Lost in translation

O my, will I indeed be looking forward to that weekend! Only two days into the week and already I am feeling knackered. It's been a while since I was a nine-to-fiver, let alone a 8.30-6.30er. It's tough, getting back into the rhythm.

My supervisor clearly does not belief in easing into the job either. I have had to hit the ground running and running fast at that. I shouldn't be surprised as this is the man who once told me we "could not afford to be average". It is what makes working in this group both a wonderful opportunity and a daunting challenge.

My first project is immediately a meaty one. It is my job to take inventory of the different so-called performance measures for healthcare in no less than 42 countries. Draft results to be deposited on my supervisor's desk by the end of the month, please! I am not sure whether this is an acid test of my abilities or simply business-as-usual. I am inclined to believe it is the latter. As if the scope of the work wasn't testing enough in itself, the work comes with a substantial catch. Performance measures are usually set by some sort of governmental or professional qualifications body and, as such, they are not to be found in the standard scientific literature. Instead, I have to dig through websites and policy papers. Naturally these papers are written in the language of its target audiences. Well, with 42 different countries you might see why that could be a bit of a problem.

I am rather pleased to find that, despite my schoolgirl detest of German, I can still understand a fair bit of the German, Austrian and Swiss papers. After all, qualitätsindikatoren is not that hard to comprehend. Also the indicateurs de qualité I can still more or less handle. And for once even knowing Dutch comes in good use! The difficulties begin with the literature on kvalitetsindikatorer and indicadores de calidad.

So here I ask you, my wonderful international group of friends: those of you proficient in Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic: may I perhaps invoke your services?