Interviews

I feel really lucky that Fantastic Năm has already been able to do several interviews. This past weekend Khương, Katie, and I traveled to Hải Phòng and were able to do three interviews. Phuong was able to do two interviews a week ago, although we are only going to use one. In Hải Phòng we interviewed a cow killer, a rat catcher, and a traditional cake maker. All of these people are in Khương’s family, and we were really lucky that the interviewees were generally open, and that we were able to record all of the interviews. We were even able to get video of a cow being slaughtered (although I’m not sure if anyone will want to watch this…). The interviews ranged in duration from about 15 minutes to 25 minutes. While it seemed to me that they went well, and that we got a lot of good information, I really just have to wait for the translations to be completed to know more details about what was said. My inability to understand the interviews was definitely frustrating for me. I just really wished that I knew what was being said (especially when everyone was cracking up), and could contribute questions while we talked to our interviewees. I also really wish that I could be more involved in the process as a whole, and feel I bad that the bulk of the translation work has to fall on my groupmates. I realized that I should really step it up more in terms of doing what I can do—taking pictures and video, researching the jobs, thinking of good questions, and making sure that the final translations are really strong. I hope to collaberate well with my groupmates for the rest of the course of this project, and to try to focus on my strengths rather than my limitations.