Consulate Officers Are Useless

It would be a lie if I said I haven't been a *bit* stressed lately. Firstly, I was running around trying to get a reliable job, which is never easy, no matter what country you are in. Meanwhile, my boyfriend, Guillaume was trying to open a Brazilian bank account, which, my friends, appears to be its own full-time job. Then Guillaume moved into my place, which was also a bit of organising to deal with. Since then, I have been dealing with the stress of my new jobs (8 hours of translation and 2 hours ESL teaching per day) and scrambling to pay the rent. I am now currently trying to organize a trip to Argentina to get a tourist visa, which, of course, means more scrambling for money and time spent on organization. I will have to go during the time that Carnaval is on, because it is the only time Guillaume and I can get that much time off work before my student visa expires.

I called the Brazilian Consulate in Argentina this morning, because after five days, they have not responded to my (very pertinent) questions about the tourist visa. (If they had sufficiently prepared their website and apparently-only-source-of-reference-to-the-public, then I wouldn't be asking, would I? I don't want to spend all the effort going to Argentina and then being rejected for lack of documents or incorrect number of staples, do I?) I assumed that I would be unsuccessful in my telephone call, because, like the Brazilian Embassy in Australia, on the Fale Conosco ('Speak to Us') section on their website, they simply list a few email addresses, and if you are lucky enough to spot the telephone number in tiny print somewhere on the page and manage calling, you will be greeted with an answering machine message saying 'Don't you dare ask us about visas, don't you dare!' or something similar.

So, when I finally got through to a live person, on my third try, this is how it went:

Mean Argentinian Man: Buenos dias.
Me: (In Portuguese) Hi, may I speak in Portuguese? I am Australian and have some questions about a tourist visa.
Mean Argentinian Man: PREGUNTAS SOLAMENTE POR EMAIL!!
Me: (In Portuguese) Yes, I have already sent an email but nobody has replied.
Mean Argentinian Man: REPREGUNTA! (Or something like that - I don't claim to speak Spanish - but anyway, I know he said, 'JUST ASK AGAIN!')
Me: (In Portuguese) Okay, but while I am on the phone with you, couldn't you help me just briefly?
Mean Argentinian Man: *Hangs up*


I emailed them again. I am going to email them again and again and again, every day from now until I get a response.
Why are people in consulate offices so useless? This is a worldwide problem. The Brazilian Embassy in Australia would only reply to me in Portuguese, on my third try at emailing them, when I was trying to get my student visa. That's cool, I'm a linguistics student, I speak Portuguese, and I get the whole 'being-proud-of-your-language' thing. But aren't people in consulate offices, like, very specifically supposed to be able to speak the languages of both countries? If not them, who?  You ain't gonna get tourists that way, guys. Better fix this up by 2014.

Besides that, I have been taking the first steps towards applying for a M.A. in Linguistics in Europe. I recently sent copies of my transcripts to one university to see if it would be appropriate to apply, and they replied, that no, it would not be, because their M.A. programme assumed a B.A. in Linguistics, or similar. I spent the last days angrily composing a letter in German explaining that I do, in fact have a B.A. in Linguistics.

Otherwise, today, some client for whom I did a translation, sent it back with 'corrections'. They only had a couple of corrections which were correct - the rest were synonyms for the words that I had chosen - which were wrong. I made those choices because they were still accurate, but more appropriate-sounding in English than the literal translation. I'm stubborn, and I'm right.  Four years of English classes at FISK can't equal a native English speaker, and certainly not a translator. (Again - I am not a professional translator but I have studied a lot about it so I have some idea, at least. I have also studied several languages to fluency so I know the amount of time and dedication that it takes.)

Another angry, sarcastic post. I'm hoping to reduce the number of such angry posts in the near future, I'm hoping. I'm hoping...


*To clarify: I also think Australian Consulate Officers are useless; Iranian Consulate Officers are useless... from personal experience. For haters: IT IS NOT JUST A DIG AT BRAZIL!