Here at the MCI, we’re in exam mode. Most of my Year One students just took the Transition Exam, and my Year Two students will shortly take their Exit Exam. This means that — depending on the results of the exams — my students will soon find themselves on the professional market. Consequently, I’ve been thinking about what they will find there. Two particular truisms spring to mind.
Truism Number 1.
Most of our clients have a limited understanding of what interpreters do. In fact, I’ve seen some clients behave as though they thought the work could be done by a trained monkey.
To wit, here’s a snippet of a conversation I had once upon a time with a physicist at a conference on nuclear power. I caught him at the morning coffee break. He was due to give a very technical talk that afternoon on the construction of nuclear reactors. I had received some PowerPoint slides in advance, but I was having trouble making sense of them.
Me (smiling): Hi. I’m sorry to disturb you. I will be your interpreter this afternoon, and I was hoping to ask you a quick question related to your point about “core reactivity”.
Him (scowling): Why do you need to know?
Me (somewhat taken aback, but still smiling): Well, if I’m going to communicate your message effectively to the members of the audience who speak the other language, I can only do so when I understand you properly.
Him (snapping at me): You don’t need to understand. Just repeat what I say. (Storms away)
Now, maybe my timing was bad. I might have caught him on the way to the loo. Or maybe he snapped because he was suffering from a bit of stage fright. Perhaps he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
I’m open to all those possibilities. Still, it’s a scenario that has repeated itself at different times, in different places, with different people. But the reaction is the same. When we talk to clients about what we need to do a good job, they, at times, give us a look that seems to say, “Why is this circus animal trying to talk to me?”
It’s a dynamic that also rears its head whenever we discuss fees. Clients are willing to spend appropriate sums of money to get good keynote speakers, good audiovisual, and good food. But when it comes to interpreting, they often seem miffed when asked to pay a team of three (for a bi-directional, day-long event) a professional rate.
Now, maybe my timing was bad. I might have caught him on the way to the loo. Or maybe he snapped because he was suffering from a bit of stage fright. Perhaps he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
I’m open to all those possibilities. Still, it’s a scenario that has repeated itself at different times, in different places, with different people. But the reaction is the same. When we talk to clients about what we need to do a good job, they at times give us a look that seems to say, “Why is this circus animal trying to talk tome?”
It’s a dynamic that also rears its head whenever we discuss fees. Clients are willing to spend appropriate sums of money to get good keynote speakers, good audiovisual, and good food. But when it comes to interpreting, they often seem miffed when asked to pay a team of three (for a bi-directional, day-long event) a professional rate.
“Why do we have to pay so much?” they ask. “I’m sure we can find someone else for cheaper. My friend’s niece studied (insert name of language) in high school…” I’m waiting for the day when they ask if they can bring in a chimpanzee!
Truism Number 2.
Interpreting is, for most clients, an issue of compliance. In other words, it’s something that they know they have to have, but that they don’t see as connected to the core of what they do.
In Canada, federal government departments and agencies are bound by the Official Languages Act. The Act basically says that in the National Capital Region and other specific regions, government bodies have to both communicate with the public and provide a working environment in both the Official Languages of this country.
When putting together a meeting or event, organizers call in the interpreters. In doing so, they are“compliant” with the Act. Since the interpreters are there, the meeting is, de facto, bilingual. On the list of things to do, they get to mentally put a checkmark beside “Official Languages”.
This attitude is compliant with the letter of the law, but not with its spirit. I was part of a team of interpreters that worked at a federal event a while back. I watched as organizers dutifully said, “Bonjour et bienvenue à la conférence,” then held the rest of the day in English. Francophone participants followed the entire proceedings via interpretation. All seemed to go well until there was a break for questions. At that point, one of the Francophones wanted to say something in French. The organizers clearly had not considered that one of the participants might actually want to speak French during the event, and they seemed quite distressed. They had the poor Francophone repeat his question four or five times slowly, and one of the other participants who “lived in Quebec for a while” did some armchair interpreting into English. The Francophone looked downright mortified. I’m sure that if he had any subsequent questions that day, he kept them to himself.
The irony was that my teammates and I interpreted the whole farcical scene. If the Anglophones had wanted to understand the question, all they had to do was pick up the headphones in front of them on the table and put them on their ears. They would then have heard the question in perfect English, thanks to the interpreters. But the organizers that day didn’t think of this. For them, the interpreters were there “for the Francophones”. It never dawned on them that we were there for the Anglophones too.
Still, it’s not all gloom and doom. There are clients out there who really want to communicate across a language barrier. I recall a trade union event where a Quebec local had been trumpeting a particular success. One of the stewards of the local had been largely responsible for the success in question, and he spoke almost no English at all. The majority of the delegates at the conference spoke only English, so they had no way to interact with him, save for the interpreters.
The result was astounding. People spoke clearly. At a normal pace. If they were discussing documents or using PowerPoint files, copies were sent to the booth without the interpreters having to ask for them. I wish all assignments could be like that!
But the truth of the matter is that they are not. Accordingly, interpreters have to take matters into their own hands. How do you avoid becoming the “compliance monkey”? Here are a few ideas.
1. Let quality be your hallmark
Every time your clients put on their headphones, they have to hear a superior product. They have to hear a plain difference between your work and that of any non-professional they were thinking of putting in the booth instead of you. This is the most powerful tool we have for convincing our clients that our services are worth paying for. If we don’t go into the booth well prepared, confident, and ready to give our very best, we are in essence confirming our clients’ uninformed belief that anyone can do what we do.
2. Behave like the professional you are
Often, the people who hired you won’t be listening to you. They speak English. The event is (mostly) in English. They have no reason (most of the time) to pick up a pair of headphones. But they will notice when you race to be first in line at the buffet at noon. They will see you doing the crossword or knitting in the booth when it’s not your turn on the microphone. They will hear you making loud personal calls in the lobby during breaks. When you are on the job, ask yourself these questions. Would I want someone to take a photo or video of me doing what I am doing now? Would I want that photo or video to be labelled “Interpreter at Work” and appear on social media or standard media? If the answer to either question is “no”, then change your at-work behaviour.
3. Give your time to a professional association
Our professional associations do good work. They defend our interests. They make us more visible. They put our profession out there for laypeople to see. I’m thinking here particularly of the Associationinternationale des interprètes de conférence (AIIC). With its Facebook page, Twitter account, Weibo presence, webzine (and blog, AIIC does an excellent job of raising the profile of conference interpreting. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But any professional association is only as good as the members — and the number of members — who get involved. Your professional association needs your creativity, energy, collegiality and time to get things done. Give generously of yourself.
4. Be an advocate for your profession
There are things you can do as an individual, outside the booth, to help increase awareness of conference interpreting. Talk at a career day. Write letters to the editor when the media mistakenly calls us“translators”. Establish a presence on social media. (If you are looking for inspiration, here are some of my favourite resources: Michelle Hof’s The Interpreter Diaries, Andy Gillies’ Interpreter Training Resources, the European Commission’s SCICtrain, and Lourdes de Rioja’s A Word in Your Ear.) Or find a way to change the conversation altogether. While there is increasingly a wealth of information about interpreting available on the Web, one criticism is that interpreters are really only using it to talk to ourselves. We haven’t really succeeded in commanding the attention of people outside our profession. Perhaps you will be the person to change that!