Translation

(From left to right: Fred, Leonardo, Thomas, Renato, Miguel, Salvador, George, Marcelo, Rukhsana, Ana, Kevin, Eliane, Ronaldo, Gabriela, André, Gustavo, Noronha and Brian.)

Last week I had the privilege to meet some very friendly people from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration), ANAC (Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil), Departamento de Polícia Federal and also some colleagues from my own company, INFRAERO, that I hadn't had the pleasure to meet before.

The TSA is a component of the Department of Homeland Security, formed immediately following the tragedies of Sept. 11 and is responsible for the security of the USA nation's transportation systems. One of their functions is to oversee security systems of airports with flights to the United States and as this is our case, a TSA team came to observe Guarulhos.

Four days before their arrival, my boss told me that our security manager needed someone who spoke English to accompany them and help with the language. I told him that I had never done translation before in my life but, of course, I would help. All I could do was to take a look at the terms related to security to familiarize myself with the lexis beforehand, since this isn't my area. In case you don't know, air traffic controllers work with safety, not security.

To my astonishment, on the first day of the visit, the security manager told me that we were going to the auditorium and the superintendent was going to speak in Portuguese about the airport, not only to the TSA team, but also to the ANAC members, some Federal Police officers and the representatives of the airlines involved. And they needed me to translate it simultaneously to English. Ok, it was not that simultaneous because he was going to say something, then stop so that I had time to translate and then continue... Luckily for me, there was someone among the americans who could spoke portuguese, and she agreed to sit beside me to help. Her name is Rukhsana and she lived in Brasília when she was a child. It's thanks to her that I felt more confident and could do the job. But in the end I thought I could have done it much better because my main problem was that I was not able to record everything he said and then I passed only the idea, not literally.

During their visit, I went to places in the airport that I'd never gone before, such as the Federal Police kennel where they train dogs to sniff out drugs in people's luggage which by the way in one of these days I actually could see a dog on duty. It was amazing when the agent planted a bag with drugs amid a bunch of thirty others as a demonstration and it still could find the drugs. After surrounding all the airport perimeter, I realized how large it is. There was a day that we walked through terminals 1 and 2 on the two floors, so they could observe all the luggage entrances and all the access points where passengers are screened before getting on a plane. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I have to confess that in the end my legs and feet were aching all over.

On the last day of their visit, we had an out-brief in a conference room and again I had to translate it in front of a group of people. But by that time after having been talking to them for the whole week, my translation skills had considerably improved. While they talked and expressed their feelings I translated from Portuguese to English and vice versa and although I say so myself, I think I did a great job.