“la parole exportée”

I’ve just written one important letter and I feel better now.

Last week, I mentioned an assignment that was promising to go rather badly.

It did go quite badly in the end, and I certainly have been mis-used, not to say ab-used.

But rather than making a big fuss about it, once I had mentally and physically recovered from the incident, my decision was to turn this into an opportunity.

My feeling is that the organization had absolutely no clue as to what interpreters are for (apart from translating). I am saying ‘my feeling’. Even if it is misguided, I am acting on that feeling.

So I wrote a very nice Thank you letter for all the good things, adding a memento in 3 parts on the proper hiring and use of conference interpreters: Needs Analysis, Technical Resources, Contracts and Documents.

The Needs Analysis section is, not surprisingly so, the longest; looking back, that was the source of all the misunderstandings that ensued.

One of my regular clients had one of its staff invited to speak at a conference. I don’t usually interpret for that person directly, so I was not aware of her actual knowledge of French.

My brief, on which my understanding was based, was to assist her for her presentation, or rather for the questions following her presentation, with a last-minute add-on, a press conference. All this was fine, and I made a proposal to the organizers on that basis. In other words, I was hired by the organizers of the conference, not by my client who was just a guest.

But that wasn’t the only need, hence the problem. My client was part of a panel, and most importantly she was to stay all the time. That was never mentioned.

I could have refused to cooperate in the end. You have to think fast in those circumstances, and my very good business relation with my client, and the personal relation that has developed over the years, meant it was difficult for me to storm off. So I stayed. I also stayed because I was ashamed on behalf of the organizers. (Stupid of me, I know!)

The Technical Resources issue is an extension of the initial defective needs analysis.

The Contract/confirmation bit was another oversight on the organizer’s part, but they did sort it out quickly.

I may or may not work again with these organizers. After all, their conference only takes place once a year and I am not even looking beyond now. But I felt that a little education was necessary. Translators and interpreters are not bilingual secretaries with oversized egoes and remunerations. Our work is recognized as difficult and for most people, it is impossible. But because it is not very well known, it is easy to abuse us, and we have to be very careful about that.

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Why is it so absolutely necessary these days, to repeat again, and again, that this country (France) has been built on the cumulative efforts (and at times, the blood) of different nationalities and cultures, over several centuries? And why can’t we interpreters and translators make our voices heard, when our very lives are devoted to international understanding and cooperation?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2gd3_fredericks-goldman-jones_music

Carole Fredericks was born in the USA and died in 2001 in Dakar (Senegal); she was buried in Paris.

A nos actes manqués (1990)

Lyrics and music by Jean-Jacques Goldman

A tous mes loupés, mes ratés, mes vrais soleils
Tous les chemins qui me sont passés à côté
A tous mes bateaux manqués, mes mauvais sommeils
A tous ceux que je n’ai pas été

Aux malentendus, aux mensonges, à nos silences
A tous ces moments que j’avais cru partager
Aux phrases qu’on dit trop vite et sans qu’on les pense
A celles que je n’ai pas osées
A nos actes manqués

Aux années perdues à tenter de ressembler
A tous les murs que je n’aurai pas su briser
A tout c’que j’ai pas vu, tout près, juste à côté
Tout c’que j’aurai mieux fait d’ignorer

Au monde, à ses douleurs qui ne me touchent plus
Aux notes, aux solos que je n’ai pas inventés
Tous ces mots que d’autres ont fait rimer qui me tuent
Comme autant d’enfants jamais portés
A nos actes manqués

Aux amours échouées de s’être trop aimé
Visages et dentelles croisés juste frôlés
Aux trahisons que je n’ai pas vraiment regrettées
Aux vivants qu’il aurait fallu tuer

A tout ce qui nous arrive enfin, mais trop tard
A tous les masques qu’il aura fallu porter
A nos faiblesses, à nos oublis, nos désespoirs
Aux peurs impossibles à échanger
A nos actes manqués

This was the title of one of my Twits yesterday: “Too many cooks spoil the broth”.

The reason was this: I had just spent the previous hour making arrangements and getting authorizations for a short presentation I am interpreting for tomorrow, in the South of France.

I was approached on 24 January by a consulting firm working for an organization that is holding its Congress tomorrow. One of my clients has been invited to take part as a speaking guest, and had given my name as their preferred interpreter (nice!). The consulting firm duly sent me a confirmation e-mail, and when I mentioned that I would need to announce my fee and conditions, and get written confirmation, i.e. a purchase order for the engagement, they simply said they were forwarding the fact that I was available to the organization, and someone would get in touch with me.

Well, they never did. Or, they did, but it was about equipment, nothing official. And because I was busy on a big translation project, with the deadline looming large, I must admit I was a bit lazy there.

In fact, I’ve had so many organizations in the past few years, that just gulped, caught their breath and hastily told me that my fees are very high indeed, and they’d think about it, and I never heard from them again, that I’ve got used to being contacted, and to hope for the best. That’s something I must deal with differently, I know. Follow-up is essential, and I am not doing enough of it.

Anyway, last Monday I started wondering for good, but it was so close to the date that I really thought they had decided to do without me. Until yesterday, around midday, when my client’s assistant called me to say how happy she was to see me on Thursday, and she was sending me the presentations for me to prepare. Ouch! What was going on? Plus, the meeting started not at 10am as announced initially, but 9.30am, which can make a hell of a difference with flight times out of Paris.

So I spent the next hour trying to reach her contact (yet another person) on his cell phone, someone who, for reasons I discovered later, had no idea who I was, and had to call his assistant and call me back confirming that everything was fine, and he had no idea what had happened.

So then I had to book a seat on the morning flight out. This being not a very busy destination, I was lucky, because there is only one flight out that early in the morning, and I couldn’t leave before, because I have to make special arrangements here when I am away for more than 24 hours.

So I got the flight booking, and the organizer accepted my interpreting fee and the fare without batting an eyelid, and the confirmation was faxed back to me virtually within seconds.

Then the consulting firm (having probably been called by the organizers), called to ask about what happened and to offer apologies.

In the end, I was able to reassure my client that I would be there tomorrow, although this means I have to leave before crack of dawn to drive to the airport. Ain’t I lucky that I am flying out from the airport closer to me? I can drive there under 20 minutes and leave my car for the day.

What happened? I, being at the bottom end of the line, can’t tell for sure. But for one thing, too many people were involved in the (non) decision-making process. I know, without exaggerating too much, that we interpreters and translators do not rank high in the pecking order. Once it was confirmed that I was available, I could easily be forgotten, I was taken for granted.

But one thing I’ve learned over the years is that when you do not rank high, you’d better ask for contracts and purchase orders before making any plans. If they forget about you before the fact, will they remember to pay you after the fact?

I’m not taking any chances. Would you?

So that leaves me now a day to prepare a rather sensitive topic. Fortunately I can rely on the glossaries I have compiled for previous occasions, and I can browse the Internet to check on recent developments in the field. I have experience and I’m not worried. But young colleagues would find it stressful at best.

I haven’t shown up a lot recently, as I was coming to the realization that I might not be able to deliver a fairly big translation project on time.

From an operational point of view, I prefer one big or medium project to a host of small ones. Small projects involve a lot of interruptions, red tape with estimates, PO’s, bills, keeping track of small things that are always liable to creep into holes and be left there forever, despite my ‘foolproof’ double checking system, bookkeeping. I am not even mentioning the trips to the bank to cash small individual checks. For these, I like to go to a branch that provides much faster processing than high-street ones. Unfortunately, it is located right in the middle of a large shopping mall (hence their productivity), and walking through a shopping-mall with your eyes shut to temptations is also a very painful experience!

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that what fits me best, in terms of attention span, red tape, deadlines, and research optimization, are 5,000 word long projects. I feel I own that size (4,000 or 6,000 are equally good, I just picked a round figure).

By the old standards, 5,000 English words used to mean about 15-16 pages. In those days, when you were painfully typing 5,000 + extra words (as the French translation is always longer than the English source), plus corrections, retyping, etc. it could be considered a fair-sized project. It is not anymore, while many projects are much smaller than that, especially web content that is often very concise, but with totally different style requirements, etc.

The project I was working on these last few days was several times bigger, but I am a believer of ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ and I also accept smaller projects in between.  Not only do they allow me to retain those clients who depend on me for instant availability, they add diversity and take my mind off the main project for well-earned breathers. They also allow me to spread my sources of income, always a good strategy when a client (as is happening this week) fails to pay on time a sizable bill for projects that you delivered up to 2 months ago. Argh! Lastly, last-minute interpretation assignments have become the norm, and that can upset your best laid-out agenda.

So this size of project may account, among other things, for my personal issue with automation. There is not much point in automating such a short project, although it can work fairly well with very technical stuff. But as I like to own the project, to keep visibility into its architecture and most importantly, its logical flow, lack of automation doesn’t bother me.

That is also probably the reason why I generally do best in the translation of advocacy, or marketing material, when the emphasis is on finding the words to convince people of the qualities of a concept or a product. I might be adverse to the product in question, so it can be an intellectual challenge at times, but I am comfortable with that.

I also pick the advocacy themes very carefully. I would probably love to wallow in money for a couple of days, but how could I forget the plight of those who barely survive on one US dollar per day?