a christian hedonist

Dear Ajarn Peansiri,

Good evening.
Along with my homework from Sunday, I would like to introduce myself like I supposed to since last week.

Now I do have a reason why I am typing in English, not that my English is better than my Thai, and it is also a good reason.

Right after graduation, I have started working as a translation staff at the International Bible Society (IBS). We work primarily with the Bible, so yes, I am a Christian. Our well known version would certainly be the NIV (New International Version) and in Thai language we own TLB (Thai Living Bible) and TNCV (Thai New Contemporary Vesion).

As a general process, we have an American Translation Consultant visit us once in a while to check on our work. Since the Consultant does not know any Thai, we do back translation on selected passage for him. The first time I did that he caught me making a mistake between เชลย and ทาส. He looked at me and asked, in a serious tone, whether Thai is my mother language. He told me to study more Thai.

How embarassing!

I know that as a translator my Thai should be a lot better than my English and I do try to practice more. But instead of sending you poorly writen Thai email, I think at least you would be more willing to forgive me for the gramatical mistakes I made here. English is not my mother language after all. (And I might add that writing a paper in Thai would surely be a pain.)

I hope that gives you glimpse of myself.

Best Regards,

NC