Ohgodohgodohgod ican'tican'tican't

The Ethiopian ambassador thing is tomorrow morning. They were supposed to give me the speech beforehand. They didn't. When they asked me to do this, I told them I wasn't good enough, I don't have the vocabulary, and could they please ask someone else. They took that as a yes.

I'm not good with public speaking in my mother tongue. I can't have intelligent discussions about politics or economics in my mother tongue. I don't talk in front of a microphone.

And tomorrow I am expected to simultaneously translate the keynote speaker of an Africa conference. Into German. You guys, I can't. I seriously, seriously can't. I don't have the vocabulary. I don't have the confidence. I don't have the balls. This is the ambassador we're talking about. Someone who is addressed as "Your excellency." You don't give the ambassador a translator who's going to make his speech sound like a shitty fourth-grade book report.

I'm so scared. I don't want to even think about it, yet I can't stop thinking about it. It is going to suck so much. I will be up there behind that hateful microphone, searching desperately for words, making pitiful mistakes, detracting from the seriousness of the situation. I have been in situations where the translation is so bad you can't even hear the content anymore add it's embarrassing for everyone. Maybe eventually someone will take pity on me and take my place and I can leap from the stage in disgrace and flee. As far as I can tell, that's the best-case scenario.

I can't imagine a situation in which I don't thoroughly and publicly and humiliatingly fail.

I have good German days and bad German days. Hell, I have have good entire days and bad entire days. But even on my good German days, my vocabulary doesn't involve much in the political or economic realm. Most Germans have studied several years of English and will be simultaneously translating in their heads. Their translations will ALL be much more accurate and intelligible than mine. I don't understand why we can't just mike one of them.

I CAN'T DO THIS. This is not false modesty. This is panic. And I'm all by myself and I'm scared and I want to come home. Why can't people hear me when I say no?

*takes a deep breath*

Well. I'm still pretty panicky, but I do feel less of a need to jump off the nearest tall building now after writing this. Thanks for listening. Sometimes I hate my life, though.