Too many foreign languages!

My first assignment for Reuters was to cover a press conference where an accounting firm released the results of a study about the economics of European soccer leagues. Right...soccer and European economics...probably the two subjects I know least about in life. Oh, and did I mention that the press conference was in German? Make that three foreign languages!

I only understood about 20 percent of what the speaker was saying (blah blah blah "soccer clubs"...blah blah "stock exchange"...blah blah "that's a good question," etc.) Fortunately, there were written materials available, which I took back to the office and translated fast and furiously with the help of online dictionaries. I also stuck around after the press conference and asked other reporters, then eventually the bemused-but-patient speaker himself, if they would mind summarizing the main points in English for me. I got the sense from the other journos that it wasn't a major story, just something sports nerds might care about.

Back at the office, a senior reporter helped me decipher the stack of charts and graphs I had gathered, and suggested I write a brief story about the finding that France has a more exciting (i.e. there are a lot of close matches, rather than the same teams winning constantly) league than the rest of Europe. So I wrote about six paragraphs...he cut it down to three, and took the lead off because it was "too featurey," and then in the end, the London office decided the subject wasn't quite broad enough to pass muster for the international wires. (But it may end up on their soccer blog.)

You might think that a day of hard work with no tangible results would leave one feeling frustrated, but I was actually just relieved it was all over! Plus, even fake work is better than no work...good practice in terms of language skills and deadline reporting.