Lost in Translation

This week is my first full five day training course. I've been co-training with Ilona, the PT, and a volunteer PT named Inge. The first day went well. I got my stride with speaking and lecturing again, especially with having a pace and time for translation. Takes a little getting used to.

Ilona and I hard at work. I think we're watching a patient walk and critiqueing the AFO he's wearing.



The problem came when Tuesday morning, I was informed by two colleagues of mine, that the Lao staff in our course had reported that my translator doesn't make any sense. They are interested in the information I was giving but my translator was not translating properly. Of course, I have no idea what is being said in Lao and didn't have a clue that my words were being lost.



Lao staff working with their new camera to capture some gait video of a stroke patient.



My translator, Soksai, and I at the team building day. He's leaving me to take over management of the visitor's center, so we're highering a replacement.

My colleague Donna told me the story of a Lao translator being asked to translate the term "mainstream" and saying then the man stood in the river. I can only imagine what my trainees have been being told.

Just yet another element that keeps this job interesting. Hopefully, yesterday and today went better. I tried to emphasize the need for the trainees to speak up if something doesn't make sense, because I have no way of knowing.

Our training has been on gait evaluation. A huge topic to cram into a week long course but they seem engaged at least. We've been having them do lots of demonstrations of gait and interaction which seems to help the learning when language is hard.

The Lao staff figuring out their new cameras. Lao culture seems to involve lots of standing around.

We've also provided them all with new laptops (each center gets one) and cameras to aid in gait evaluation and recording of patient gait and photos. One issue in Lao is that items such as these mysteriously disappear....never to be seen again.

Our COPE team building day. Normally I hate this kind of thing, but it was helpful for me to get to know some of the Lao staff better and understand the way the organization works.  



Training in full force. I'm enjoying the lecturing part of it but it's frustrating when it seems that so much is lost in translation.