Isn't that ice

So after Chinese New Year, I'll be preparing to conduct the second of two drama and movement activity sessions with teachers in our schools.

The first time around, I was asked two days before hand if I could come up with a workshop for our western (read: English-speaking) teachers who had to be quarantined at school while the children were home because of an outbreak of hand foot and mouth disease. Government regulations on that front don't make a ton of sense to me, since we were clearly sending people in from other schools, but apparently they weren't allowed to leave... but I digress. I decided on workshop content, aimed at ways to use drama and movement in the preK/K classroom that are not performance-based (high quality performances with a drill-til-you-drop kind of prep style are very popular in China, even in preschools), before I was told that they had decided the Chinese teachers were also very interested in my workshop, so they would provide a translator from the school to translate my workshop live.

Since arriving in China, I have been to several meetings and events that have needed to be conducted in both English and Chinese, so I was well aware that I'd need to cut my content approximately in half to allow for the extra time it would take to pause for translation. I also assumed I'd need to adjust the content a little to account for cultural differences between the western and Chinese teachers, though that was accomplished easily enough through consulting with my Chinese colleagues on the Education Team, who helped me to verify that the Chinese teachers would actually be willing to try the activities I had planned. And given that this would be my first experience facilitating something that was being translated, I expected that I wouldn't be able to anticipate all of the challenges involved. That much, at least, was definitely true.

My translator did a remarkable job (I think) given that he wasn't given any notice and we weren't given a change to discuss the content before beginning, and in fact seemed to enjoy himself. And for the most part, I had brought pictures where I thought words might be confusing to translate, and could demonstrate with western teachers when necessary. What I hadn't accounted for, though, was the difficulty in what I consider one of the most important parts of the workshop: discussion. The rhythm of a discussion is crucial, I noticed, in building enthusiasm in the topic, and that rhythm is distinctly disturbed by having to pause - after EVERY comment and question - for translation. When we broke up into small groups, we essentially segregated the room into English speakers and Chinese speakers for lack of a better option. The groups were mostly self-selected, so this wasn't an intentional divide so much as a practical one, I think, but I have mixed feelings about it nonetheless. We did have both groups report back on their discussions, and the reporting was translated, but overall I found it off-putting.

A few of the activities were also a little difficult to describe (apparently) in Chinese - I had groups create before and after tableaux from the story of The Three Little Pigs, which many of the classes were reading, and despite my best efforts, including demonstrating and several metaphors, could not effectively communicate the concept of "freeze." "Freeze" as in "Freeze tag." The phrases "like a statue," "a frozen picture" and even "don't move your body" did not seem to translate properly. It occurred to me that despite my wide range of attempts at describing the intended lack of motion, I had no idea how it was being translated. For all I knew, they were moving to simulate trying to keep warm because they were "freezing." Turns out, it is quite the challenge to clarify a miscommunication when you're not the one actually doing the communicating.

The activity - and all of the others, actually - went well in the end, and ultimately wasn't much upset by the language challenge, especially once they saw the group of Western teachers present their tableaux, and they huddled up to discuss a revision to what they had done. But it did cause me to wonder what else hadn't been effectively communicated? How often did they smile and nod in response to something that actually made no sense to them? What things were they not understanding that hadn't been as obvious as continuing to move when we said "freeze"? And how do I use that to make the next time more effective? What language can I use, and what choices can I make to make the activities more accessible, so less important detail gets lost in the sieve of translation?

On the other hand, I suppose I could just learn to speak Mandarin.