Thursday, February 5, 2009

Orientation Week Again

My life seems to involve a never ending series of orientations. I was orientated to living cross-culturally, I was oriented to life in Tanzania, I was orientated to the cluster project here in Musoma and this week has been one more orientation. However this orientation is not for me but for the Tanzanian translators who were recently hired. It is their introduction to working with the cluster project as part of an international team.

Today was the fourth day of the orientation and it was my dream come true! We spent all day talking about our personalities! I absolutely love analyzing my own personality and those of everyone around me. We began yesterday by having the translators fill out the Keirsey Temperament test (similar to Myers-Briggs) and then spent today looking at the different personalities.

There were some challenges because the test and the results are in English so everything had to be translated into Swahili. And Swahili doesn't have all the same adjectives with all the different nuances so that proved to be quite difficult at times. However at the end of the day the translators had a pretty decent idea of what personality they and their teammates are.

Not only was it great fun to see what types of personalities emerged but it was helpful to know the personalities of the translators I will be working with. Fortunately two of them (who will be doing the Ngoreme translation) are exactly like me so at least I can know a little bit where they are coming from.

Although this week has been a new experience for all of us leading or helping with the orientation, it has gone well and been a good first step in building an international translation team.

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