During our Third Week of the Internship things progressed
immensely--as I said the second week was spent attending meetings, but not
really doing anything and I started to think that, that was all bureaucracy
really was. Thankfully—so I thought at the beginning of last week—we received
tons of PR and Marketing translations to do from Albanian to English--my forte,
as I know English grammar inside and out since I've lived in the US for 16
years of my life. On the other hand, my Albanian skills--besides for the
conversations between family members and with grandparents--lack in the formal
writing department, as I cannot stretch my imagination to create, both
grammatical and beautiful, marketing slogans/ translations. So it was helpful
that we were doing Albanian to English translations at first and not the other
way around.
The first couple days started off super slow because I had
absolutely NOTHING to do...and then the work crept up on us. But, while we were
lounging and chilling we decided to try a few places around town as we had been
there for 2 weeks and still not had a nice meal out--only coffee, sweets, and
street food--which is still good, just not the same. Era Piceria was a hit with
us—a frequented tourist restaurant.
It's going well so far thankfully--but it's picked up with a lot of promotional marketing pieces under our belts we've even had the opportunity for our work to help change the national website Albania. At the end of the week we visited Korca, Albania and ventured around it's rolling hill and visited Birra Korca--a famous establishment there known for it's beer and meatball like "kernacka" aka the best things ever. It was very cool to be tourists ourselves especially during "Karnavalet e Korces" a mix between halloween type costumes and Mardi Gras tribe associated groups doing Albanian traditional dances.
Albanians LOVE crepes and so do we--this is a picture of one of the many crepes we enjoyed that week!
Era Piceria and me having traditional Albanian rice with chicken broth and pine nuts!
Karnavalet e Korces...
In front of the Cathedral!
Enxhi,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your work is definitely challenging. As a language learner (and English major), I understand the difficulties of translating. Is there a way for you to take a formal reading/writing class for Albanian? I could see where only being strong with conversation skills would be a barrier when trying to formally translate a document/website. That's awesome that you were able to change the website! Can you share the web address?
It's nice to have some time to wander around and explore. The Karnavalet e Korces looks interesting! Is it a celebration of some type? If so, what for?
Best,
Tammy