“la parole exportée”

A few years ago, I was asked if I would consider interpreting in rather special circumstances.

A German company was holding a meeting in Paris for its French subsidiary and there was going to be a fairly short (45 minutes max) business/technical presentation in English, which I was to interpret into French. I wasn’t to interpret directly for the participants, but for two sign language interpreters, who in turn were translating my words, French to French, for two hearing-impaired participants.

No documents. No booth. No equipment. Not exactly what you would call the best conditions.

I had never done that before, but I accepted enthusiastically.

I coaxed the speaker into giving me a printed copy of his Powerpoint presentation, and hastily prepared it. My clients’ needs were very specific: although they seemed to be experienced, they were concerned about computer parts, balance sheets, work plans, etc. The speaker was a typical relatively fast-speaking businessman with a German accent, but one of their problems, as I understood it, was that they had to make up some of the terminology while following me at a brisk pace. I think they did a splendid job. The reason why they had to take it from me was the technicality of the meeting, and the German nationality of the speaker that had frightened them.

In the short time we had before the meeting, we ‘set up camp’ in a corner (the client didn’t want us up in front of the audience), close to the loudspeaker, but I had full view of the room, the screen and the speaker. The two sign language interpreters were sitting across a small table, and I had to whisper loud enough for them to hear me. They took turns to sign my interpretation for their own ‘clients’ who were seated close enough to them while still facing the speaker to see the slides. And of course, to make all this more acrobatic, we weren’t supposed to be too conspicuous…

I got used to the funny feeling of talking to two people who were listening to me as if we were having a one-way conversation. When a figure came up that wasn’t in the printout, I would jot it down for myself first, then fly the piece of paper across the table.

The 45 minutes felt like 5 hours… But what was important was that all this tortuous path, the inconvenience of the set up, meant one thing: two employees with a handicap were able to listen to and not be left out of an important company event. They were exercising their basic human right to work, and to be considered despite their handicap as full-fledged members of the company’s workforce.

People tend to think that interpreters are having a good time traveling and visiting all sorts of wonderful places.

This is not always true, so it’s nice to have the kind of assignment that allows you to get a glimpse of a place. This time I was lucky to work two half-days, and to be in a place where you can walk practically everywhere.

The weather was nice, although not at that time of the day. Still… I like this picture of Strasbourg. A couple of others are to be found on Flickr.

I’m reminded of the following anecdote by a blog post written by Werner Patels.

It goes to show how obsessed with acronyms translators can be. Once upon a time, I interpreted at a rather hard meeting and at breaktime, we were lucky to get hold of the printout of the next presentation.

On one page, there was a diagram of a process, with, right in the middle of the page, in big bold evenly-spaced letters, this *acronym*:

E C H E C

So I asked the speaker: What does this stand for?

He looked at me with a funny look, and seemed a little uneasy.

So I asked again, in my best professional voice.

So he laughed. What? You don’t know what ECHEC means?

That was NOT an acronym, it was a REAL word!

Ever heard of the word ‘failure’? That’s what ‘échec’ means. If you didn’t do this properly, the process failed.

Of course I knew the word. But when you have very little time to talk to a speaker before his presentation, you tend to go for very technical words and acronyms.

What a laugh! (and how I hate to look so stupid! )