So happy and giddy! My first TED translation is finally out!!!

Flashback about a year ago.
I was somewhere in Quezon City doing errands for the wedding. I was wondering why in that day alone, I came along a lot of proof on how the English language is so dominant in our country and how the Filipino language comes in second.

I was inside the train and the announcement I hear was in pure English, no announcement in Filipino at all even after the English one. Segue: it’s really nice to know that when I took the train again early this year, again for the preps, they had the announcements already in Filipino. I’m at peace.

When I got out the train (flashback again), the announcement on the platform is again in English. I looked around me and all I can see are Filipinos. Nary a foreigner around. But why in English?

And then I signed contracts with suppliers, again, it was in English.

For a few days I think I complained about it with my friends so much so that my friends teased me on how nationalistic i am.

Then I came across an article about top websites for the year and TED was among it and among the highlighted talks in the feature about TED was one of my favorite TED talks – Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity. Of course seeing the talk mentioned made me look up the talk again. I saw the talk when it didn’t have any subtitles yet. But when I visited then, the talk had already 42 translations!! But no Filipino translations on it. Now, did I mention how passionate I was about promoting Pilipino days prior to this discovery? Hehe.

So yes, the inevitable happened. I applied as translator.

Two things.

I was VERY busy at that time what with wedding preps just getting started and that I was due to fly to Japan in a week or so for our civil wedding and the paperworks is almost like a nightmare.
But I had LOTS of extra energy as well. I was feverish about almost everything. So much adrenaline was rushing inside me I had to have some outlet. And the adrenaline includes the worries I have for our wedding and migration paperworks. Ergo, I have to have an outlet.

Second. Being a translator is not as easy as just picking out the video you want to translate and voila, it’d be out in public already. No siree. Upon application and upon signing on in dot subs, TED will send you a questionnaire which poses as an interview of sorts to gauge if you are really determined with the task at hand and if you are capable to do so. It took a week before I got the affirmative reply. Yes, needless to say, I was in tenterhooks while waiting for the result. But I passed, yey!

But. I need to finish the translation in a month. Gulp. I haven’t written a full article in Filipino since university, some 10 years ago. And I was really busy. Buy I really want to prove my mettle with my national language and I want Filipino to be in the roster of subtitles for this amazing talk. Hence, I pursued.

I finished it a day before the deadline. O LE! But in order for the translation to be published, somebody else has to review it. It’s like the deliverables we have in the office – somebody prepares it, another reviews it (although in TED the reviewer need not be older in experience than you, as compared to how it is in the office) and finally TED approves it. It took a year for someone to have the time to review it. Thankful still.

And so here now is the talk. Please don’t forget to select the Pilipino subtitle! 🙂

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html