JJ let out a huff of frustration. The BAU had been asked to review a letter sent to the media; the original was in Arabic and a translation was supposed to have been provided by the NCAVC translators. And therein lay the problem – the provided translation made absolutely no sense, there were no notes with it, nor any insight as to why it was such a mess. It had been a problem for a couple of weeks, she knew several of the other teams at NCAVC had also been having trouble with shoddy translation work. The work was always better when sent back, but JJ was sick of having to send files back for correction. Whoever kept fucking up was wasting time. Time that people didn't have. The BAU team had to review the letter, verify what it said and if the threat was genuine.
Running a frustrated hand through her hair she gathered the files into her arms and stormed out the door. Her mind was on the last case, a serial killer in Breckenridge who targeted young children. It hit too close to home, she couldn't imagine losing Henry, and ever since becoming a mom, cases with kids just threw her. Held up by bureaucracy, they'd been minutes too late to rescue the last victim, and his screams still echoed in JJ's ears. She didn't want that to happen again. People's lives may depend on her team's ability to verify the letter and get a profile out as soon as possible, and whoever was doing such a terrible job at translating was putting lives at risk. It infuriated JJ. Their work at the FBI was important, and how anyone could think that it wasn't, that they didn't have to translate properly, was insulting.
Shaking off those thoughts, JJ entered the translators' office. She'd never been down before, having previously sent either another agent down or just strongly worded emails, and she was curious to see what the office was like, and to see who would be on the receiving end of her dressing down. Looking around, the office was surprisingly sparse. There were no personal effects or photos of family, JJ had almost been expecting something like the lair Garcia had created in her office. However, this office looked like no-one worked there, JJ thought to herself that it could explain everything, no one actually worked here, and someone was just running the translations through Google Translate. That would explain why the translations they'd been getting were so terrible. Footsteps behind her stifled the laugh at her internal joke. Turning she saw a tall brunette in a dark pantsuit walking into the office, frowning down at the file in her hands. Obviously another person finally fed up with the lack of coherency in the translations.
"Hey, they've really been messing up the translations recently, haven't they?" JJ joked, smiling at the newcomer and moving to the side to give her space.
The brunette ignored JJ, still frowning at the folder and walking to the desk where she sat down, pulled a pad of paper and pen towards her and started writing. JJ frowned, and awkwardly cleared her throat, a request for attention that was completely ignored, as was the "Excuse me, ma'am," JJ had called out.
She rolled her eyes, great, not only was this woman terrible at her job, she was a bitch too. Figuring that actions would speak louder than words, JJ threw the file down on top of whatever the woman was writing and stormed out, heading back to her office while mentally composing a scathing email to that woman's superior.
Reaching the BAU bullpen, JJ headed for the kitchenette, needing a coffee to face the rest of the paperwork waiting for her in her office.
"Hey JJ, where've you been?" Reid asked as he poured a frankly obscene amount of sugar in his coffee.
JJ groaned in frustration, "Well, the translation for the letter we're supposed to analyze came through," she thumped a coffee mug onto the bench "and it was awful. Like, I don't speak Arabic, but even I could tell that the translation was, if not wrong, at least terribly done. How are we supposed to do an analysis of something if our translators can't do their job properly?"
"It's okay JJ, we'll get there, maybe the rough translation is just because whoever wrote the original letter wasn't a native speaker of Arabic?"
"I thought about that Spence, but there weren't even translator's notes with it. Usually they will at least leave a post-it note or something to say that. I went down to the office, and the woman there completely blew me off, like full on ignored me," she shrugged. "I dunno, she seemed pretty stuck up. I just left the file on her desk, hopefully she'll get us the translation soon. Or at least an explanation."
Huffing out another sigh, JJ took a large sip of her coffee, pulling a face as it burnt her tongue. At Reid's stunned and mildly concerned expression she smiled.
"I'm okay Spence, just, I'm sick of feeling like we're always just one step behind the guys we're trying to stop. That last case, that little boy. We were so close. We should've… I'm angry that this woman's bad translating might cost more people their lives, if we had a decent translation, we could already be building a profile, and figuring out what's happening," she shook her head, smiled again and nodded towards her office. "I'd better get back to work, at least the rest of the files on my desk don't need translating."
JJ spent the rest of the morning sorting through the files on her desk, prioritizing and sorting, and then handing them to the rest of the team for consults, setting a couple aside to run past Hotch as ones that the team may need to head to. She was interrupted by her stomach rumbling and decided that it was time to take a break for lunch. Grabbing the files for Hotch she dropped them at his desk before heading off to grab something at a nearby café.
When she returned, she saw the brunette from the translation office, head tilted back, laughing at something Morgan had said. A small, traitorous voice in JJ's head informed her that the woman was really very cute when she smiled. That voice was immediately quashed by the fact that cute or not, the woman had completely ignored her earlier, and was terrible at her job. She leveled a glare at the other woman as she climbed the stairs to her office. No wonder the translations had been so terrible recently, that woman was spending her time flirting with agents, and not doing her job.
JJ was pleasantly surprised when the file containing the letter and the translation was sitting
on her desk. Opening it, she was relieved to see the translator had actually done a decent job this time, the translation was legible, and there were notes, highlighting areas where the language used by the author of the letter did not match the vernacular a native speaker would use as well as highlighting other inconsistencies with the letter. It would seem the woman wasn't entirely incompetent when she wasn't wasting time flirting with agents.
By the time she had gathered all the notes for the case, and headed out to gather the rest of the team to finish working on the profile the woman was gone. JJ decided not to give her another thought until the next time she needed something translated, there were more important things to worry about. Like getting this case finished so she could get home and give her son a huge hug.