'Subject To Interpretation' is a weekly podcast that deep dives into the topics that matter to interpreters.🎙 This week we is the re-launch of the podcast after the pause brought on by the pandemic. We have a new host Maria Ceballos-Wallis and the guest is DE LA MORA Institute's president and founder Agustin De La Mora.
Watch the episode: https://bit.ly/2UoUycF
Follow us on:
https://www.facebook.com/delamorainstitute
https://delamorainstitute.com/
https://www.instagram.com/delamorainstitute/
'Subject To Interpretation' is a weekly podcast that deep dives into the topics that matter to interpreters.🎙 This week we is the re-launch of the podcast after the pause brought on by the pandemic. We have a new host Maria Ceballos-Wallis and the guest is DE LA MORA Institute's president and founder Agustin De La Mora.
Watch the episode: https://bit.ly/2UoUycF
Follow us on:
https://www.facebook.com/delamorainstitute
https://delamorainstitute.com/
https://www.instagram.com/delamorainstitute/
Welcome everybody. This is subject to interpretation, a podcast, which will take us deep into the topics that matter for professional interpreters. I'm your host, Maria Seva Wallace. Welcome. I hope to cover topics from theory to practice. In other words, there is the ideal of how things should be done or how they're done. And then the reality of how things actually function in the real world. Our guests are people who have tried successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully to bridge that gap in interpreting and translating the program is recorded via zoom in both video and audio format. So check our website for the correct links today. We're going to talk about the inspiration that led this podcast and why interpreters need to have access to all kinds of resources that can help guide them through the constant challenges we face as professionals and as human beings. So today, as we launch a brand new season of subject to interpretation, we have a very, very special guest with us who is usually actually on the other side of the microphone. Yes. Right? His name is AAM in case you hadn't noticed. Um, he is a well known figure among hello interpreters. Hello, Aine. How are you today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. Marie, how about yourself?
Speaker 1:Oh, I am doing great. Now for those of you who don't know Aine Naam, he is not only a professional interpreter, but he is an instructor and he's also part motivational speaker and standup comic if you've ever been in any of his workshops, but he's also president of di LAMODA Institute of interpretation and the creator of a wellknown training program called weightlifting for interpreters. That's a lot a Augustine. Isn't it? Are you tired yet?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. I'm bored already.
Speaker 1:<laugh> well, in addition to that, some of your background is very, very interesting. A Gustine. You have worked as a Lance of staff interpreter for over 28 years.
Speaker 2:More than that now. Yes.
Speaker 1:More than that now. Exactly time flies in the pandemic, right? Mm-hmm<affirmative> and you are a state certified, um, federally certified of a court interpreter, as well as a medically certified interpreter, correct?
Speaker 2:That's correct. I'm federally certified and I'm CMI as they called certified medical.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Now you have also been a consultant for the administrative office of the courts for various states, as well as rating federal in state exams. And you have a degree in psychology, which is very interesting to, to me because interpreting and working with people always requires a little extra knowledge of psychology. Don't you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't hurt, hurt. It doesn't hurt. Yes, that's true. And I have been very lucky to work with many, uh, states in the, uh, when they started their programs for certification of core interpreters, cuz I've been around as you said for a long time. So, um, it's, it's been an interesting journey. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about subject to interpretation. This is the podcast that, um, that we are restarting with a new season mm-hmm<affirmative> and, but it was your brainchild. So let talk to me a little bit about where this idea came from, why you thought we had had, um, a gap perhaps in the information we were getting for interpreters.
Speaker 2:Well, actually, yes, it happened to me from the very beginning of my career as an interpreter, as many of you, probably yourself, Maria, or many of us that are starting this business, uh, the standard, especially 30, some years ago when I started was pretty, uh, strict about becoming a court interpreter where I was working. It was very strict. You know, they have to ask you two questions. Do you speak Spanish? Can you be here tomorrow? And if you could answer in the affirmative that you were in and that's how I got hired to become a court interpreter. And it was very exciting because at the time court interpreting was paying what I considered a lot of money compared to what I was making as a teacher of languages. And, uh, but of course, the first day that I went to court, I realized I really had no idea what I was doing, that I failed for the Mirage, that a lot of people in this business fall for and, oh, I'm bilingual, I've done this before with my relatives. I'm sure I can interpret or how difficult can it be? And, uh, I found out it was quite difficult and uh, I also discovered that there was a lot of, uh, requests for interpretation in the courts, but really not even the mention of the word training at all. And when we look for schools or places to go study or learn about interpretation, we found none, none in Tampa where, which is where I was living at the time. So I realized even then, Hey, uh, there's a disconnect between the job that we're supposed to do and the requirements to go get that job done. And that most of us were learning on the job to the detriment of the people we were interpreting for and the courts, in my opinion. So from very, uh, early, I started with several of our, uh, colleagues from Florida to, to start a, a creating training materials that had been my GA when I was in Mexico, I had a company, we specifically train people in learning. And, uh, uh, that was the beginning and, and a few years ago, many years ago, maybe, uh, as many as 15 years ago, I came up with the name subject to interpretation because, uh, it, it was catchy. And, uh, it started as an act weekly release of some training materials for interpreters. Okay. That, that was the birth of subject to interpretation. And, and again, it was because I discovered, Hey, not only there's no schools, there's, there's not even material to learn. I mean, where do you learn consecutive other than the Holly mics and tapes that everybody had at the time, there was really not much to, to do so that that was a birth. And the idea was to publish every month, a different version of this, uh, uh, training materials for court interprets. That's how it started. And then we revived it if you years ago, as a podcast with the times.
Speaker 1:So fast forward to the world in which everybody has, is glued to their phones and is always looking for more stimulus.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we go from actual CDs, which is what we used to have<laugh> uh, and the idea was not only to give people some materials to practice, every one of, of the CDs had articles on interpretation and information for interpreters at the time, uh, as to where to get trained. So it was always informational. And throughout my career, I've always been an interpreter by, uh, you know, uh, and, but training has always been, is love of my life and continues to be. So I, I found a way to combine them both. And when we started the podcast, what's with the idea to give back to all of the interpreters I work with and have helped me have my own career for a long time, something information, because there's still to this day, not a lot of connection between what interpreters do and what they're supposed to know how to do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I completely agree. Now speaking about the podcast, it's interesting. I was reading that most podcasts don't make it beyond six episodes and yeah, absolutely. Usually they kind of, yeah, well, I'm glad you didn't know, because so far subject to interpretation has 37 episodes. Really? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:No kidding. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yes. You see, that's awesome. You debuted in April of 2018 with Jackie ring from the national center of state courts and your LA the last episode was March, 2020, which was just right before life changed. Mm-hmm<affirmative> so that's, um, that's really interesting to me where we're gonna cover a little bit of that, but, but the focus of the, uh, the focus of the, of the podcast has been really to bring people together with the expert in the fields that they may have heard about somebody who they might have a dictionary from, or they have taken a course from online or in per, and actually get to go get to know them a little better and maybe, you know, for, for lack of a better terms, find out what makes them tick and how they got to where they were. You've also covered the, the podcast has also covered topics from certification to marketing, to business, et cetera. And it really is a who list of the interpreting world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we, we, we put a lot of effort in bringing people, uh, that were well known on the field by the few people that are in the field, cuz it continues to be it's interesting because we seem to have almost two kinds of interpreters, um, uh, working in, in this business all over the United States. You know, we have a large group of people who are bilingual who enter just like me into the field of medical or legal by saying, yeah, I speak Russian and yes, I can be here tomorrow and continue to be pretty much in that vein. I mean they go every day they say, Hey, I've been doing this for 10 years. That's their education and their background and continue. And I think we still have a large group of people that are like that. And then we have another group of people that like me, like you were more curious about doing a better job about, uh, finding out how do I do this better? How do I train myself, how to improve my performance? What is the objective? What am I, and these curious minds are the people that I belong to associations and go to the conferences and are constantly looking for, for, uh, advice and new information. And I, my idea was to not only service those people, but also to try to invite the other group to, to help them understand there's a lot more to interpretation than just going to work and saying, she says this. And he said that, you know, it's a lot more than that. Uh, so subject to interpretation, that's why we wanted to bring the people from the very beginning. You know, we, we brought Jackie ring because she said super expert in the field of testing and the national center is still the repository for the, uh, state exams. And I wanted her people to hear from the horse's mouth that is not a punitive exam. That is not black magic, that is not designed to people. So people fail. It's actually to identify people who can do the job. Uh, and in that vein, you know, we invited Robert J only because many of us consider him the grandfather of the profession here in the United States. And he had a lot to contribute about the history. So to make it more about the traditional, oh, this is how you say, judge, and this is how you say, uh, prosecutor, you know, instead expand the horizons.
Speaker 1:Right? So subject to interpretation has never really been a how to it is, it is more an overview of all of the different facets of, of interpreting now, starting in this season. Um, this is a very special episode, at least for me, it is because, okay, I get to interview you. And so, you know, and I get to take over from yeah. How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm super happy. We we're so excited to have you here. I know. And you should talk about your background in the, in the fields of communication, but I've known you for a long time since you were a little girl. And, uh, I've seen you, uh, grow into this very, uh, complete, very good instructor for our classes. You have, uh, contributed in many fields, uh, with us in many instances, as a trainer, as a filmmaker, I remember going to Georgia a few years ago with Claudia and we filmed a couple of episodes of, of our training. So I'm very excited. I, even though I plan to work until I'm about 110, I figured that it would be a good idea to start passing the torch to people that come behind me and, and, and can carry this much better than I can. So we're very, very excited that you're here with us now.
Speaker 1:Well, I definitely appreciate it. And for those of you who don't know me, I'm a state, um, certified interpreter in the state of Georgia in Florida. I currently work as a staff interpreter in Georgia, and I'm a trainer for the Georgia commission on interpreters. I'm on the Nat, um, bench and bar committee. So I do a couple of things here and there as well as an instructor for the da Institute of interpretation. But, but, but truly, I mean, you did you, I appreciate that, that you mentioned, you know, how long we've known each other. Yeah. Because in fact, this is a, a, an anecdote that most people do not know. Um, once upon a time when a person was tested, they were able to receive comments from the Raider. Do you recall that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I do. I do remember those.
Speaker 1:This was in the state of Florida in 2002. This is one of my proudest moments.<laugh> mm-hmm<affirmative> I received my results. I passed my, my state exam from Florida and I received a very, very ice note from one of the Raiders, signed a very good job. And of course, um, I was away from the states for a couple years, but when I came back, you were the first person I looked for and I said, Hey, I wanna follow in your footsteps. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. And that, it's a sad thing. Remembering those days, uh, sad in the that I believe that those comments that we used to provide for the, for the people who took the test were very helpful, unfortunately, that has gone away for whatever reason. And, uh, we don't have those comments anymore. It's funny that you mention it because, uh, the guy who's now the director of the, a program for federally certified interpreters, Javier sole, uh, used to live in Florida. Oh, uh, many years ago before he moved to DC to work with our friend James Plunkett and then got the job that he has with the, uh, with the, uh, courts now. Uh, but when he was living in Florida, he on owns to me, as they say, took the state exam, even though he was a federally certified in
Speaker 1:Trouble. Oh, that's
Speaker 2:Interesting. And he took it because he said I wanted to, you know, check it out and see why, what was this all about? So he, the next year we were rating exams in Chicago and he approached me and he said, oh, thank you for your comment. Because he said, I got my results from Florida and I did pass. And the guy who raided me said, this is a very good candidate. We encourage him to take the federal exam. So<laugh>, he had already passed it, but it was, it was, he went and told me, so it's interesting. This is the second time that I hear that, that people did appreciate some of the comments it's nice to hear.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And hopefully in other episodes of, um, subject to interpretation, we'll talk more about testing and, and about some of the other things that we need for sure, for sure to get through those hurdles. But, but that is, that is one for, for me, that is a key moment, uh, in my career as an interpreter, because I felt a connection. I felt a connection, not just with the, with E with somebody in the industry who actually cared about what I had done and what I had accomplished, as opposed to receiving a very, very, um, antiseptic, antiseptic, um, type of, um, letter you passed, you didn't pass that kind of thing. Um, now with, with subject to interpretation is my understanding because of your background in philosophy and your very, very, um, deep interest in education, you were also interested in addressing, interested in addressing issues about adult learning and, um, recognizing adults, um, recognizing the importance of bringing more people into the fold. Can you talk to us a little bit about your philosophy of teaching adults in gen, as opposed to teaching perhaps anyone else, children, college students and things like that. And, and then I wanna go into a little bit of, of, you know, what this means for interpretation.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Uh, well obviously the people that have been doing this job forever, as I told you, by the time I was hired myself as an interpreter are, uh, there were people that had been doing interpretation in the courts for 10 years or more, right? So clearly the people who are doing this job are adults and they're not in a regular school. And we starting to see some, uh, institutions of higher education having a opportunities for interpreters, but it's been very slow to come, but again, 30 years ago there was nothing. So it was not considered something I guess, worth of, uh, being, uh, uh, taught in an educational institution. Uh, so it was all up to us to train ourselves. And what we discovered is that it's very difficult to work, uh, with adults because adults, first of all, they already did their schooling, right? I'm done with schooling. Uh, they go and yell at their kids for not doing their homework, but they have no interest in doing homework themselves. Been
Speaker 1:There, done that,
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a different animal. It's very difficult to not very difficult. It's D to work with adults and how to train them. And especially in this profession, which is, uh, let's face it as of right now, it's a performance based profession, right? You have to prove your medal and correct to get there, to educate, uh, adults is different from, uh, children. And one of the important things is adults, as much as they hate hearing it, it's more than just doing things. I think that there's this idea among adults that, Hey, you know, uh, you, you learn by doing it and maybe it's true in some things, but nothing, uh, uh, says, eh, to me,<laugh>, As in this profession to tell somebody, go learn on the job, because then you're talking about, well, you know, so if Johnny ends up going to jail and he shouldn't, eh, well, you know, there's a learning curve. So learning
Speaker 1:Curve for the interpreter, but certainly not for the person ended up in jail
Speaker 2:Exactly. Or the other way around, you know, Patricia Kels always says, you know, we're the unheard injustice is either people are let out to victimize again when they shouldn't have, because of a mistake and an interpretation or the other way around. So we started studying a lot and we based a lot of our training, uh, at that time in, in the theories from, uh, specifically David Cole, who is a well known experience of psychology. So I discovered that working with adults is a lot more practical and repetition based. And you mentioned something interesting. Motivation is a very important part of working with, with adults. I think that that's probably where we have had the most success because children have no option. Right. We give them no option when they're killed, you have to go to school. This is this mandatory. If not, they'll put you in jail for being, you know, for playing hockey. So they have that's their job.
Speaker 1:Right. That's but I thought, yeah, absolutely. That's
Speaker 2:What it's expected from them. Right. But for adults is, is different. So what we found out is that the idea in adults says, oh, well, you learn just by doing, but the results don't bear that to be true. You know, when we tested interpreters and we started introducing these tests, as opposed to just do you speak Spanish, can you be here tomorrow? What was, uh, very surprising was a very low passing rate of these people who had been interpreters for me, but, you know, not to their fault, not, it's not their fault. The fact that the job assumed that by just telling you, just go there and do it was enough to train somebody. So we introduced the concept of work, uh, with a philosophy that takes you from just doing to actually learning from what you're doing and, and taking you almost, you know, step by step, not almost step by step in a systematic approach to actually learn what you need to learn, uh, to be a court interpreter.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm for a medical
Speaker 2:Interpreter,
Speaker 1:Medical court, you, you know, all, all of the above, they, they can all benefit from the systematic approach. I am always surprised when I, I speak to new students and they say, and I ask them, do you record yourself? And this yes. All the time. Yes. And then I ask you, listen to yourself.
Speaker 2:Not that I,
Speaker 1:Why would I want to
Speaker 2:<laugh>
Speaker 1:And, and, and it takes a little bit of drilling. It takes a little while to get it into them, that it is not just being put on the spot. It is the, the action of reviewing and listening to yourself. When do you get tired? When do you mix up your consonants and your vowels, depending on the language, when do you mix up your articles, for example, mm-hmm<affirmative> um, have you, were you trying to multitask while you were doing something and they came out the wrong way, or were you just not focusing and you missed a certain segment what was being said? So there's no way you can know this without listening to,
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. Uh, one of the things that I think is, is very important about this and you hit hit in the, in the head is the idea that because I did something I learned from it really doesn't do well in this area. I mean, the fact that I interpret for somebody and somebody who doesn't speak the language tells me you did a good job, really doesn't help me learn much. And listening to yourself is just imperative. If you're gonna be a good court interpreter again, or a medical interpreter or any kind of interpreter. So, and actually one of the interesting, uh, how would I, I say serenity, uh, situations that we got from, from this COVID was this forcing us all into this virtual learning and, and virtual communication. We at the Institute had already had classes online for a while. Uh, but obviously since, uh, COVID hit us, that has increas dramatically. But, uh, the point that I wanted to make is that by doing things online, instead of a person, we discovered something interesting. And that is that, that approach of adults needing a lot more reinforcement and pushing, uh, into actually getting the job done rather than just attending and thinking that bio osmosis they learned was, uh, uh, effectively and, and positively affected by online learning. Because what I realized is that with all this motivation that I tried to give people during a weekend, for instance, I've had the experience, people leave really more motivated, man, this was great. Oh, I'm, I'm so happy. I'm gonna start tomorrow. Blah, blah. But most of the time it was like this new year's resolutions, right?
Speaker 1:Yes. I agree.
Speaker 2:They, they talked about it by Sunday, by Wednesday. They didn't even remember that the seminar had occurred. Right. And then of course they would go take the test. They would discover that, oh man, the last time I opened a book was when that was in that weekend seminar. Right? So when we started having classes online and having to see each other every week and giving them less, fewer tasks to a complete, before we saw each other, again, really was very PO uh, positive as the results of people being more engaged and actually doing their homework, I guess a little bit of peer pressure that, you know, say, Hey Maria, did you do your homework? And now there's eight guys or 10 guys around you that said yes. And you don't want to see the guy who says, say, be the person who says, no, I didn't. Right. So, uh, that has been a, a positive discovery that our systematic approach do this. And then let's do this and very well matches this format of having shorter classes and you don't have to be present. So it's, it's been very into for me how, how we have adapted and found that there's actually positive things now, of course not being present has its disadvantages. We can't go out and go salsa, dancing on Saturdays or, or go meet the people and have a different environment. Uh, but that will come to
Speaker 1:One of the things that I find really interesting is the fact that in addition to being able to extend the cycle of learning for, uh, interpreters who are taking online classes, now they really have access to other interpreters. In other parts of the country, they may not have known. That's true. Absolutely. Especially, I mean, a Spanish and interpreter can always find another Spanish interpreter work with, but how many, um, interpreters of languages of lesser diffusion do we have in each state? Uh, so I guess one of my big questions for you is what characteristic would you, um, say over the years you have discovered the optimal, the date for, to become an interpreter should have,
Speaker 2:Well, there's, there's many things, uh, like I, I I've said before, you have to be brave, first of all, to stand in front of people and talk. And when you're on a, on a, in a trial, everybody's looking at you, so you have to be brave. You have to be smart. I think one of the most difficult things for people to accept is how bilingual are you?
Speaker 1:Mm.
Speaker 2:I think there's a big confusion. And I, that that's very important. The ideal candidate would have to understand that the level of sophistication requiring both languages, first of all, has to be almost identical mm-hmm<affirmative>
Speaker 1:<affirmative>.
Speaker 2:And it has to be very high according to something that bill he used to mention many years ago, about a two year college education level on both languages. I think that that's been one of the issues that we have to accept as interpreters. Cause I have a lot of interpreters or interpreters candidates that don't really see that difference. They believe that because they can speak enough Spanish to go to Cancun and order a couple of beers and have a, a conversation with somebody is the same as the level of Spanish they're gonna need in court. And of course, that's not the case. I mean, if you haven't studied one of the languages formally, there's very good chance that your level of sophistication is not gonna be the same as a person who got educated in that language. So you have to study it. So you have to be studios. You have to, to put in the time, um, you have to get rid of this concept. I'm bilingual, I'm ready to go. And I, I tell people, Hey, listen, I can drive a car. That doesn't mean I can drive during the Daytona 500, even though some people would say, I drive as bad as those guys do, but that's neither here or not there. But, uh, the point is just because you can do something, let's say as an amateur, that doesn't mean that you can do it as a professional.
Speaker 1:And there's also Aine isn't there also a misnomer or a misunderstanding about the concept of fluency.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. I, you know, yes, yes. I, I often ask that question because people say I'm fluent in Spanish or I'm fluent. And you know, and the best example I can give people is, well, think about a 10 year old child who has gone to school and was born in you pick the country, let's say the United States, a kid about 10 years old is gonna be able to have a conversation with people, uh, older him younger than him. They're gonna be able to understand certain concepts. They're gonna have a, and they're gonna be, if they only speak English, let's say, well, they're a native fluent, but nobody's gonna tell a native speaker that they're not fluent in their language. Fluent really only means flow, right? That they can say what they can think. But if that 10, 10 year old, who is a native speaker of English goes to court one day and the court in his native tongue says something like you shall be remanded to the authorities of the correctional facility due to the non-compliance of the previous order of this court. There's a very good chance that that child who is a native fluent speaker of English would not understand completely or at all what the judge just said in his native tongue. So here's the thing. One thing is to be able to flow at certain level. And another one is to be fluent at all levels from sophisticated language educated language to slang and, and anything in between innuendo, uh, amatic, expressions, Proverbs, et cetera, uh, you know, PI, uh, posted that, posted that, uh, kids before the age of 12 don't even have, uh, a good ability for abstract reasoning. So if that's the case, then that means that if you education language wise, stop before the age of 12, then there's a lot of things you really didn't learn in that other language. So yes, you can go to the other countries. Yes. You can have conversations with people who speak that language, but no, you don't have the sophistication to interpret vocabulary in court. And that's something that people have a hard time accepting. I mean, nobody and going back to something that you and I talked about before this commentaries, that was one of the PE the reasons why people complain. Sometimes they said, what do you mean I need to improve my English. I've spoken English my whole life. Right? So, so yeah, we have to be among many other things. Ideal candidate has to be open to understanding where do I, where am I and where do I need to go on? Hence the importa of recording yourselves.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. I was seeing that when I teach, I talked, especially new interpreters. I make sure that they understand that there's at least four languages. They need to speak mm-hmm<affirmative> they need to speak English. Is this, this, when we're talking about court interpreting of course, mm-hmm,<affirmative>, um, you have to speak legalese in English, you have to speak your native language or the language you're interpreting into. And then you have to speak the legalese of that, of, of, of that country. And that's, and those are just the basic quote unquote languages that you need to know. You mentioned it very well. You mentioned, um, you mentioned jargon, you mentioned slang. Um, idioms are very important. And, and, and it's interesting to me because in addition to the fact that many interpreters, and we talked about this earlier, come to this as a second career, and they bring a lot of their knowledge from a previous, previous career or a previous occupation. In addition to that, we language is alive and being that it's alive. And we're focusing here on interpreting here in the United States. So what happens when you've been in this country for 20 or 30 years, and you haven't really spent much time going back and forth to the country where that language is originally spoken and, and you are interpreting for in, or refugees or anybody who perhaps has a, a different, um, a different relationship with the language than you do. Can you comment on that?
Speaker 2:No, that's, that's very true. We, uh, I haven't been to Mexico for years now, at least one. Um, but I left Mexico and I was gone for a while. And when I first went back a few years later, I realized, yeah, people could already tell, Hey, you don't, you sound funny when you speak Spanish. Right. There was so certain, and there was certain things that were new to the language that I didn't know at all. Um, so yes, it's a, it, we have to understand the, at, too that you have to continue, um, acquiring this new, this new language that is coming from the outside world here in Orlando. We had an interesting situation when I first took over the, the, uh, interpreter program here, uh, in 97. Uh, the first language that was used, number one was of course Spanish, but number two was Vietnamese.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:Uh, and number three was, uh, Haitian Creole. Uh, so Vietnamese was, uh, highly used in Orlando a long time ago. And, and that was very clear that the people who came as refugees from Vietnam, uh, in the, at the end of the Vietnam war in the seventies were older now. And they have kids and some of the kids spoke Vietnamese because they made him, they made them speak Vietnamese, right? So
Speaker 1:Heritage,
Speaker 2:But when people came from Vietnam, even the people who were here in the seventies had the surprise of this change of the language, as you were mentioning, things that were not used before new, uh, words, uh, new sayings that were part of the culture. So yeah, we have to be open continuously renew this knowledge. And I, I think that that's why this wonder loss that I mentioned is kind of an integral part of being an interpreter, because you have this idea of going around and talking to people and acquiring this very necessary for your job.
Speaker 1:You are, you're absolutely. We're, uh, a Augustine and the, and the more that you put into it, the more that you get out of it. I like to say that a good interpreter or a seasoned interpreter is like a good wine. You you're never too old. You just have to continue to acquire the right conditions to mature in the right conditions, whatever those are, whether it's temperature or whether it's vocabulary or whether it's exposure to new, um, new environments. And that is, that is really what cements the, you know, all of these skills in the good interpreter. What about you? What makes the good interpreter?
Speaker 2:Huh? What about me? What makes me a good interpreter?
Speaker 1:Oh, well, yeah. That's a good question. Actually. I meant what I, I was actually asking you what you think makes a good interpreter, but why don't we go with that one?
Speaker 2:I, I was, I, I think I was, uh, telling you that for me, interpretation is part knowledge, part bravery and part black magic.<laugh> I don't know how we do it. I'm serious. I think that this just like any other talent, you know, people can't sing. I can't, um, some people are better dancers or whatever. I think that in, in interpretation, there's this quick connection in the brain where you skip from one language to another and backwards that can not be taught. So a good interpreter has to have some innate talent to do this job. Um, I've had people that have PhDs in both languages that I speak and told me, and, and they're very good translators. And they tell me, there's no way I could do interpretation. I don't know how you guys do it. And the truth is, I don't know either. There's a part that I really, how did I come up with the solution? I don't know, but it's there. So what makes a good interpreter is openness to this. Let, I think when you concentrate too much about trying do it perfectly, right, you're not gonna be as effective, a good interpreters trust what she knows and goes with it. So you have to be very open to go with your flow. So you, you, I, I talk a lot about this two, um, zones, you know, there's, there's time that we have to dedicate to learn new things and to acquire new vocabulary and to acquire new techniques. And then there's when we perform. And when we perform, we should not be thinking about how to do things. We should just flow with it.
Speaker 1:Aine. Thank you. Thank you very much for speaking with us. No, thank you. We look forward to continuing our conversations with you. We shall absolutely. Now as a sneak peek for next week, um, we will actually be continuing our conversation with a Gustine delam and we're gonna be talking about lessons learned from COVID 19 times. Yeah. And whether we are any closer to settling on an idea of what a new normal might be for interpreters.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Stay tuned. Cuz we don't know. We're good.<laugh> take it as we go.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much Aine. It's nice to see you.
Speaker 2:Bye bye.
Speaker 1:If you're looking to continue to build your skills and learn something new, join Aine himself for his upcoming nine hour live on interpreting skill building course learn the core methods and practices that have made theam Mota Institute of interpretation and nationally recognized interpreter training company classes begin on November 23rd and for more information and to enroll visit the website theam institute.com/catalog CA T O L O G or our Facebook page. We hope that this podcast has enriched your journey along this fascinating field of interpretation. Perhaps you've learned something new, remember something you'd forgotten or are now encouraged to try something different. If you're watching this on YouTube, please share your comments with us below. And if you're listening to us, don't forget to subscribe. So you don't miss our weekly episodes. Take care.