Renowned for her warm, user-friendly voice, as well as her smooth delivery as a “relay” interpreter, Ine interprets into and from English, French and Dutch.
On Becoming an Interpreter:
Seventh grade, and we were finally allowed to take a foreign language. I chose Spanish. By that time, I was already bilingual (Dutch, my mother tongue, and English, since moving to the U.S. at age nine) and knew that languages would be my path into adulthood. But the only avenues I saw were teaching language or sitting at a desk and translating written texts. Neither of which appealed. And then I saw an article about another language profession – interpreting, at the United Nations. There you go! That’s a way to use languages professionally. It would let me travel. Maybe do some good in the world. And, not coincidentally, eat interesting and exotic foods. It took a while, a lot of traveling, several university degrees (political science and French at the Universities of Washington and Strasbourg and communication at the Interpreting School in Geneva); and voilà, at 25 I was employed full time as a staff interpreter in Brussels at the Commission of the (now) European Union. Since then, I’ve worked, primarily as a free-lance, domiciled variously in Geneva, Brussels, Monterey, Washington D.C. and now Centralia, Washington, serving clients all over the world.
And I’ve eaten more than my share of wonderful food :)
Types of Interpretation:
Conference Interpreters work in several modes, and I have done them all.
The most glamorous is, of course, Simultaneous interpretation, often compared, in terms of stress, to the job of air traffic controllers. The interpreters are tucked away in a booth, usually overlooking the room, the meeting participants don a headset and follow the proceedings in their selected language. In real time, which is why we call it Simultaneous.
My personal favorite is Consecutive Interpretation. A speaker speaks, the interpreter, in the room, listens, takes notes (in a highly structured yet personalized way), and then delivers the message in the other language as soon as the speaker finishes. Hence its name, Consecutive. This remains a benchmark in training programs (most programs do not allow students to train in simultaneous until they have passed a consecutive exam). Consecutive interpretation does slow the meeting down (more than) a wee bit. This can be an advantage on several counts: everybody in the room hears both the original and the interpretation, which means that bilingual participants can easily monitor for accuracy. Everyone has a little more downtime during the meeting to check in at the office or text their loved ones. In delicate negotiations if one of the negotiators does speak or have some understanding of the other’s language, consecutive interpretation also provides time for reflection. So, depending on client need, consecutive is always an option.
Plus – worst-case scenario – if there’s a power outage, we can still continue the meeting in consecutive mode 😊.
The reason we’re called Conference Interpreters is because we go where the conferences take place. These days, however, with geopolitical, climatological, sociological and other ogicals, many of us are working remotely (RSI). This comes with different sources of stress, but also means we can work from home.
As with everything else in life, there are pros and there are cons.
Court Interpreters work not at conferences but in the court room. Court Interpretation is generally treated as almost a separate profession. What we do looks the same, and can occur in both simultaneous and consecutive modes, but it involves different precepts and separate training. In most states/provinces and in most countries, court interpreters undergo a very stringent certification procedure which has, not coincidentally, caused some bottlenecks in the system.
International courts do not require such government certification. And here’s an interesting fact: it was a long-running international court case in Nuremberg, Germany right after the war that laid the groundwork for our profession – and introduced the magic of simultaneous interpretation to the world. During my Brussels years I interpreted at various international courts - primarily in The Hague and Luxemburg. Since moving to the U.S. I have worked and/or assisted in court cases in California and in Washington D.C. and run a government-funded nine-month training program for potential court interpreters in Washington State.
My Experience:
Curiosity had better be the hallmark of an interpreter. During my California Period, I was challenged to take on a ten-day conference somewhere in the Canadian Boonies. Colleagues warned me that this was an impossibly difficult conference. I took it on because, really, how can you resist the challenge, and also – and this is key - there was sufficient time to prepare. I still smile when I think back to how I started learning about an industry I knew nothing about: our public library had a children’s book on the subject, with drawings and everything. That provided the basics, from where I read, researched and prepared terminologies and connected with colleagues. And managed, somehow, to sound like a coal engineer. Such an interesting profession!
Somewhere in the bowels of my nicely synched computer/tablet/android cloud, there is a semi-recent very incomplete but nice-looking resume of my professional life. Which includes a semi-recent very incomplete list of clients. Feel free to get in touch.