Own Private Audio Self Help
My translator and I started work on getting my motivational keynote translated to Chinese Cantonese this morning at about 10 am as planned. It turns out that this project is going to be a lot more challenging than either of us thought as within the first 30 minutes, we were struggling on getting certain English phrases translated to an acceptable way that Cantonese speakers could understand.
As anybody who has done any translating can appreciate, literal translations will often not work out as meanings and concepts are lost. The first part of my motivational keynote contained quite a few abstract words in English and my translator had difficulty coming up with proper words in Cantonese that could still reflect the same meanings.
We went slowly part by part as each small numbered section of the transcript I created of my entire keynote contains only from two to four sentences. I would say each part in English the way I usually perform them during a live talk. Then the translator would come up with the Cantonese equivalent and once he’s ready, we record his translation into my laptop with my Garageband software.
I’m basically creating my own private audio self help program to learn more of the Cantonese language using my own motivational keynote as the base. As we were working on each section, I could pick out maybe 70% of the words my translator was saying in Cantonese. I’ll have to learn the rest as I study from the audio recording.
Project Will Require More Audio Self Help Recordings
We worked non-stop for four hours and managed to get only 50% of my motivational keynote translated. I’ll have to learn each section on my own and clarify the extra vocabulary I don’t understand with my translator.
Then we’ll have to get the rest of the keynote done which will require multiple audio self help recordings for myself. We may end up doing only up to the 45 minute version of my keynote.
Once we finish the project and assuming I’m successful in learning the Cantonese version, I’ll have both this version and the English version available to present to Chinese audiences here in North America, Hong Kong, Macau and maybe southern China. I’ll need a new Mandarin version for the rest of China and Taiwan which both the translator and I agreed will be much bigger potential markets.
At least in the meantime, I’ll have created my own audio self help recording for myself in terms of learning the Chinese Cantonese language. Even if I never get to use this version in a live talk, the entire translation exercise will still help me improve my own Cantonese speaking skills and that’s not a bad thing.
For more information on my English audio self help program version of my book ‘The Life Champion In You’, see my Books and Audio section at my website.
