A Day or Two in the Life (of a French Court Interpreter)

 

 

It has been a week of work and drives. No, it has been two weeks of working and driving. No wonder I am feeling fresh as a May daffodil. (In Iowa, this equals drooping and done.) Despite the fatigue, I appreciate the beautiful detail in historical courthouses (Polk County above and to the right, Benton County below). There was a trial out of town on Monday, which can bring out the best and the worst in me. On one hand, I settle down to prep work in a serious way, but that is because I know that this is going to be intense. Even breaks will be taken up with attorney-client communication and I will have nary a minute to stop and do any extra research.

Trials mean, most importantly, that I will get to work with another interpreter, to collaborate with someone, to have someone to relieve or be relieved by when fatigue sets in, to laugh with after this is all said and done, mainly said, done is a matter of opinion, to have made memories with in both languages, which one can only do with another interpreter. Most of the time it is just me. 

On a non-trial day, there is a routine that may look a lot like this:

Interpreter shows up at courthouse, and on a good day, finds a parking spot less than a mile away. Interpreter stands in line at the front door with all of the other clients of the day. We wait to be scanned, bag and person. We usually have a minute to greet the guards, but not enough time to dwell for too long upon the misery of poverty and missed opportunities, despondency, mental illness, and (sometimes) horrible actions that have brought many of the people in this line to this place today. There are a number of individuals who look scared, rebellious, nervous or resigned, but most of them look down on their luck.

Everyone then either finds the printed-out sheet on the table in the hallway, or glances up at the electronic bulletin board by the elevators, or simply treks the three flights up to the clerk's office, depending on the county, to figure out which courtroom one needs to be in for their case. The smaller the courthouse, the greater the chances of needing to trek up three flights of stairs. Some counties let interpreters and attorneys know where they will be via email the night before. In one county, I will most likely descend to the basement and ask the smiling clerks at the bottom of the steps if 1) I am on the correct floor and 2) if the assigned attorney and party needing French have arrived. 

 

At this point, there is no set procedure, but if I can, I say; "tell them they can find me in courtroom 1-F," and I set up shop down the hall, comfortably installed, coat on a hook, ipad and ipencil at the ready, headsets for each party too, and on my guard for the moment someone may be looking for me. In the over-crowded, less welcoming courthouses, I have to shuffle about in the lobby of the floor everyone is supposed to be on, craning my neck every once in awhile to see if I can see the look that says, "hey, are you the French interpreter?" 

There is a very particular look, recognizable on faces of attorneys who I've not yet met, part panic, part exasperation, part rushed and harried, then such relief at finding each other. In the ones with whom I am familiar there is a different note of stealth and slyness and hope, "maybe she won't see me and I can just sneak in this very annoying and insistent client first who will only take a moment of my time, then I can deal with the man who needs an interpreter and will take twice as long since we have to say every single bloody word twice." 

"No, sorry ma'am, this interpreter knows that you think it will take but a moment, and that 45 minutes later, I will still be hanging out and checking for you to find me, with the added risk of every minute spent out here means a greater chance of your client asking me questions I am not allowed to answer." Now, would be the best time to utilize my services, merci.

Was that not clear? Let me explain...and I never explain, so pay attention, this is important if you want to look like a professional interpreter who knows what she is doing.

What my job is and is not: the duty is to interpret, which means, more or less that the stuff said in English goes into French and vice versa. If there is only French coming in, especially in the form of questions I am not qualified to answer or statements about what they say did or did not happen in a case, there is no interpreting, because my answers would be in French too, and they would be my own words. So, unless there are three of us present, I am not doing my job. 

In the hallway, a conference room, or a courtroom, the interpreter's role is always the same: interpret the message accurately from one language into another and back again, every message and utterance, the whole time.

What the job is not is giving my own opinion, ever using "I" except to convey what either of the other two parties just said to the other one. This is what makes waiting in a holding space of any sort (lobby, waiting room, hospital room, jail cell) with one person problematic...I am not interpreting, I am engaged in a conversation. This is especially true of an LEP individual who suddenly finds themselves in the presence of someone who understands their language fully and to whom they may of a sudden find themselves very much inclined to confide every last detail or ask every question about this very confusing system in this foreign country. I would do exactly the same thing in their place, should I ever find myself in similar straits in say, Bali or Tokyo, and I would milk it for all it was worth, because I am here, I do not understand and I NEED TO KNOW. 

It is natural, it is also equally in my nature to want to help, to offer a kind word or an answer to requests such as, "How do I call and set up the drunk driving class?" (Yes, it really is referred to that way by some judicial officers). "What if I am a permanent resident, would the plea offer get me deported if I took it?" In front of a third party, I become perfectly legit. I just say that phrase in English and allow the other person (the person qualified to answer) to take over. I am obligated by a strict code of ethics and in the interest of the system working the way it should to not give the appearance of any conflict of interest. This used to feel cold to me, but then came the day when I was accused of just that, and I was not allowed to complete an assignment the way I would have preferred. Live and learn. 

But still, occasionally someone catches up to me in the hallway after a hearing to say, "Madame, Madame, is he going to be allowed to have weekend visitations with the children, even though he told my brother back home he hates us and will have us deported or kill us?" Or, "I did nothing, that cop did not even talk to me when the accident happened. She was the one, the other driver, who ran into my car, not the other way around. This is so messed up, man. I just bought that car, it was almost new. What, is it because of the color of my skin? What is going on here?" The parking meter they have out in front of the courthouse in City A is full of glitches and there are requests to help out with it, back outside in the rain. And so I hide in courtroom 1-F until it is time to interpret.

Recently there have been three trials, scenario A. It has been a great pleasure to work with two French colleagues. I absolutely adore my fellow Franco-American interpreters and had been counting on working with one of them, but agencies will surprise you sometimes and set you up with a trial partner you've never met. I love that the French expression can come out so elegantly with a native speaker, and the flow is beautiful. I delight in hearing accents that are familiar as family to me.

The last trial, the third one in as many weeks, was a bench trial, set for a duration of half an hour. This means there was only one interpreter assigned to the case. I thought it would be a piece of cake to handle a little plea hearing in one city, drive two hours, and interpret for this "short trial", then drive an hour home. Three hours later, this civil law suit with a counter claim turned out to be a fresh new circus of ..."he said, I said, they did, they did not," with a never-ending set of documents to prove the contrary of the other side's argument. When we ended and I had not collapsed from exhaustion, it was a triumphant moment. 

I got back into my car, put on the most outrageous podcast I could find to keep me wide awake, and drove home to my family. It is not a bad life at all.

Conferences and Conventions and INVENTIONS, in Salt Lake and Vegas

This is from a post begun months ago. I could not quite conceive of how to begin to suddenly write about the profession of interpreting on my family blog, out of the bleu. Still family life evolves, and this part is proof of that fact. We have children and they are small for about two nano-seconds. It is much like our fleeting existence overall, floating out here on this planet in this vastness of the universe for maybe an entire heartbeat of time.

As I look for ways to heal the world, I will just keep sharing stories of what unites us and all of our glorious differences from around the world. Some day you will get to read the "tales of a young woman from Sub-Saharan Africa in the US," I have written but dare not yet share.

Life (and colleagues, merci!) have tossed some fascinating travel and work opportunities my way recently: Salt Lake City and Las Vegas both. Below, oui, sometimes work attire means dressed like a tourist.

This is far and yet not far from my normal Midwest venues. True, in-person my work has been closer to where we live, but via video? All around the entire globe, for depositions, conferences, court proceedings, and interviews between humanitarian organizations and their counterparts in towns large and small anywhere. This was merely a next step post-pandemic, as the world is getting back together again.

Last week we had essential oils as the topic du jour, it was aromatic. This week space, robotics, machine learning, AI and ethics. I am learning things I may never have explored without my work. Quantum physics, folks!!!

While we pound into the brains of those sensitive enough to be bothered or those with enough to lose to be defensive the fact that the world is truly going to hell in a hand-basket, there are those actively involved in solutions to critical problems. This last conference gave me a strong hope in the brilliance of humanity's inventiveness, know-how, and the will to solve our current riddles.

This presenter explains that so even this literary type can understand: Shohini Ghose on quantum computing for all here and talking about Marie Curie here.

Tom Oxley, who has found a way for the paraplegic to text straight from their thoughts. This invention helps individuals who may have been contemplating requests to help end their lives because there was no way to meet one of our fundamental human needs; to communicate with each other. It was a privilege to interpret for him. You can hear Dr. Oxley tell the story here in a TED talk.

A well-known and much-loved for his congenial manner and talent for explaining physics as well as the future, in this talk, Michio Kaku gives his take on the future of AI and what jobs will still exist in our brave new world.

Here is a glimpse into what an interpreting booth looks like. It is high-paced action all the time. And those micro-seconds of my children's childhood? Those moments are among the most precious of my entire life, but I have learned to be thankful for each instant as it comes along.

Where else was an interpreter to be found at work in Utah that week? How about a lavender farm, a company's beautiful HQ, or between events behind dog robots in the hallways?

Gala aka dress-up night from the booth. That's the slightly mad look I get whenever I try to take a selfie. You can just get a glimpse of my booth partner's chair next to mine. It is close-quarters. I have been super duper lucky to have had extraordinarily good humans as booth partners every single time; professional, upbeat, fearless in the face of adversity. I have heard tell that this is not always the case. (shark attack music plays...)

There was a six-hour farm stay in 97 degrees and not much to interpret. The tractor was not my idea. We have tractors in Iowa. And they are all green. But my booth partner is a gem and where she goes, I will follow.

Out my hotel room window. I pulled a chair right up to it for those hours of prep listening to speakers and translating terminology. It was not as hard as it looks.

Let us make the most out of that blip we get in history to craft solutions, to be love, to dare to offer what we have to give and then some. Let go of the fear, there is no time for it, nor is there for hesitation, lack of confidence or to be deficient in compassion.

 

A Hot Day at the Seaside

Landlocked no more! I am on a beach, sand under my feet, with the water within reach, salt droplets spraying my face once again.

It is unworldly how much is evoked by mention of the ocean; peace, beauty, lulling, raging, tempestuous, murderous, whatever name one gives it. 

I do not believe I gave it any name growing up, except in picture books or when my grandmother returned from visiting my aunts in California or Hawaii. It was mythical, foreign, powerful, it brought to mind images full of vigor and the quiet of tidepools.

And then we met, really met, when I happened up and over the sand dune and was faced with the vision of such vastness and roaring, beautiful, ordered chaos. The waves, wild and dangerous, nonetheless obey laws of moon, land, and season.

The very way the surf dances and plays invites intrepid humans to do the same on board, boat or on the power of their own strength.

Any time I can, I return.

I do not get author Bill Bryson at all. We are both from Iowa, true, but he claims he cannot fathom a fascination with a large body of water full of salt one arrives at via a long and sandy path. He grew up without it and never missed it, as do millions and millions. I grew up without it and mourn this impoverished childhood. 

I do not live on a coast, the reasons would fill an entire tome, and yet, the call remains in my heart. The gentle lapping on the shore or the bellow of a boisterous sea are music to my forlorn ears, the salt in the air a delicate bouquet to my land-locked nostrils.

G. and I began our stay with a few days on the Atlantic coast to make sure we were not bringing covid with us when we went to visit anyone older and more vulnerable. It was a hot, hot time and the lodgings were filled with hungry mosquitos, but the beach was a stone's throw from the house, as were cafés, bakeries, pizza trucks and a tiny grocery store filled with all one could need...and more. We spent the day in the waves and ate pizzas, bread, paté and cheese at night.

We did it all over again with a cousin a couple weeks later. This time I was able to stay under the beach umbrella a little more, frying a little less. Sunscreen only goes so far, especially when the next round of it has to be mixed with sand.  I had my knitting, done while keeping both eyes on the kids, and they had each other to hang out with.

This is one of the places my interpreting profession has led me. I have an obligation to keep up my second language. Why not on a beach in France? Attention! Vague!

Call the Interpreter Tales

Now offering a new series on where life as a French-speaker and an interpreter might take you. One of my friends joked it could be named "Call the Interpreter" as one of my beloved t.v. series is entitled, just with "Midwife" instead. Only with less blood and gore and screaming, except during labor and childbirth, of which there was quite a lot for the first nine years.

And truthfully, it all began spontaneously. I was a former translator and interpreter, but currently a mom at home. The first phone call was to request I report for duty... at the western wall of the in-patient psych ward one wintry day. "Yes," came out of my mouth, it does sometimes. I have kept much of it tucked away as this used to be a homeschooling blog. But the hard, real, hilarious at times, truth of being a semi-working mom and wife and homeschooling five children will be interwoven in the fabric of these stories.

The plan

Share the juiciest, most exciting, lively, and tender moments of this 20-some-year adventure in every type of interpreting encounter you might imagine, but entirely fictionalized. No real stories will be shared, would-and-might-have-beens only.

        My short-list 

of people, places, memories and scars, as noted on my Ipad. Please do excuse the formatting, as I have only one hand and I'm relying on a write to text app to produce this.

People from:

France  🇫🇷                 Congo RDC 🇨🇬

la Belgique   🇧🇪     Congo RC 🇨🇩           la Cote d' Ivoire 🇨🇮

Benin  🇧🇯             Haiti  🇭🇹          Togo  🇹🇬

le Liban  🇱🇧                               Cameroun 🇨🇲

le Quebec 🇨🇦                 la Suisse 🇨🇭

le Maroc  🇲🇦           l'Algerie 🇩🇿                     Burundi  🇧🇮

Rwanda  🇷🇼                          Niger 🇳🇪                     le Burkina Faso 🇧🇫

le Mali 🇲🇱                                        Senegal 🇸🇳

                                The Central African Republic 🇨🇫

Gabon  🇬🇦                           Tunisia 🇹🇳                             Roumanie 🇷🇴

.

Places

les Landes                         Springfield                  Las Vegas

Iceland                   Nashville                  Muscatine 

Paris                                Cedar Rapids

San Francisco                    Racine

Waterloo           

                …and hidden FLW masterpiece gems like Cedar Rock and its boathouse

        Des Moines... my own capital (but hardly known)

        Chicago... my own city of proximity (scarcely visited)

Dublin                 Salt Lake City                     Rock Island

        London                             La Salle                          Adel  

Scars:

relatively few

- one or two from biking the Golden Gate bridge...

-psychological ones from high-winded, icy, bleak highway travel in winter

Memories made:

the best and the worst and everything in-between

Names and any other identifying factors shall be disguised beyond all recognition and stories will just be stories, based on treasures of all sorts I’ve seen and heard. Weird treasures. Beautiful treasures. Terrifying treasures.

A Super-Bendy (Hypermobile/EDS) Recovers From Joint-Replacement Surgery; Chapter One

This is, in fact, Day Seven Post-op of having a joint replaced in the left wrist, or an arthoplasty CMC . ***If you cannot abide reading medical descriptions, skip to the next paragraph and cute dog pics. The trapezium bone was removed, replaced by a tendon graft and the bones hitched back together with a tiny tightwire. I always dreamed I'd do acrobatics and tightwire stunts. Fancy this being the first one.

I'll start here and in future chapters work back to when this hand first became a problem, but fresh things first. I am accompanied by a warm weight pressed up against my knees in the form of woman's most faithful friend (until the mailman shows up), Tuxy Pup. He desires nothing more of a morning than for his person to stay put for the duration of his morning nap.

 

We are back in a comfortable position, pillows in place under left elbow, ready to chronicle recovery as I live it. But earlier I did a very easy-going set of stretches. I am not going to get all stiff and old because of my left thumb. I am drinking as well, as much water as I can remember to drink each day. Recovery hinges on a balance of all three. Move. Rest. Hydrate.

Surgery Day, as you might imagine, was woozy, fuzzy, and tired until it wasn't. There was a good deal of meditation on gratitude and some silent cussing. My rambling notes, scrawled on a tablet with my Apple pencil went something like this, "Think of everything that is pain-free. Toes? check! left leg, right leg, torso, right arm, right hand, neck, eyes, nose, whole head? Check, check! I am so fortunate!" I even used pretty colors. And no cussing.

How could I complain when my husband had rearranged his day, his month around this to take care of every detail, meal, animal, and child? What's more, I was not going to whine about a choice I made freely. 

Nevertheless, the truth is, when the nurse tells you, "take a pain pill when you first start to notice pins and needles," it is a good idea to do just that. They know what they're talking about. I blame timing and a chronic low-pain tolerance for what happened. 

They said, "a nerve-block can last for up to 24 hours, if it hasn't worn off before you go to bed, take the meds to be safe." That was my plan. But, the pins and needles warning sign came two hours after surgery as I was being bundled into the backseat to head home. I thought it might just be the new positioning of my arm or imagination. I have a bright and vivid imagination that goes into overdrive for anything with the smallest hint of the catastrophic. When the pain began vaguely in the heavily-bandaged region of the joint that had been gussied up, I knew that this time it had to be my imagination. There was no way I could have any feeling at all in this arm when the nerve block was so clearly still at work. 

How did I know this? Remember when the fake wizard professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, casts a spell that eliminates all the bones in Harry Potter's arm? When it goes all gooey and limp right there on the Quidditch field? Yes, well, that was the exact appearance of my arm too. Like jelly, zero control over it, made you queasy to look at. The nerve was blocked. For real. Fingers could not wiggle. And...weirdest of all, I could not get a grasp on its coordinates. 

My arm was still in the position it had been in just before they jabbed me with the magical nerve block needle. This was the oddest encounter of the day, not the half-remembered conversation I had as I woke up still in the freezing cold operating room, nor the loopy happiness of seeing my darling still in my hospital room as though he'd never left, even though it had been almost two hours but felt like 3 minutes. No, what my brain could not wrap itself around was where it believed my arm to be and where my eyes said it was, stretched out and bandaged up, way off to the side.

But still it hurt in a dull, aching way. The wiggling capacity returned suddenly, and then it was too late. I accepted two ibuprofen. They did not seem very effective. One pain pill an hour later did not much help either, but I didn't know what other side effects the drugs might have...like vomiting. Who wants to vomit when clean up will be someone else's duty? I would have to breathe through it. Until around midnight when I gave in and chose to take TWO pills. Best solution ever.

Speaking of decisions, this whole thing was not undertaken lightly. I have been present for too many limb surgery recovery visits as an interpreter (nine years worth) to believe in the always happily-ever-after of opening up body parts and making it all like new. It does happen and surgeons can be miracle-workers, but it is science, not magic. In science there are variables. 

My major variable is hypermobility (or super-loose joints), a form of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome which has meant many things, as those of you who are familiar with it, (fellow zebras) can recount in detail. A few years ago, I wrote that surgery was not an option. What changed?

That is a topic for the next post. Suffice it to say that the arthritis pain could no longer be dealt with to my satisfaction in an alternative manner.

Today I will focus on recovery.

Day One following surgery, ugh, the barf I had avoided and feared appeared. Pain and nausea...typical post-op misery I knew, how many times had I seen patients in similar straights? Was it due to tacos for lunch or the pain medication? Hard to tell. I ended the day with tea and rice crackers.

Day Two, I sleep until 9, which is noon in my normal world.

-I read, clean up left-over invoices and emails, read and sleep.

-I get dressed, professionally, and work for two hours plus over Zoom. I thought I was going to be ready for this. It was a long and emotionally taxing interview. Once finished, I am wiped. 

My thoughts on Day Three, still mainly resting sitting still but off the strong stuff, down to a couple NSAs twice a day:

-Marvel at what a gifted surgeon can do today so that a person will be able to move; lift, drive, type and knit tomorrow. And wince, just a teensy bit, from time to time.

-Contemplating the terms Arthroplasty CMC and mini T-rope fixation, which serve as a reminder NOT TO USE THE THUMB. The only admonition from the doctor.

-Fortunate indeed to be free to swivel my head from side to side, to feel I lack no flexibility of body or inferior limbs (did this hypermobile human really say that?)

-Even luckier to have scrumptious food brought to my side at any hour of the day or night. Thank you, sweetie doing all the cooking and cleaning and thank you to the friend who showed up with a whole beautiful meal.

Day Four, in which I wake up and get up and moving.

-Yesterday I moved, allowed to go up and down the stairs on my own finally. OK, the instinct to protect me from myself is not necessarily out of line, I am ever-so-slightly pone to running into things. I also went for a drive to see the river because I know it was missing me.

-Today though, the garden beckons in the fall air and sunshine, it is irresistible and being outside feels healing. I garden, or rather, I spend an hour picking disgusting bud-eating caterpillars off my geraniums, one-handed, being extra careful not to splash the cast as I drop their squirming forms into a blue ceramic bowl of soapy water. At least I grant them a somewhat noble end. 

-Rest, tea, snack then a stretch. As usual, when there is pain, I go to a pain-relief Essentrics slow video. It feels good to gently, gently stretch every body part, minus the thumbs. 

-This is the end of not resting for the day. It feels better to have my hand raised and cushioned. 

Day Five

-We take two walks, one with Tuxy Pup held in place by my sweetheart, one alone, just to make the most of yet another beautiful autumn day.

 -I feel much like normal; I even wake up before 7. The pain definitely is more apparent with exercise in which my wrist is free and blood can flow into it rather than away. Back up we go.

Day Six

-There is no one free to supervise a walk until evening and it feels like a betrayal to go out without dog, so I work all day, with no fatigue, then break at 5:30 for another Essentrics video, this one is called a connective tissue workout.  After the first two minutes of warm up exercises, it slows way way down for the rest of it. I adapt for this heavy thumb I'm toting around by doing the warm-ups in halftime and instead of reaching for a feather, it becomes a fluffy white kitten. For others who have EDS, you might want to remind yourself that "pull your shoulder right back, stretch it way out" may need be be modified to "gently, ever so gently extend whichever body part we're stretching today," lest the helpful exercise become less helpful.

-Remarkable for today: no pain medication until early evening, no fatigue, a little achiness and twinges, both of which have been present since surgery.

Day Seven, Eight, Nine...

The week is a holding pattern of waiting to heal and have the next visit with the doctor. The pain is completely manageable with rest and one small dose of an NSA each evening. I always wait until the end of the afternoon so that the pain, if any, can be a reminder to slow back down and let this heal properly. 

I have a couple of remote assignments, but mainly I study to learn how to teach more effectively. This has been an exciting week as I go back through two online classes on better consecutive interpreting and do all of the exercises myself there and in Note-taking for Consecutive Interpreting. This freedom of having time to study and plan has been a great gift. I was looking forward before to teaching a class on interpreting for a local college, but now I am super-psyched about what we will be able to accomplish in that classroom and beyond, in our community.

What we all want to know is...how does it turn out? Will I knit, type, drive and lift weights again? We shall discover it all together. 

More details also on the decision-making that went into this and the options offered and tried.

In the meantime, let me entertain you with strange tales of travel and encounters as a French interpreter, à tout de suite!