for someone to fill in the gap."
I don't know if there is any blood on my face, I want to laugh, but I am too weak to laugh: "CG Architects?"
"You should have heard that CG and four other architectural design companies are currently bidding for a huge C urban area reconstruction project in Wenzhou City. It involves three resort villages, ten residential areas and five villa complexes as a whole. planning."
"Is the boss of CG always Swiss?" Knowing that Li Chuan is probably not in CG, I still want to ask clearly. After all, I had no contact with him for five full years. As time goes by, that scar has not faded away, but I buried it very deeply. Li Chuan is an air bubble, and I am a fish in the deep sea. I swallowed the air bubbles and dared not spit them out. When you spit it out, it will float to the surface of the sea.
"No," Tao Xinru said with displeasure in her eyes. Such a pie fell into my hands, and I was not happy, not grateful, and really ungrateful. "The boss's surname is Jiang, Jiang Haotian. He is from Beijing."
Thank goodness!
"Then, it's settled like this. After I report to Mr. Xiao, you will come and sign the agreement." She suddenly gave me a meaningful look, and said: "I heard that last weekend, Mr. Xiao invited you to Fugui Villa have dinner?"
"yes."
"Why?"
"Because of the auction manual, he said that I did a good job and made a good start. Therefore, the auction house signed a long-term cooperation contract with Jiutong. I hope that I will concentrate on the auction house in the future."
On that day, Xiao Guan invited dinner alone, drank a few glasses of wine, and said a few unrestrained words. I pretended to be deaf and dumb and prevaricated. Therefore, Xiao Guan definitely did not "strongly recommend" me to join CG.
"Well." She looked at her watch and said, "You can go."