An invitation to pop by
Reaching out and breathing life
“You are bright and cheery, Peter.”
Oh, sorry, do you know Peter? Peter, this is everybody. Everybody, Peter. Peter wrote to me on another channel and asked, “How are you doing? How is business going? We haven't heard from each other for ages! Kind regards, Peter.” Which I think is bright and cheery. So, I wrote and told him so. Peter and I knew each other when both of us worked for a bank called KBC Group, at their Leuven headquarters. Shortly after I’d started there as a freelance service supplier in the translation department, Peter got axed as part of a rationalisation that saw the exit of about nine translators when all was said and done. He was kept on in other responsibilities elsewhere in the bank, but he missed his translating. In the end he set up a firm of his own, one-man, like me.
[He translates into German from French, Dutch and English - he’s very good: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-dahlen-632582153]
Anyway, he touched base with me to see how things are, and I value that greatly: it speaks of humanity, and humanity’s never a bad thing. So I answered, and I thought I’d share what I said to this old friend from way back with the blog lot, with you, some of whom are old friends from way back as well; because I don’t see many of you very often, or even at all in some cases. Here’s what I said.
“Bright and cheery are sentiments that raise my spirits, but you don't want to hear why they are down. Save to say, I am well. I am in good health. My fortunes are up: I paid off my credit card, I paid off my overdrafts and work is a stream - sometimes it seems like a carefully coordinated one. A job is done, then there appears another, as if it were waiting in the wings of a theatre, waiting for its chance to appear on stage, its cue. When times were bad I was at times listless, without hope and felt like flotsam on a turbulent sea. Covid seemed like a lull of equality, when bad times were shared by everyone. Contrarily, there seemed to be some comfort in that. That's mean, however.
“Now, exactly four years to the day since it happened, there is greater light on the horizon, although the ominous shadows that tracked me since December 13, 2018, still seem to be there: widening gaps in justice, justiciability, wealth, fortune, power and powerlessness, respect and respectability. And now my concerns and worries are real: what of those who fortunes are such that my own impecuniosity should be marvelled at as being comparative untold wealth?
“I've been told I write ineffectually, by some who can maybe write. And I've been told I can write well, by some who maybe can't. I am sentimental, sensitive, thin-skinned and easily despondent. We live in a busy world that mostly lacks time and patience for despondency, and despondency in others I have not the means to quell. So, I try, even if I cannot do much. Tears do not heal an ill; but they can make it more bearable to him who suffers it.
“I'm appalled by what has happened in Ukraine. I was appalled at the January 6 storming of the Capitol in Washington. I burst into uncontrollable keening at reports of four English boys drowned this week in an ice-covered pond in the Midlands, and was in some measure comforted to read that the newsreader reporting the story had done likewise, having to pause her delivery so overcome she was. I am outraged at the travesty that a football tournament turned into, though gladdened by the honest talent of Moroccan footballers and Lionel Messi. I've been asked for help - a huge honour - by a man in The Gambia who also seeks a way out of penury. And by a Ugandan on the other side of that continent who is oppressed in Kenya for having fled from oppression with like roots in his home country: for his homosexuality. The eradication of homosexuality in East Africa is a purge quest the likes of which are to be found in America's Jim Crow laws or the witch-hunts of Salem and is unconscionable in our 21st century of human progress. The man in The Gambia phones me and we talk about what could be done for him. I apologise that I cannot do more for him. He replies, "You offer friendship and sympathy - these are already worth a great deal to me." I am glad, but I am shamed. For, if well-meant words of encouragement already carry such weight with some in need, why do we who offer them place such a premium on giving them? Do we dent our image, curry favour, apportion our generosity of spirit arbitrarily to the deserving and undeserving, as we see them?
“I was given a filip today. Yesterday, the electric company wrote with bad news which they must believe I couldn't possibly have heard. That the cost of heating would go up. They advised me to up my monthly payment by three times what I pay now. Today, they wrote again. They'd made a mistake. While I rushed around the house to turn off any appliance that wasn't necessary, it transpires that I'm on a fixed-tariff contract, and the electric company cannot increase my bill. I feel as if I won the lottery. For a lottery is what the choice at the time entailed. Nice that my ticket came up.
“13 December 2018 was my last day at KBC Group. Truly, my last day: not one assignment from the promised continuous flow of assignments ever came from 100 Brusselsestraat after that. Occasionally, I smile - genuinely - at what I had done that was so very heinous in their eyes to warrant such desultory treatment. Mr Essers, with whom, I know, you are befriended, objected strenuously to my raising my voice to him. God made the human voice such that it can attain a wide variety of registers and tones, volumes and qualities. It can soothe a baby, it can express the joy of an opera and it can hail the warning of danger. And it can voice objection to undeserved criticism of a contracted worker, which is what it did on the day I raised it to him. He "joked" (his word) that workers may not leave their post until such time as the job is finished. This is fine for him to say, except for the following observations: my chit-chat was minimal; I wore earplugs to drown out that of others - which had me labelled as anti-social (it is anti-social to work when others are frittering time away). But I never - ever - did less than the 4 hours I was contracted for. And when I, on one occasion, fell asleep at the desk - I put in an extra hour to make it up that very day; in short, when my jobs were not finished as I left the office, it was because they could not be finished before I left the office. The time taken to do a job is the time taken to do it, not the time that is arbitrarily designated as being the time in which it "requires" to be done. I retorted to him, somewhat testily, I must confess, that "I devote such time to ministering to the needs of KBC Bank as I am contractually required to do, or such time as, by my own good grace, is allowed in addition, but not that which is required by the demands of Mr Essers." It ruffled his feathers sufficiently to ensure that the change management mantra that was to be deployed shortly thereafter held true: whatever else a change manager does, it can do no harm to fire a couple of translators. He had in fact previously invited me to extend my hours, to 5 from 4. I declined and told him why I declined: because I didn't believe my nerves could stand another hour of reading what I discerned was arrant clap-trap. Added to which was the operational flaw that was patent in my eyes and in others' too, but which warranted seemingly scant response from management: the hermetic seal between drafters of documentation and those whose task it is to translate it. I was engaged by KBC Group to give legal insight into their legal documentation and thereby improve on its legal quality. But my remarks went unheeded, un-listened-to and unappreciated. Tasks were set by project staff (secretaries, I believe) who feigned ignorance of the portent of the documents to be translated and who acted as an impermeable barrier to the true writers of the words at question; a little like solving a war using negotiators who have no idea what the war is about and no authority to agree any solution. When, five years after the English section was told vehemently that henceforth "customers" are to be referred to as "clients", the edict was reversed, so that "clients" were thenceforth to, instead, be known as "customers", the arbitrariness with which the department was run was laid bare for all to see, a background in which "objecting to a vain objection" is all too readily to be seen as a ground for dismissal.
“Peter, this all may seem as a rant to you. For four years, I've held my silence on these matters, but your friendly enquiry has beckoned them forth and I present it as it is - rant and all. Some of the conclusions I hold about KBC Group in fact took these 4 years to arrive at. So, a momentous day for you to write: intended or no.
“If you're interested, I'm blogging now, about a variety of subjects, so there's "something for everyone". Even some on translation, so take a look: endlesschain.substack.com.
“I'll close for now (you'll be glad to read), but a warm welcome is extended to you to pop by and say hello in person. I would love that, whether over the coming festive season or anytime.
“Thank you for reaching out,
“Bis dann
“Graham.”
Before I go and, indeed, lest I go, that invitation to pop by is extended to you all.