Many moons ago, in the 70´s actually, I worked at Volkswagen here in Brazil as a technical translator and copywriter. The factory was enormous, almost like a small town, with over 22,000 workers. It had it´s own small hospital, police force and fire brigade and over the years produced over 20 million vehicles.
Amongst my jobs I was occasionally asked to translate informative booklets from Portuguese into English or to check articles written in English by the mainly German executives. This occasionally led to problems when for example one such executive insisted on correcting my English from "head of cattle" to "heads of cattle" in an article about the company farm. It wasn´t always easy to get my point across even though I was the native English speaker!
One day I was given a booklet about the factory, again written by an executive, and asked to check the English. Amongst the chapters was one on the fire brigade, cheerfully entitled "The Volkswagen Firing Squad". Needless to say I discreetly corrected it, and thankfully this was not challenged.
Really interesting story Sandra. It tells a quite bit about some of your working history and how you came to be in Brazil. Must have been a big step for you at the time but 'youthful' confidence can take you anywhere.
ReplyDeleteWendy (Wales)
I must admit my working life was full of variety.
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