The Lean Podcast
The Lean Podcast
Remote interpreting: All About Boundaries
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Welcome to another episode on our miniseries!
In this episode we have the wonderful Ali Heatherington discussing boundaries in Remote Interpreting settings.
Let us know what you think!
Ciara and Romy xxx
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00:02 (singing).
00:03 (singing)
00:04 Hi, my name's Ciara.
00:06 Hi, I'm Romy.
00:07 And this is The Lean.
00:08 The Lean. Another episode.
00:12 Another episode in our very special mini series... 00:15 Remote interpreting. All about boundaries. 00:19 All about those boundaries.
00:22 Yeah, I don't don't know your experience. My experience... Before, pre-COVID, before everything went
online, I didn't have a studio at home. So I would either walk to work or get a bus to work or go to the airport and fly to work. And that is distancing yourself from the job in such a big way, right? Because if you have a big, stressful job, which happens on a regular occasion in interpreting-
00:49 It's true.
00:50 ... You have that whole journey back home to filter and process and let go, or just separate it, have like a wall
between personal and work.
01:01 Yeah. Exactly. You've got a very natural boundary, you could say, the fact that you've got your health, your safe
little space. Of course you could do all your preparation work because preparation is so important. If you haven't listened to that episode on The Lean, go ahead and click now. Classic plug.
01:22 Plug her own podcast on our podcast.
01:24 On our podcast. It never gets old. Will I ever learn? But as I was saying, you could do your preparation and that, but
it's relatively a safe space, little bubble, off you go, venture off to work. I don't know about you, Romy, but when I get my little interpreting outfit on, I get my game face on. I'm ready to go to work. I do my power posing, off I go. I listen to Nina Simone Feeling Good when I'm going to job that I'm worried about or a bit stressed about or if it's very important, because it makes me feel very empowered and ready for the day.
02:01 Classic song, by the way. 3 All about boundaries (Completed 09/22/20)
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02:04 It's a great song.
02:05 Epic song choice.
02:06 Would highly recommend to anyone who's feeling a bit nervous or worried about a job they're going to, to listen
to that one. 02:14 Absolutely.
02:14 Or to sign along to it. So exactly, what you said, you have that whole journey to mentally prepare, you physically go
into work, you do your job, hopefully it all goes quite well. And if it doesn't go well, you get to leave the job, you get that journey home to decompress, whether you're singing along to your radio in your car on your way home, which is what I like to do if things have, maybe, not gone to plan. Or a nice little walk home to get a bit of air to refresh your brain.
02:49 I'm a dancer, that's what I do. If I have had a stressful day, I tend to put on the tunes, absolutely, but I do a massive
dance. I do a jump up and down and expend the energy of nerves and stress, because as an interpreter, obviously there are stressors that come with the job, but when you come out of a tense situation, nine times out of 10, it's not your stress or tenseness, it's the task. So that's my way of bouncing it off.
03:20 That's a good way to release it.
03:22 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not one for exercising. So that's
my...
03:27 I would see dance as a form of exercise.
03:30 True. Very true, yeah. No, but boundaries are such a big part of being able to cope with the job that when we
went online we talked about needing to get the studio space up in our previous episode, but it's also talking about the emotional and professional boundaries that are now completely different to what they were before. So instead of having a commute, whether it's dreaded or needed, because, as we know in Dublin, the commute is always insane, but at least it's that mental space to prep and get you to where you need to be.
04:05 Exactly.
04:06 Now it's a question of going from your bedroom to your
"office space." 04:13 Yeah.
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04:13 And you can shower and you can do a walk around your local park and try create that commute in a way, but it's
still never quite the same because when the job finishes, you're just at home.
04:28 Exactly. That whole physical boundary, if you like, has melted away and, as you said, instead of hopping on the
bus and battling the traffic to work, in my case, I'm going downstairs to my desk and to my laptop. And that's, I suppose, that breathing space that I have to get ready to actually do the job. So I found I've had to make sure I have a little routine, rather than just jumping straight on.
05:00 Right.
05:01 Because that can be very tempting when you're working from home, I'm sure a lot of people could relate, you can
just... 05:06 Yeah.
05:07 Because you don't have thought time that you need to leave at a certain time and have your usual little routine that you would normally have. That's totally gone. So I've
found I've had to make sure I have that breathing space before I actually do hop on a job on my laptop, just to make sure that I have, as I spoke before, that game face, you're ready, you're on, you're ready to go, all guns blazing as best you can.
05:35 Yeah. I've struggled with that, to be honest. I've had the opportunity to work with a phenomenal group of
interpreters throughout COVID in Ireland for government bodies who were doing announcements on a daily basis about COVID-19. And although it wasn't in my homework space, so there was still that travel to and from, it just was you're in the house and you're thinking about COVID-19 because it's everywhere on the news, on social media, and then you're in the taxi and you hear it and then you arrive to work and you're interpreting it. And then there was no boundary when you came home. And it was still everywhere.
The amount of times I came out of, let's say, the Department of Health who had just given the updates, the numbers, the protocol they'd like people to undertake, and you get into the taxi and the news is doing highlights of it, you can't handily ask them to turn it off, and then you come home and you're rewatching it because your housemate has it... It's been very difficult to switch off from that space as well. So the boundaries, in that respect, when it's everywhere, and even in other
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interpreting work, COVID is always underlying. You start a conference in your home, from your home studio, and the first thing they say is, "Oh, well, because of COVID here we are." And you can't switch off from it, which is quite challenging.
06:59 Yeah. It's definitely one of the biggest stressors, I mean that everyone is facing in the world, let's be real.
06:59 Absolutely. Absolutely.
07:07 Not just sign language interpreters or interpreters in
general. 07:09 Yeah.
07:09 But it's definitely one of the biggest things. And I suppose we're talking about boundaries and moving on to, I
suppose, more personal boundaries. One of the things that people are always... As a professional, you don't often talk about your home life and your sitting room setup.
07:29 Totally. Totally.
07:29 But now suddenly that's the order the day that people are talking about coronavirus, how it's affecting them, asking
how you're working from home, because it's quite clear that your background is working from home. I'd done my best to create my Zoom corner, but there's only so much you can do to make it not look like a house. So all of a sudden your own little home environment has suddenly become your work life as well. So it's a strange one. It's a balance I'm still definitely trying to manage.
So hopefully our guest will actually be able to see you lead us and guide us and give us some great tips and insight as to how we are better able to manage these boundaries between the physical boundary of us and your new, very close proximity to work, to managing your whole home environment, I suppose. And I suppose, I live with housemates, but I know other people live with families and they have children and all sorts going on, so that's another layer that you never would have expected from working, I suppose, as an interpreter.
08:43 The wonderful Ali Hetherington coming on board, we are very lucky to have her as our guest. She's a sign language
interpreter from the UK. She has a diploma in supervision and wanted to support her work as an interpreter, so looked for supervision and basically came into this whole supervisory aspect of life, where she considers ethics and boundaries, which is why we reached out to her to come
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onto the podcast to talk about boundaries, particularly
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given COVID. So we're so ecstatic to have her on board. 09:20 I'm so excited to see what she has to say. Can't wait to
learn, to share that wisdom. 09:26 Welcome, Ali.
09:28 We're so happy to have Ali here with us on The Lean. Ali, thank you so much for joining us remotely.
09:34 Welcome.
09:34 This is so exciting. Romy, we've really got up in the world,
having international guests now.
09:40 That's it. We now have people that we had no connection with before. It's been a real mover. More and more
perspectives, more and more conversations. 09:47 Yeah, all through the beauty of Zoom.
09:49 Yes.
09:50 So Ali, just for our many listeners and viewers we have all over the world, to start off, would you like to give us just a little bit of background about yourself, your experience
and anything else that you'd like to share?
10:04 Okay. Well, I qualified as an interpreter 21 years ago now, in 1999. In my previous life, I was a youth worker.
10:15 Oh cool.
10:15 So I originally trained worker and I worked with homeless young people. And at the same time, I started learning
sign language. Not with a view to being an interpreter, I think my aim was to make our services more accessible for deaf young people. And then I got more and more interested in sign language and decided that I wanted to train as an interpreter and went to Wolverhampton University in the mid '90s and then qualified in 1999. So I think because of my background in doing youth work, I leaned towards doing more community type bookings. And actually, also, over the last 18 years, I've been working within mental health services, so primarily within forensic mental health services. So those are my two main domains that I work in.
And I also trained to be a professional advisor 10 years ago, approximately 10 years ago, because I wanted to support my colleagues. As we know, interpreting is incredibly complex. It's not a matter of, "Oh, just tell
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them what I've said." Which some people believe it is about. But first, we know it's far more complex than that, and boundaries being one of the complexities that many, many supervisees bring, and myself as a supervisee, takes to supervision as well. So it's really interesting to have this opportunity for us to think about and talk about online interpreting and the issues around boundaries that that brings for us in this whole new world that we've got.
Well, Ali, you led in very smoothly to my next question
because you just mentioned- [crosstalk 00:11:56] you know?
... How important it is to talk about boundaries, especially when it comes to remote work. So our question for you is, quite a big question, what do you think boundaries, particularly as we're focusing on remote interpreting, are?
Well, in your introduction, you nicely outlined some of the issues around going from home to work and back again, and how pre-COVID, pre-lockdown, how important... You talked about putting your game face on and how important the commute to and from work was, both to mentally prepare, to then also discharge emotions, singing in the car, and how important that has been and was for us, and is for us when we're doing face to face work, how important that commute is, that time that we have when we leave home, before we go into work. And of course with lockdown that completely changed and our home became our work. And that's what you talked about. So now we're looking at not only how do we create a work environment at home, so it's what space do we use?
Some people have the luxury of having designated space, but a lot of people don't have that. And in addition, a lot of, primarily, women have taken on childcare during COVID. And interpreters are primarily women, so how have to manage children as well as workspace? So all those considerations that we've had to think about. And also, like you said, how do you leave work at the door when you can't do that? So it's how you then change your workspace back into your home space at the end of work. And we've had to find ways of doing that over the last five months. And I think that, generally, people probably have found their own way of making that distinction between home life and work life. And I think we're still finding our way with that.
And I think what particularly interested me when I was thinking about this podcast was the boundary issues when
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we're actually working as well. So we're actually online interpreting and how those are different from when we're working face to face. We know that we make complex minute by minute decisions and what we do is not straightforward. And I think working online has created a whole new set of challenges for us that we've just been having to find our way as we're going along. We didn't have preparation for it. So I think that has been really difficult for all of us. Certainly has for me. And I've gone from feeling quite confident about going into my assignments to fitting really anxious and coming out in cold sweat of technology. I've had so many problems with technology, I've had so many gremlins in my laptop.
And I think as well, I was thinking of course there are VRS interpreters and, in some ways, because they've got protocols for how to work, they've got to have a particular backdrop, they have to have designated space to work in, in some ways that makes it easier in some ways, because we don't have to think through the issue so much. I think that one of the things I've thought about is how we're seen and how, for example, what we were. Wearing work clothes from the waist up and then wearing the pajamas-
From the waist down.
Yeah. So it's always thinking about... And I think in terms of personally, yes, it's what we present to the world and how we feel. I do get dressed for work because then that is for me a boundary between work and home. So I wear different clothes for work as I do for home.
Yeah. I think that's very true actually, because at the start of it all, I was very much, "Okay, business on top, lounge wear on the bottom." But then after like a couple of weeks of it I was like, "Oh no, Ciara, this is not having a good effect on you." And then once I actually made that shift, when we knew that things were probably going to be here for a little while longer than we expected, when I made that effort to do an actual outfit, a full outfit, as if I was going to work, I could feel the difference that that made. And especially, as you mentioned, the anxiety, overdoing things that you may not have been used to doing, normally they were face to face.
And I actually work as a VRS interpreter part of the time, and that was fine working from home doing that because I was so used to the procedures and everything we had, but everything else that I did outside of that, when that was changed onto online, that was a huge change. And I did have those anxiety and anxious feelings because it was totally new just like everyone. So that's something
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that I found actually, it's funny, you mentioned it, when I actually were like, "No, Ciara, you're going to have to do a full outfit today." It was something so tiny, but it helped so much to actually get you in the right mindset and the right mind frame, if that makes sense?
And then the best part at the end of the day is taking it
all off and going into lounge wear proper. Always at the end of the day, I'd take it off and I'd be like, "Oh, fun time." It does really help a lot with the mindset, absolutely.
And I suppose that's something that we find as we go along, or we have found as we've gone along over the last five months, is what works for us, what helps us get us in that work zone. And like I said, it's how we're seen in terms of how we're dressed, and it's also what's in the background as well. And I haven't got the answers, I've just got a lot of questions that I've been asking myself as well. It's like, what is the importance of the background? Because there could be a sense of, "No, we have to have a screen behind us." And I don't have a screen. I don't do VRS work and I will go back to doing face to face work as much as possible. I do have a plain wall that I use and I use that for formal meetings.
Yeah, it's just thinking about... Because I think there's a sense that interpreters might have, "Oh, this is how we have to do it." And actually there's no rule book. There's no guidance for how we do it, apart from with VRS work. But with the other work, it's like, well, what is the importance of the background? I mean, of course, we don't want there to be a distraction, so that's really important that we can be seen clearly. It could be that we don't want to be brought into a conversation like, "Oh, that's a nice plant you've got behind you." or something. So those are the sort of considerations that we need to make. And I do think it probably differs depending on if we're doing a one off booking with people we've never worked with before.
I've done assignments in London. I don't know anyone. I don't know anything really. I don't know the geographical area, I don't know the people, I don't know the coworker. So it's a very different ball game. So I always make sure I've got a very plain background for that sort of work. Whereas, when I do work that I do on a regular basis with people I work with week, in week out and I have done for the past few years, I will use maybe this background and that's fine to me, that feels fine. And also I'll have a drink, whereas I wouldn't in a formal meeting. Whereas, we have a afternoon coffee, everybody seems to be having a coffee at the same time and that seems fine as
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well. So I think it's also around the relationships that we form with people. Because that's really important part of our work as well, isn't it? And I think sometimes trying to be less present means we become more present, but not in a good way.
20:07 Yeah, yeah. Well, it's the human aspect of being an interpreter that's constantly being spoken about. We're
not the robot that we were thought to be. We're not just the telephone. And more and more in current research it is talking about aspects of interpreting as human, right? Because we can't help but be there, but it's how we manage it.
20:27 Absolutely. And I still think there's a fear around that. I don't think interpreters talk so much about being invisible
anymore, but I certainly think there's a fear around being present. And in my role as a supervisor supervising interpreters, I do hear that a lot with interpreters, is that, "Am I permitted to do something? Am I allowed to do something?" And so online working, let's say it just adds a whole new complexity to that. And also I guess as well, some interpreters will want to be more private than other interpreters. So it's how we manage that boundary between how much is too much? And I think it's just acknowledging that we're all different. I mean, personally, I'm a private person and I think that there would be issues maybe with having, say, pictures of family and children on the wall. Particularly, if we're talking about risk, if we're doing, for example, a probation officers appointment with a child sex offender, I mean that's a really obvious one.
But I think those are the sort of considerations we need to make about what impact we might have on people if we do have something more personal behind us. So I would choose not to, personally. I might have plants, but I wouldn't have anything that's pictures or something more personal than that. But it just shows how complicated it is. Because I think it's something we need to talk through and come to some conclusion of what works for us and what works for those that we work with as well. And it's about negotiating, isn't it? It's about us negotiating those professional boundaries. And the fact is, we are all in the same boat and it's okay to negotiate and talk to our clients, talk about how we're working together, what their expectations are of us and how that sits with us as well. Because I know as interpreters we are accommodating and it's important that we are, but there might be something that we're asked to do that doesn't sit well with us and it's how we then negotiate.
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What you were saying there, what might work, say, for
example, maybe for one interpreter really well and they find that that's how they can cope, might not work very well for another interpreter. And because everything is so new, it's not like you can just look to someone say, "Oh, well, that's what's done. So I'll do that." Because that might not suit at all, that kind of way. But I think it's really important, as you mentioned, to remember that we are all in this together and it's really important to have those discussions and talk about it because it's not just... I mean, it's not something I don't think any of us ever expected when we trained as an interpreter.
Right. Absolutely.
That one day we're all going to be at home in front of our screens or be too afraid to be less than two meters near to someone, so how are you going to interpret? All those kinds of crazy things that we just never thought were actually going to happen. So I think it is very important because there's so many new challenges that we have and we're all facing them.
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think the boundaries are also moving and shifting. At the very beginning of all of lockdown it was so forgivable to have anything in the background. It was totally okay if you didn't know how to use Zoom. You weren't seen as unprofessional because you didn't have your ducks in a row, because everyone was in the same situation. But now the professional boundaries have definitely shifted more to, "This is becoming a bit more of a norm." So there's more expectation there. Like you say, it's a constant negotiation, because even when we're there in person, we're always constantly negotiating where we stand, where we sit, our position as interpreters in these situations, it's all just taken a turn, a random turn on the roles that we all know have to deal with, you know?
Yeah, that's true.
Absolutely. And I think having those discussions is so important, that transparency, that negotiation, feeling okay about talking about how we work. And everybody is doing this, to some extent, it's quite new to doing this. I mean not so much now, as you say, things are moving. And I think those discussions, like I say, are really important. And having a separate platform with coworkers and clients on is really important, not only for the interpreting process to be smoother, but also to be able to prepare, to debrief, to be yourself. Talk about that boundary between the person and professional, we're still there as interpreters, but not in the meeting
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and we're able to then... It's part of that transition of working to not working, that's what I find. Because what I've found really difficult when I've worked on my own, for example, particularly at the beginning, was suddenly switching on Zoom and being on and then just clicking leave meeting. And then it's like, that's it.
There is no little prep conversation. There's nothing after.
Yeah, I know. It really hits you. It's really hard.
I really struggled with that. And I don't think I quite appreciated, I suppose, that incidental communication and connectivity that I had with people until I didn't have it anymore. So even that walking down the corridor or walking to the car park or walking to the train station, having those conversations that help move us away from work, maybe discharge some of the emotions that have come up potentially, and then go back into a workspace. So I think that very sudden change from one to the other is something that I found incredibly difficult. Walking for me, at the beginning of lockdown... Thankfully we had fabulous weather, who'd have thought it?
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
That made such a difference. I just needed to get out of the house, be surrounded by nature. And when I say surrounded by nature, I do live in Manchester, so we haven't got a lot of nature by found quite a lot that I didn't even know existed and I lived here for over 30 years. And that made so much difference to me. It just helped make that switch, that transition, that discharging the emotions. And having coworkers on another platform. Initially, I didn't because I didn't think about it. Again, it's finding your way, isn't it? And it's like having them next to me, it was lovely. Having them on video, it was like they were sitting next to me. And that made a difference, particularly on more stressful assignments, having that chance to debrief afterwards.
And I guess also I've thought about in terms of coworking online is how we co-work, how we alert our coworker if we're struggling. And I'm thinking, of course, they're struggling in terms of maybe mishearing something or technology, but also if we're struggling emotionally, because we don't know. As interpreters, we think we're going into one thing and we're going into something completely different. And we don't know what might be triggered for ourselves. And in a face to face setting, in some ways it's easier for someone if they can see us and to communicate that. But it is thinking around how we
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manage that, both while we're working and then after we've finished working as well, if we haven't got that time that we might normally have. So there's so many considerations to make, so it's how we ground ourselves and how we have that sense of ourselves while we're working, isn't it? So we feel grounded and yeah...
Oh Ali, just... It's like we've opened a gate and now the
boundaries and the queries about it are just flooding out of my mind, it's like so many things. But it's just so true.
[crosstalk 00:28:32] Well it only with you asking, I've really thought about this. I thought, god, there's more and more. Ad that's not the transition from work to home, that's the actual working bit. Because there's a lot of information online around creating a routine and having time away from the computer and all that's really good and really important. As interpreters, it's different when we're online, we're not at a computer working, writing reports or in a meeting... We're not performing, but it's a different situation. And how we manage that, we didn't consider because we didn't have chance to consider.
Yeah. I thought I had more awareness and then it happened. And then I realized, "No, Ciara, maybe you don't have as much awareness as you thought you did." To be honest.
It really is, isn't it? I think the more we do it, the more we become aware of what's involved in it as well.
Yeah.
I mean, I must admit, I've gone back to doing more face to face work, and the first time I started going back to it I thought [inaudible 00:29:40] people and I couldn't because we stay two meters apart. And it's that being with people. Not being with people, particularly during lockdown, did have a massive impact on me, out of everything. And I think a lot of people are the same. What I missed was that connection with other people, that real connection.
Yeah, because it's not the same doing it remote, you don't get the same connection, no.
And especially with a sign language, a 3D language that is now on a 2D screen, it's very different.
Oh exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean the technical aspects of the language are more complex and then everything else is more complex as well. And I think it's important for us to know when our boundaries are being pushed and that's
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that awareness that we as interpreters need to have. And because we're all different as well, and I know that interpreters do go to colleagues for support and that support is absolutely invaluable, I think what a lot of interpreters do is they go to colleagues and they say, "Oh, what would you do if? What would you do in this situation?" And if they get a response back which is the same as what they did, then it's like, "Great, that's it. Sorted." Without exploring further.
Or they might think, "Oh god, I didn't feel like that." And think there's something wrong with them or they're at fault in some way. So that's where, I think, supervision comes in because it's about us exploring our boundaries. Because our boundaries are different depending on our upbringing, our values. And so what we feel comfortable is going to be different for some of us compared to other people. So it's having that understanding about what our boundaries are and when they're being pushed and recognizing when they're being pushed.
31:45 Exactly. Now more than every, really, yeah. Ali?
31:50 Yes?
31:51 I think that leads us on to our next question. Do you have one clear example or something that really sticks on your
mind, an experience of this, or something similar that you would like to share?
32:04 Do you know, I thought about that. So boundaries working online?
32:08 Yeah.
32:10 Or in general, if there's not one online.
32:12 Or in general, nothing specifically online, in general either.
32:16 I think for me some of the boundaries are the same. Working online and working face to face, some of the
boundaries are the same in terms of how we present ourselves. It's just how we do it is different. I think for me, one of the main issues for me was technology. I like to appear quite calm and collected, that's the persona, my professional persona. And using technology, I am not calm and collected. So I suppose those sort of boundaries about being yourself and choosing how you present yourself, I found that a challenge in terms of using technology. Because in some ways I haven't had as much
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control over it as I would normally do. So that for me, I
Ciara:
would say, has been challenging.
33:06 With technology and sometimes not having control over it, and sometimes your screen is taken over by someone else, quite literally, because they have power over what
everybody sees and everyone views. And maybe you prefer to have maybe the gallery view on, but all of a sudden there's a screen being shared and everybody turns tiny and that can cause a bit of panic. You've got that going on in the back of your mind, you're still trying to interpret, you might have a team interpreter that you're trying to communicate with at the same time. So there's so much going on that it really does test you in your boundaries. You can't just close your laptop and say, "No, do you know what, we'll try again tomorrow." You can't, even if you might feel like doing that, you can't, and you have to try your best to power through those moments and they are testing.
But I suppose going back to what we were saying is everyone is human and interpreting is such a human profession. Particularly at the minute I think, especially at the start of the whole crisis, I found anyway, people were a lot more understanding. So when there were technology things... Because I've also had technology disasters and I truly have wanted to close my computer screen and not go back to it. But I suppose the nice part of that was being very open and saying, "Look, I'm really sorry. I don't know what's happening. I'm going to need a couple of minutes to try and figure this out. I'm so sorry if this is disrupting anyone. I'm trying my very best." I think it's very important everyone is experiencing the same things we are.
And I know, as you mentioned, presenting yourself, as interpreters I think sometimes there's a pressure to be very much, as you mentioned before, "Here I am. I am the interpreter. I'm in total control. There is nothing that can faze me." But sadly there are things that can phase me, particularly when we're online and my technology skills only go so far, especially when you're trying to learn different platforms. So I think it's very... Tying back to what you said when it comes to how you present yourself and you try your best to be your professional self, but sometimes your personal self has to come through a little bit.
35:17 We are only human. Everybody has had problems with technology, other people in the meeting, it happens all
the time. And I think the not having certain control of turn-taking, those sort of issues that we would have face to face becomes more of an issue on online. And I think
Ali Hetheringto...:
Ciara:
Ali Hetheringto...:
36:12
36:36
it's important to have a really strong chair who understands the interpreting process. And again, I've learned that, I didn't have that knowledge to begin with and it was more difficult. And so I think it's more important to work together and not just with our coworker, colleagues, our deaf clients, it's with everybody else. It is a matter of looking calm even if you don't feel it. And I think that has certainly been a challenge for me with working with technology.
Ali, you're dipping into our third little part of this series.
We might have you back next week. This is great. We're going full circle. Wonderful. Okay, well I think there's only one more question to ask and Ali that is, do you have a pearl of wisdom, a top tip that you would like to put out into the universe?
I suppose what I think is really important for us to do is, like I said before, it's about recognizing when our boundaries are being pushed. So it's doing a body scan, being aware of when we don't feel comfortable, what happens in our bodies. So for me, I might get a knot in my stomach. Other people might get, their hands might be clammy, it'll be different for different people. But once we know that something... Because our body will alert us probably before our head will. So practice doing a body scan in situations, particularly stressful situations, new situations like working online, and then that will inform us that something's happening that we're not... It could be our boundaries are being pushed in some way. So I would say my tip would be to do body scans of ourselves regularly and learn what our physical responses are.
So wise. So much wisdom. I love it.
Well that's good then. I'm glad you liked me top tip.
Oh my God. Thank you so much for coming on, Ali.
You're welcome.
We so appreciate it.
Ali, thank you so, so much, it was wonderful. That was amazing.
(singing) (singing)
We would like to thank David Hay, our video technician extraordinary; Isabelle Walshe, art director supreme;
Aisling Dragoi, our dream translator; as well as all of our guests for making these episodes possible.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Lean Podcast: The Mini Series. This has been made possible thanks to the Sign Language Interpreting Service, SLIS, and the Citizens Information Board. Without them, this never would have happened. Please follow us on our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram @theleanpodcast_ and know that we now have a Patreon account, so if you have any euros to spare, we would really appreciate them so we can continue doing what we love, talking about interpreting. Thanks for listening, bye.