My new website: http://www.danielanegru.com/it/

Ok, the reason I haven't been writing here is that I have been busy.

With what? Well, doing what I love most: interpreting. And getting some visibility for that too, by creating a website: http://www.danielanegru.com/en/interpreting-portfolio/

You might have noticed the site has three languages, Italian, Romanian and English and hence you might presume I did some translation work for that. Wrong.

I had fun in creating three separate profiles, adapting to the various cultures involved - especially in the "About Me" section which allowed for more creativity, because I wanted something different and personal for each.

PS In the photo, with a great team of interpreters (http://interpret-future.blogspot.it/) in Milan in June 2013!

Italo Romanians travelling, one rainy June day...

After my Easter horribilis in Romania, I thought I would dread the coming back in June. So far I haven't (but that's because I only landed a few hours ago, gimme some time).

What spurred my good mood was probably the fact that I'm coming here for an interesting conference on specialized translation  taking place in a couple of days at the University of Galati. And not even the fact that my mum warned that "it's hot and sunny so I shouldn't pack too many things" while what I see outside the window of the train are fields covered in foggy rain with a chill to match the downpour does not dampen (literally) my current enthusiasm.

The fact that I'm travelling on a quiet train which allows me to finish a translation doesn't hurt either. Had so much work lately (not complaining) that I enjoyed just doing nothing for a whole morning, snoozing on the plane, acting silly at the airport, chasing unhealthy food at the "Gara de Nord" (main train station in Bucharest) and GODDESS my having the time of my life in the one-hour bus ride from Otopeni airport to the NOrth Bucharest train station.


"Chips, bread sticks, beer, juice water ladies and gents! Pretzels, who wants some..." a woman, whose voice is living proof people should not smoke, passes by. Her voice carries back and forth a couple of times, and then dissapears into the next carriage.

Where was I... Ah, yes, the bus ride. The fact is, the whole bus was filled with "capshunari" (The Romanians will understand the pejorative term used for fellow nationals working abroad, usually in Spain, in agriculture, to pick strawberries - hence the name). wait, our bus weas filled with Romanian living and working in Italy... so what's the name for that (open naming season people, what are we, the Romanian  Italians?...Alex, do your worst here).

And so fate had it that a kind young men helped the 6 or so Romanian-Italian travellers in front of the bus to correctly use the new magnetic tickets now sold all over Bucharest. Crazy contraption, when you do not know from what direction to approach the machine on the bus with your magnetic plastic card. Doors close, another women manages to get on the bus just on time, struggles with her ticket and validation machine, gives up eventually, ticket controllers arrive.

And I enjoyed the best show ever (only paid one euro for it too, the bus fare). All the bus turned on the "hingheri" (another beautiful Romanian pejorative term for controller, which actually designates people who collect and kill stray dogs. Don't get me started on that...)."had it not been for this young man, we too would have been fined," a disapproving voice is heard when the couple decide ti fine the protesting victim. Another voice and yet another one, plus mine add up to the chorus. The controllers, unmoved, fine the lady and get off the bus. Total anger while the first voice continues this time in perfect Rome accent "Ma che roba è questa, ma non si può far così". Another calm Milanese voice adds: "incredibile come ti trattano qua". And so, a perfectly Romanian bus, sliding through traffic at midday in Bucharest is witness to a fiery coonversation in Italian. It seems all dialects met there. The best was the Rome lady, with Italian husband and two kids, passionate woman and what a voice! Fire and brimstone, one slap occasionally to the smallest child climbing onto the bus seat, more heated discussion, all in perfect dialect, while other responded in Romanian or otehr Italian accents. At arrival, she shouts towards her tribe "Mo' ho tre valigie qua e solo due mani. Muovetevi, su!"

"Mineral water, fizzy, beer, juice, energizers, nuts, sunflower seeds"... after the smoky voice lady, a man's voices, and there he is, suprinsingly suited up, passing by with his musical spell of earthly goods. My curious eyes met his for a second, and made him think I was a potential client, so I smile apologetically and dive back behind the laptop screen once more...

2 hours to go...

"But my boss told them: come at work in my lavanderia in Rome, and those cheeky women asked him how much they would get for a salary and he told them 800 euros a month and they said, are you crazy, what can we do with so little that's why we stay on the streets, we make that money in two days" a shrill voice comes from the neighboirs on the train...

A white haired man in his fifties belly out and eyes on the fields outside absentmindedly takes turns in sipping beer and eating a pretzel, not interested in the woman's stories of the "belles de jour/nuit" in Rome.

Transportation in Romanian hasn't improved much in speed and quality, but it does offer excellent entartainment and company...

Za traveller on the Orient exprex :)

Women will burn in hell, according to Othodox Church

Dear friends,

I was in the Orthodox Church today, located in via San Michele, Trieste when I saw a truly horrible poster.

It showed Jesus surrounded by the corpses of dead feti covered in blood. What shocked me most and angered me was not so much the image in the poster, kitschy as it was, the written words around it:  “Jesus cries when children are killed through abortions” (or they are not born, something like that), and “Women who have abortions will burn in hell”.

So I called the Orthodox priest in the afternoon, and respectfully asked how come this horrible image was placed on the walls of a Christian Church.  I said:  I believe in life, I would like to see posters with things like: “Protect life, learn how…”, or the image of a couple who wants to keep their yet unborn child, and finds a way to do so.  And I do believe that a child is born of the union between a man AND a woman, why is it then than women are to subjected to this verbal abuse and condemned to burn in Hell?

The Orthodox priest said (and I’m giving you the short version, I’ll skip the explanation “you were shocked by it because it’s been ages since your last confession”) well, yeah it’s an ICON (?!!) from a Romanian monastery, yeah it’s made to scare women…

I asked for its immediate removal, and he hesitantly said he must first speak with the church council first since "you’re the only one to have complained so far "

Dear friends, I am asking a big favour from you all.  I’m against violence, and violence against women. In my opinion, this is just that, bullying even.  What is your advice? What can I do?

Because there are women who believe those horrible words! I know them, I’ve spoken to them! They live their life with the awareness of their painful decision, with the pain of having killed a life of their unborn child, and to top it all, the Church deems it fair to make them feel like shit! Notice how the man, especially the Romanian man, seems to not have anything to do with this!

And if, in the meantime you do have an opinion about this, please contact our Romanian priest here in Trieste.  Maybe I am not the only one “to have had something to say about this”. His cell phone:  3349951987

And spread the word… The more know, the better!

Daniela

Iulia Daniela Negru 
Translator& Conference Interpreter
English Italian French > Romanian Moldavian
daniela.negru@gmail.com

National Geographic

Just received a letter from the National Geographic in which they were asking confirmation of my address for a subscription I received as a birthday present. All fine and nice till I noticed they got the names wrong and that letter arrived (also probably courtesy of Poste Italiane) a month later then it should have. So I could not resist writing back:

Gentile Segreteria abbonamenti National Geographic

A seguito della Vostra lettera di data 19/01/2012 arrivata a casa mia esattamente un mese e due giorni dopo, avrei delle correzioni da fare: Sì, l'indirizzo è giusto ma tutto altro è sbagliato: il mio nome e Daniela NEGRU (non Negrili) poi avete sbagliato anche il nome di colei che mi regalò questo abbonamento.

A parte anche il fatto che avrei voluto avere la rivista in inglese, non in italiano (o magari anche in rumeno...) direi… “No harm done”. Con i miei migliori saluti, Daniela…NEGRU

Am I asking to much if I want my name right?

Mah'!...

PS The image shows a subdued (bear) customer

Overbooking

God gave overbooking to help people like me, who always run around, to meditate, look around at people and eventually get down to writing some unimpressive thoughts about overbooking. Now, how come I was one of the 3 passangers on the Lufthansas flight from Munich to Bucharest who exchanged the pleasure of getting to Bucharest at 4pm with the chance to see the airport in Belgrade, the airport in Otopeni Bucharest at 8pm, sleep over in the capital, and finally catch an early train to Galati, my home town the second day? Well, for starters, I can speak and understand English decently which was a point in my favour, for me, the South African and American dudes who volunteered for the exchange in tickets.

Duly note tha I also volunteered to interpret the message the flight attendants gave in English and German, into Romanian to the 100 and so middle aged men and women looking rather lost at the announcements that were being made for the flight overbooking, delay and what more. However, they did no allow me to use the mic. I always dreamed of broadcasting my voice in an airport ever since that time I went to the wrong Venice airport (in hindsight, I should have bothered to check whether it was Venice Marco Polo or Treviso, but I got a rush of panic and a car race to the correct airport instead, not a complete waste...). I always snorted at the silly people called over the airport mic for last minute boarding, but hearing an Italian voce uttering Miz Neeegruuu just gave my ego a boost and my legs a jolt on that going-to-the-wrong-airport-occasion.

I know I haven't written here in ages. The thing is, lately (as in the past 3 years or so) life has been both interesting and sad, good and bad, filled with love, work, travels and sometimes without some of the above. The common denominator is I think that I lived, the way I like with intensity and "gusto". And when you live like that, there is seldom time to scribble something. But I will again. Thoughts are fighting at the margin of my brain, trying to escape. Memories of lands and people are struggling to be expressed in writing. Will do, will, let me add some wisdom to my thoughts first...

Just back from my Romanian trip. Some thoughts and photos, since I haven't written in this blog in ages.

The first thing upon landing in Romania: the light in the Cluj airport bathroom not working. A woman was having fun next to me about it and when we both got out of our dark cubicles, she told me, as a form of explanation: 'Romania!'. It's just that I used this excuse so much, that I don't believe it anymore. True, maybe in other countries light is provided to find your toilet, but I wasn't so ready to use the name of my country in a complaint tone as an excuse this time. The flight was on time, we landed at a European looking airport, and my luggage, as always, was on time and untouched. True, it took my brother an hour to cover the remaining 50 km separating us from him, but well, Romanian roads are, as we'd like to call them, 'work in progress'. I would complain more about Romanian drivers and impatient overtakes on curves than that.

First stop on our Romanian tour - Cluj Napoca. Busy, filled with cars, communist blocks in the outskirts but some beautiful Austro Ungarian buildings in the Centre. My brother liked the theatre, while I tended to see it as too much of an eclectic mix. I would like to mention at this point that it rained buckets the first two days, and although the photos won't show it, we were usually under an umbrella or avoiding a water-filled hole...

Our guide, Luana, took us to a hidden canteen around the centre where they served good and cheap Romanian food. Hungarian-run and Western-looking, it was nice to see such a place in downtown Cluj. They turned the inner Courtyard of an old building into a restaurant by covering it with a pyramid shaped glass cupola.

We stopped at the birth place of Matei Corvin, son of Iancu de Hunedoara and it was strange to connect facts that students learn during their history lessons to the real places and names of that era. We are taught to do it for international history (what happened in Europe when the Chinese invented paper?) but not enough for our own history I believe. Cluj is nice, clean, but extremely hectic. Beware...

We played the Romanian Loto - no I'm not rich, we did not win, unless you think I'm writing from the Bahamas. We stopped at a library where a national newspaper was displaying books and CDs that are usually sold with the newspaper itself - a wonderful occasion to discover the whole collection of Jules Verne in the format I read it in my childhood.

And that is it for Cluj. Provided I do not start work soon, I will try to share some thoughts on the rest of the country...

The curse

In the Early Ages of Humanity

I must have been one of those weird creatures

who died for love.

A rather strange adaptation

since my brain

has always deemed love

a peculiar disease.

I have this mental image of myself in another life,

building the Taj Mahal for love.

Starting new religions and fires

In the name of the unnamable feeling

That hunts my thoughts

...do I have to carry this curse

in every life that I go to?

When the world stood still

I was in Piazza Unità last night, waiting for friends. I was looking at the fir trees, new Christmas additions to the imposing square, the families, the beautifully lit buildings, the people walking slowly, the dogs, the kids running around. It was a perfect moment.

The mist was covering everything in a glow of mistery. And the laughs around me, happy laughs of children chasing dogs no bigger than a small pocket rat, the happy chatter of teenagers and adults, the comprehensive smiles from silver haired grandparents, they were all part of something, bigger than me, the square, the people.

I would not say it was a scene from a film, for films are not real. However, the scene in front of me had something surreal to it.

It was peace. It was beauty. It was happiness.

The Dance

Why did I make you dance this dance?
You did not even know the moves

You stood there still
The world passed by…

(Till I stormed in)
strapped you from you
Add one plus one
Never made two

And crashed
my whirl
your time
my will
your love

the Dance floor clean…
I am alone.

Why did I make you dance that dance
You’ve never even known the rules…

Some of the things I write....

Trust

And then they told her

trust the Son of Man

And no harm shall come to you

And so she did

Lions were stalking her steps

from the shadows

and the winds were getting ever stronger

And they told her

Jump straight into the fire

And no harm shall come to you

And so she did

In the end, when the world had stopped spinning

The lions had fed

the winds had stopped 

she was no more

but a sad pile of misplaced ash

(that's why when you tell me

Don't worry, no harm shall come to you

I laugh

For I think I heard those words in another life

And I shall not listen to them no more...)

I realized I did go somewhere recently - Treviso, for an exhibit on Canaletto and other artists who painted Venice.

It was nice to find out what people did when there were no postcards available. They bought paintings - the English were great fans of the Italian style and showed the paintings to their friends when they got back home from their voyages.

It was also interesting to look at the people. What they were wearing, what they looked like, what they did in the past. And how the artists decided to show them, and to show what. Stray dogs existed back then too, it seems.

All in all, it was an interesting trip and a great way to get out and explore. The weather was on our side too...

Book for thought and book for women

Since it has been a while since I've published something, and I haven't been traveling a lot since my heroic adventures... back home to Romania, I'll write something about a book that I've just finished and I liked a great deal.

It's written by Natalie Angier and it's about Women. The title? Well: 'Woman, An Intimate Geography' and it's a glorious trip through all things female.

One of the best books I have ever read, I must say. There were things I never knew about the way my body functioned, about reproduction in nature, about variety and about hormones and love.

I strongly recommend it!

This is where you can find and read some pages: http://books.google.it/books?id=GuFz4r64ETkC&dq=natalie+angier+woman+an+intimate+geography&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=it&ei=7OmRSc_4DpWA_gaSvuGmDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPP1,M1

It takes me about 20 minutes to really hate the place where I land. Aka Romania, home. It actually gets better when I realize I don't live here anymore and that I am here to visit my family, not to stay. I usually feel better after the soothing thoughts mentioned above and I take the time to admire everything from a tourist perspective. See admire with inverted commas, please.

The first thing that I notice is the stewardess not smiling on the plane. She's Italian but she's been doing Romania way too long. Learning too many of our habits or having to deal with too many Romanians I guess. The plane is very characteristically Romanian since it's full with bags, suitcases, panettoni and everything you could possibly imagine plus the Romanians themselves, quite a talkative bunch too. I must say I am no better myself. I am getting better though, only a backpack plus a red bag for food. That's progress compared to three years ago. I dream of the day when I go to Romania with just a tiny purse.

The moment we land we go cattle-like to the place where a couple of really bored Customs officers pretend to check our passports and I spend another 30 minutes waiting for luggage to show up. The trip by bus from the plane to the entrance of the airport was some sort of a joke, since the latter was only 300 metres away, but in the meantime they must have moved the plane to a different country because it takes ages for the actual luggage to arrive. Gathered around a place which in dwarf-landia might be called a 'place where you can collect your luggage' and in Romania: 'a place where 200 people try to see what's coming on a 5 metre surface, possibly killing each other while doing so'.

Just before going out with my suitcase after patiently waiting for the others to get theirs and checking that nobody else took mine, a very friendly police woman was telling everyone off, in as they should get out of the airport space as soon as possible. I stopped to arrange some of my stuff and I gave her the 'don't even try it, lady' look. She did not, and I left the airport without useful advice on the amount of time I can or cannot spend there.

The crossing of the street and getting of the tickets turned out to be one of those things that men love to watch on Tv: a mud bath. A group of men were working on the road (hence no road) and to get from airport to tickets then bus meant mud, mud, puddle, mud again. I felt good about having been too lazy and not cleaning my boots before leaving Trieste....

On the bus. Off the bus, one stop on foot to get to the place where I can take the Galati bus. Of course no bus connection between the Train station where the airport bus stopped and Gara Basarab for my Galati bus. Well, they say walking is good for you, and walking dragging 25 kilos of stuff even better, so I should not complain. However, then I noticed the mud on my Samsonite, which used to be black and it was brown now, and pain started sinking in.

When I did get to the bus the driver pointed to where I was supposed to put my luggage, somewhere on the side of the bus, where I had to pull a door and slip my Samsonite in, with muddy water dripping all over the place my head included while I was panting to put the darn thing in and the driver pretended not to notice that help might be required. The trip followed on the first motorway I have ever seen in Romania, on a route I've never taken before. Dream ended soon enough, and about half way we were on the usual Ro road bumbing away on hip-hop rhythms. And I was home...

Piran

Splendid November day. I had a quick trip to Piran, 40 or so km from Ts. Beautiful place, too small for too many churches and famous for little statues of angels everywhere. Little jewel. To breathe in and keep as a memory of summers to come...

My experiment started...

... as a way of teaching my students to use web resources.

Let's see if example works!

Dana