Engineering Conference

German Translation for Engineering Conference

German Translation for Engineering Conference

Tina was tall, slim, a size 10 with strawberry-blond hair. If you believed the stereotype that all blondes are dumb, then she was about to kick that view right out of the water and into the gutter where it belonged – right at the very bottom.

She looked around her. She was only one of a handful of women at the engineering conference. And as she walked through the room, she could feel all eyes on her – as if she’d just walked over Einstein’s grave – as if they had never seen her kind of species before.

Tina could speak fluently in both English and German, but she chose to present her paper in German as most of her audience was German-speaking. However, there was a projector already in place that would display the English equivalent of her presentation. This would allow English-language speakers to read in their mother tongue if they chose to. There were two people standing on stage – one to the left and right – the one on the left was responsible for doing the German translation of Tina’s presentation in sign language (for people in the audience who were hard of hearing) – while the other would sign in English. She also planned to put up the website translation of her presentation on her blog for her English readers by the coming weekend at the latest.

It seemed to take ages to walk up those stairs and get to the podium, but it was really less than 20 seconds away from where she had been sitting. She kept her head held high – one sure step in front of the other as she made her way to the podium to present her paper. A couple of people were smirking before she took to the stand, but she simply ignored them. You’d think that people who were so bright wouldn’t be so dim in their views. Did they really believe all blondes were the same? It was just hair, for god’s sake. Hair! Follicles had nothing to do with her PhD.

By the time her presentation was done though, she had wiped the smirk off their faces. They tried to throw her off balance with convoluted questions that made sense to no one (including themselves), but she took them down a peg or two and wiped the floor clean with their acute level of cockiness. They never should have graduated from college because that’s where they belonged, the childish fools. And they called themselves PhD students?

What was amazing about the presentation was that the two sign language interpreters were women. She didn’t think it was mere coincidence and she felt blessed for it.

Later, after her presentation was done, Tina walked calmly off the stage. It started with one clap, then two, then before she knew it, the whole audience was on its feet clapping profusely, much to the red-faced annoyance of the smirkers. She would remember the look on their faces for some time to come.