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!

Trapped in a Kwik Star with Nothing but Ice Beyond the Door, but Rescued by a Library

In which the happy, adventuresome itinerant interpreter comes face to face with a near-ditch experience, seeks shelter in the first option available, and is rescued, once again, by a community resource, this time, The Maquoketa Public Library.

The First Place Available

As I left home

Courthouse in Dallas County, Iowa, a "normal day in the life"

 

Well, Susana, oh, what can I say? When I left, the weather it was dry. True, rain was predicted, but it has been warmer of late and this was not surprising. What began as rain had become a "wintry mix" thirty miles from home. My husband called, concerned. I saw nothing, but out of respect for how worried I would be in his place, I stopped for a coffee refill and to make sure my court of destination had not decided to switch to a video hearing today. I took the next ramp promising "food and gas" and that was almost my last move of the day; at 8:30 am. 

This library! Maquoketa Public Library

While the highway itself had been clear and on the dry side, the exit ramp, as I slowed, lost all sense of stability. My snow tires were glass, the road was an ice rink and the ballet of my movement on it clumsy, spinny, and desperate. I kept my calm, winter weather is home territory, no palm trees in a cyclone, earthquakes or tsunamis, just...free-wheeling in the strictest sense and at a speed I had no business driving today.

At the bottom of this endless hill, I had the choice between exactly two places to park; the Big W or the gas station. Hot coffee and individual doughnuts won that competition and I eased into the sludgy, crunchy parking lot, marveling at all of the available parking spots (every single one of them was free), and I parked, gratefully yet a little doubtful. I did need to be somewhere today in a certain number of hours, and it was not here. Again, it was in deference to my concerned husband that I agreed to exercise a little more caution, not from any natural aversion to driving in all kinds of weather.

In the twenty-four inches between my car and the front door I almost ended up on my tush. I grasped the handle to open the front door, my hand slipped and it escaped. The glass and the door handle were coated in ice already. What was I doing? I guess I could get some work done here for a little while. Doughnut and coffee purchased, I found a tiny table in front of a large screen and opened up my computer. 

That large screen really was a distraction. Well, I could check my email, tidy up a few loose ends. Already, the question looming in the back of my mind was; "And THEN what?" By then, meaning in the next ten minutes, I would be on my way, roads salted and normal. Workers walked back and forth, doors opened and shelves were restocked. My focus was un-stellar. I did give a deal of thought to offering some sisterly advice to a woman with pretty blue eyes, a shy demeanor and a hairdo that looked like she had set it with her grandmother's rollers. It was a shame, it made her look an entire two generations older. But I desisted. 

I sought some other sort of meaningful work that could be done in the moment.

I checked and rechecked phone and computer screens for weather and road updates is what I did. Then I tried to write, but my mind was tizzied and on its way somewhere else, anywhere else, forward to Black Hawk County, still almost two hours away, or back home, three-quarters of an hour behind me with good road conditions.

I attempted the compiling of a pick-up order at the drug store. They had sent out a 20% off coupon for the day, probably in anticipation of absolutely no one in their right mind leaving home without a little incentive, but I could not think, beyond bandages, which we always need, what else we might conceivably require from this store to which one of us is constantly running. My brain was mush, or rather, very busy, calculating mush functioning with the single-mindedness of bacteria. Bacteria needs to reproduce, I needed to move. 

In the interim, the weather was on a roll, it was one enormous ball of freezing, frozen, awful stuff coming down in drops, sheets and droves. 

I could stand back and see that my attitude was silly. This was not so bad. There were no toddlers in diapers to change, children to keep in check, entertain, feed. I was alone and my time was my own. It was almost paradise, except for the distinct lack of exotic dancers, quality cuisine and beach view. 

I tried to make myself see reason. This is really quite fortunate, you can refill that coffee mug indefinitely and there is even a ladies' room right there. I went back to the counter for a snack. I purchased a gallon-sized bucket of soda and a square plastic bucket of potato salad, just the thing to boost one's moral, but when I turned back to my table, I was aghast, a couple had come in and stolen my spot. Just-off-highway robbery. The other table in this tiny haven was occupied by a truck driver who said he had been there for two days. His English was slightly lacking in clarity, but he did not appear to be going anywhere else.

I tried to leave again, maybe I would take the call in my car, appropriate background be damned for today.* But on the way out, I spied a half table and two stools up against the wall of the vestibule, although that is rather a grand word for the freezing cold space between two sets of doors, covered in small piles of green salt that served this function. I sat, soda, salad, straw and plastic fork. I could not see out the window because it was entirely covered in ice bumps. I scooped out a spoonful of the potatoes and tried it. Too cold. Too sweet. Might as well enjoy another doughnut instead.

I checked my phone again, idly, for the latest cloud movement. A break in the pattern? Could it be? Was it going to be big enough for me to get back home? Perhaps...I turned my phone sideways and upside down and in doing so, I noticed the time. I was out of this last. I could, if it was close, get to the library downtown. I thought it might be, but my famous sense of direction now failed me, so I had to check. It was a 6-minute drive. I had twenty-five. I dialed the number hoping...yes, they were open, yes, they could let me borrow a room for an hour. MERCI! 

I ditched the soda, tossed the potato salad on the floor of the passenger place and inched my way carefully to the library. The streets were covered in a hail-like mess, but not too slippery. The sidewalk proved to be more complicated, but again, there was a spot right in front of the library door, so the walk was brief. My mother always said that as I child, I was capable of the most daredevil climbing and other stunts, it was only in normal situations I ever injured myself. In my element on ice then, as it were.

The library welcome was warm and everyone was beyond kind. Downstairs in the children's department was a beautiful room we had once spent an afternoon as a family playing card games when a camping trip nearby had turned stormy and wet. (I wrote about it here.) Upstairs, a kind lady invited me to sit in a large room entirely surrounded in windows and reference books. I took my call in here, as stately a setting as any judge in her law library. I was offered a newspaper, any help needed and even, at the end of my long stay and much discussion, a library card. Of this last, I am pleased as punch. I have never had my own card in a town in which I do not live, it almost feels like an honorary degree in a college I never attended. Thanks, Maquoketa! Way to turn a bad day into an experience.

*In a remote (video) interpreting encounter, a professional interpreter will either have her video off, for simultaneous, or on, for consecutive, with a neutral (blank) background and excellent lighting. A steering wheel between your face and the camera makes a judge nervous and they may even stop the proceedings to inquire whether one is driving right now.