I had quite some fun translating Aitsuko, especially the parts where Ryouto and Madoka began to banter. The conversation flowed quite naturally and it really felt like I was hearing a broadcast program with the two hosts. :P
The novel is currently translated to 31.5% of chapter 1, volume 1.
I do some odd jobs here and then, and one includes the fancy title of an concert engineer. I didn't even knew this name existed until I got into university, before then me and my team were called "nameless people behind the scenes", which wasn't really a name anyway.
I did it since my junior high school days, but it really started to get a little serious during my senior school days. Before that time (also found in most other schools), the job of managing the sound and lighting (SAL) equipment were done by the school authorities, which meant some teacher or the personnel from the general affairs department.
My supervising teacher was then someone with some background in these stuff and proposed that a club to train students to use the equipment, thereby training a ready support staff that could handle any situation that required the usage of SAL equipment. I think he rationalized his argument by saying that instead of handing the experience off to some temp in the general affairs department, students can pass on and accumulate the experience of using it over the years, especially since they might stay in the club for six years (my school merged junior and senior high schools).
It went largely well in the few starting years, with dedicated seniors running the club, but it went down under after a few years when we decided to restrict membership to senior high school students only as they would have the basic physic knowledge (mostly in the electrical part) to use it. I guess it backfired when the club membership grew stagnant since most seniors don't change clubs when they already have one they are dedicated to.
I took a position in the committee during my second year in senior high school, incidentally also the year when we started to publicize the opening of membership to junior students. So it happened that I had a bunch of youngsters without an inkling of SAL to train.
I guess I was lucky to find some passion in them. My thought at the time was to lead by example. Young junior high school students have raging passion (and a huge amount of rebellious behaviour) in them and it simply cannot be denied. By my experience as a rebellious young boy, I hated people who lead by talking. Luckily my seniors weren't really like that. They toiled harder than we do.
It was huge leadership lesson for me then. Strategies have to be suited to the person involved and the more about them you know, the better. By leading them as one of them (meaning that I got to revert to my younger raucous self......:P), and also asserting my position through active and passive teaching, where they learn the difference between us is one of experience (incidentally also the one where younger people can rarely excel in :D), they looked to me naturally as someone who keeps the group together.
SAL is really a job where you either get to run around or play with electronic equipment and watch sound and lights go alive, which I would say in spite of being slightly gender biased (we do have a few girls in our team though), is something that appeals to boys greatly. The problem is the repetitiveness and seriousness of the work, where we have everything to lose and nothing to gain, so I guess I was lucky to keep them interested for around eight concerts.
Staying in the line of a concert engineer was one of the moments where I learnt the most lessons but the one I remembered the most was suiting the strategy to the other person, I guess. I may talk about another lesson I learnt some time in the future but who knows when that would come. :D
A damien!
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