New Book on Telephone Interpreting

The book on telephone interpreting is now available!

There will be a book signing at the International Medical Interpreters Association conference this week. Read the press release from Common Sense Advisory here.

Here are some reviews for the book:

This is a much-needed and invaluable contribution to the literature on the practice of interpreting. The volume provides unique insight into the relatively new field of telephone interpreting, and should be required reading for anyone involved in interpreting over the phone, whether as a practitioner,consumer, or educator.

Holly Mikkelson, Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, Monterey Institute of International Studies and author, The Interpreter's Companion and The Interpreter's Edge

Organizations of all kinds are awakening to the fact that telephone interpreting is not a substitute for other types of interpreting, but is a vital and growing specialized area within the field. Rich with examples, this book is a must-read for all interpreters, and is highly recommended to coordinators and managers of interpreting services.

Izabel Arocha, President, Massachusetts Medical Interpreters Association, and Professor of Interpreting, Boston University

This guide is a valuable resource both to interpreters seeking to enter the world of telephonic interpreting and to interpreter service managers interested in introducing telephonic interpreting in their facilities. The author clearly has extensive first-hand experience in the field, providing concrete examples as well as conceptual frameworks. The writing is straightforward and easy to read. I would suggest this book to anyone getting involved with telephonic interpreting.

Cynthia E. Roat, U.S.-based consultant on language access in health care, principal author, Bridging the Gap and former co-chair of the National Council of Interpreting in Health Care

Nataly Kelly's book is the definitive guide to telephone interpreting, and helps reveal the growing importance telephone interpreting has in our society and economy.

Louis Provenzano, President and Chief Operating Officer, Language Line Services

Sua majestade, o intérprete

Yet another writer has expressed an interest in the From Our Lips project!

Ewandro Magalhães Jr., the author of SUA MAJESTADE, O INTERPRETE: O Fascinante Mundo da Traducao Simultanea, was kind enough to send a copy of his book to me, the only book ever written on this specific topic in Portuguese. His book is now being translated into English as well.

To read more, or to order a copy, click here.

Interpreters in Literature

I wrote in a recent post about Jesús Baigorri-Jalón, the author of Interpreters at the United Nations: A History, a former staff interpreter at the United Nations stationed in New York, who also authored La interpretación de conferencias: el nacimiento de una profesión, de Paris a Nuremberg.

Jesús is one of many wonderful people in the interpreting profession that I have been fortunate enough to meet as a result of this project.

As I mentioned previously, Jesús has also written a wonderful paper on interpreter characters in fictional literature, which is likely of interest to many interpreters.

Now, with permission from the author, I am happy to share this paper here as a free download for readers. Click here to go to the main From Our Lips to Your Ears project page to download the file, and enjoy!

Jesús Baigorri-Jalón

One of my favorite "side effects" of working on this project so far has been the surprise of encountering numerous other authors who have written books about interpreting, and who, in many cases, work (or have worked) as professional interpreters themselves.

Another author I've been exchanging emails with is Jesús Baigorri-Jalón, the author of Interpreters at the United Nations: A History, published by Ediciones de la Universidad de Salamanca and translated into English by Anne Barr, from the original in Spanish.

As a former staff interpreter at the United Nations stationed in New York, he is also the author of La interpretación de conferencias: el nacimiento de una profesión, de Paris a Nuremberg, published by Granada Comares. A version of this book was also published in French, De Paris a Nuremberg: Naissance de l'interprétation de conférences.

Jesús has also written a wonderful paper on interpreter characters in fictional literature, which may be of interest to many of you, titled, "El intérprete como personaje de ficción en la narrativa contemporánea: algunos ejemplos".

He also shared an excellent resource with me that I thought I would share with everyone here as well. It is a page devoted to the history of translation and interpreting, primarily in Latin America, from the Université de Montréal:

http://www.histal.umontreal.ca/frances/versionfr.htm

If you click on the bibliography organized by topic (Bibliographie thématique), and then click on 418.02 Traduction et interprétation, you will see an extensive listing of resources.

Jesús and I have discussed the fact that there are so many great stories to be shared, and so many wonderful interpreters out there who have yet to learn about the project. I am definitely pleased by the diversity of settings in which working interpreters have been submitting stories, and constantly encouraged by the prospect of contributions from interpreters of all walks of life!

Alice Kaplan - The Interpreter

The Interpreter. Most (if not all) of us are familiar with the movie starring Nicole Kidman. However, are you familiar with the book by the same name, also known by it's French title, L'Interprete, by Duke University history professor, Alice Kaplan?

If not, it may be of special interest. Kaplan is the author of French Lessons and The Collaborator and the translator of OK, Joe, all published by the University of Chicago Press. Her books have been twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, once for the National Book Award, and she is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Here is what the publisher had to say:

"One of the least-known stories of the American liberation of France, from 1944 to 1946, is also one of the ugliest and least understood chapters in the history of Jim Crow. The first man to grapple with this failure of justice was an eyewitness: the interpreter Louis Guilloux. Now, in The Interpreter, prize-winning author Alice Kaplan combines extraordinary research and brilliant writing to recover the story both as Guilloux first saw it, and as it still haunts us today.

When the Americans helped to free Brittany in the summer of 1944, they were determined to treat the French differently than had the Nazi occupiers of the previous four years. Crimes committed against the locals were not to be tolerated. General Patton issued an order that any accused criminals would be tried by court-martial and that severe sentences, including the death penalty, would be imposed for the crime of rape. Mostly represented among service troops, African Americans made up a small fraction of the Army. Yet they were tried for the majority of capital cases, and they were found guilty with devastating frequency: 55 of 70 men executed by the Army in Europe were African American -- or 79 percent, in an Army that was only 8.5 percent black.

Alice Kaplan's towering achievement in The Interpreter is to recall this outrage through a single, very human story. Louis Guilloux was one of France's most prominent novelists even before he was asked to act as an interpreter at a few courts-martial. Through his eyes, Kaplan narrates two mirror-image trials and introduces us to the men and women in the courtrooms. James Hendricks fired a shot through a door, after many drinks, and killed a man. George Whittington shot and killed a man in an open courtyard, after an argument and many drinks. Hendricks was black. Whittington was white. Both were court-martialed by the Army VIII Corps and tried in the same room, with some of the same officers participating. Yet the outcomes could not have been more different.

Guilloux instinctively liked the Americans with whom he worked, but he could not get over seeing African Americans condemned to hang, Hendricks among them, while whites went free. He wrote about what he had observed in his diary, and years later in a novel. Other witnesses have survived to talk to Kaplan in person."

You can read an excerpt from the book here. You can also listen to an interview about the book with the author, from NPR, here. Here are some other quotes from reviewers:

“A cross section of a tragedy.…This is an extraordinary book.”
John Lukacs, Boston Globe

“A nuanced historical account that resonates with today’s controversies over race and capital punishment.”
Publishers Weekly

“American racism could become deadly for black soldiers on the front. The Interpreter reminds us of this sad component of a heroic chapter in American military history.”
Los Angeles Times

“A brilliant account.… Inventive, moving, and beautifully written, this is a major contribution to investigative history. Highly recommended.”
Library Journal

“With elegance and lucidity, Kaplan revisits these two trials and reveals an appallingly separate and unequal wartime U.S. military justice system.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Kaplan has produced a compelling look at the racial disparities as they were played out.… She explores both cases in considerable and vivid detail.”
Sacramento Bee

In the case of this interpreter, through whose eyes Kaplan allows readers to see a unique perspective in history, the issues surrounding racial disparities were impossible to ignore. While this is an extreme example, as interpreters, we assist members of minority groups constantly as part of our daily work, and many of us are representatives of minority groups ourselves. I am sure that many interpreters will find relevance and parallels in the viewpoints offered in Kaplan's book.

So often, interpreters are portrayed using the dry and inaccurate "parrot analogy", without acknowledgment of the fact that interpreters are human beings, participants, in many ways, of the events and communication acts taking place, not just in our presence, but with our presence. Given the significance of what Guilloux experienced as an interpreter, I venture to say he would probably agree.

I came across a discussion guide for this book online, and it posed a very interesting question:

For French writer Louis Guilloux, being an interpreter was much more than just a wartime profession. What did serving as an interpreter mean to him, and how did he embrace this role both during the courts-martial and throughout his life?

This question is an interesting one to reflect upon, especially in the context of our project. What parallels are there between Guilloux's view about his work, what it meant to him, and the views we, present-day interpreters, hold of our own? I hope that some answers to this question will be revealed through the From Our Lips to Your Ears project. Certainly, Alice Kaplan has given us a banquet of food for thought.

Finally, I'm pleased to share that I've exchanged emails with Ms. Kaplan, and she has kindly offered to support the project by putting us in touch with some of the interpreters she's been in contact with in relation to the writing of The Interpreter.

Janet Perez Eckles

Many years ago, I met a true heroine in our profession. From the moment I first heard her interpreting abilities, I knew she was outstanding in many ways. She was able to render information back and forth in her language pair (English<>Spanish) with utmost grace, retaining accuracy and making the speech sound absolutely natural, even conveying nonverbal information, such as hesitations, tone of voice and inflection. Not only that, but she always had an amazing presence about her, treating speakers of both languages gently, with respect and professional courtesy.

I worked with her for a long time, and always admired her as a professional. She quickly rose to achieve many things in her career as an interpreter, receiving awards for her abilities and obtaining her court certification in the state of Florida. Throughout her career, she has trained and coached hundreds of other interpreters in the United States, Panama, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.

What I didn't know about Janet Perez-Eckles when I first began working with her, and what may surprise many readers here, was that she was blind. When someone told me this, I became even more awestruck by Janet. We worked together for many years, interacting mostly via telephone. It became easy for me to forget that she was sightless, even when we were together in person. This became even more incredible to me when I learned that Janet had actually lost her sight as an adult. You can read more about Janet's incredible abilities as an interpreter in a feature article from Hispanic Times magazine, located here.

But Janet's achievements as an interpreter are not her only admirable qualities by any stretch of the imagination. In addition to losing her sight as a mother of three young children, Janet has overcome a great many obstacles in her life that many of us can never even imagine.

Janet is already a published author, and imparts wisdom to others about the many hardships she has successfully battled in her book, Trials of Today, Treasures for Tomorrow: Overcoming Adversities in Life, available for purchase online here.

Janet's writing - and her amazing life- have received wonderful acclaim in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Orlando Sentinel, and many others. Her work has appeared in countless books and publications, and one of her personal anecdotes will be featured in Chicken Soup for the Tea Lover's Soul, forthcoming in November 2007. Her blog is available here.

So, given this extremely impressive background, and even though I already knew her as a friend, I was extremely honored when I received a call from Janet yesterday. With Janet's trademark "smile in her voice", she shared her support of our project and offered to participate. Janet also informed me that, in her book, she has an entire chapter that discusses how she became an interpreter.

Those of you who have worked as telephone interpreters know the importance of note-taking. Now, imagine for a second that you could not take notes and had to rely exclusively on your short-term memory, even for the longest segments. Imagine interpreting a 16-digit credit card number without writing it down. Janet can do this effortlessly now, but in her book, she describes how she came to acquire and hone this unique ability.

Janet has kindly offered to allow our project to use excerpts from her book, especially from this chapter, which is very relevant. She and I are both thrilled about the chance of working together again, this time with another common interest - that of communicating with a wider audience, in writing, and sharing information about the interpreting profession with others.

Readers may also be interested to know that Janet is working on a series of novels at the moment, and one of her main characters happens to be an interpreter! As more updates become available about Janet's work, I will be sure to share them here.

Until then, I just want to say that I am very grateful for the opportunity to meet and collaborate with other published authors whose writing and work focus on interpreting, but are accessible to a broad audience. One thing I am finding in common with all of these authors is that we are unanimous in our belief that it is extremely important to give interpreters from all fields a chance to share their perspectives. There is so much great work being done, and there are so many great stories to share.

Valerie Taylor-Bouladon Barnes

I am excited to report that I've been in touch with another author, Valerie Taylor-Bouladon Barnes, former Geneva-based UN interpreter, and the author of A Foreign Affair (published by Random House), who currently resides in Australia. Here are what reviewers had to say about her book:

"Barnes' writing technique, which is heavily dependent on anecdotes and vignettes, is entertaining." - Sydney Morning Herald

"Oh, to have led Valerie Barnes's life. [...] British-born Barnes was 20 when World War II ended and she was looking for adventure. Brilliant at languages - she could speak both French and Spanish fluently [...], a chance meeting and a bit of good luck landed her a short contract at the UN in Geneva as a translator. From there she never looked back." - Vogue

Valerie is also the author of another book, Conference Interpreting, Principles and Practice. She has offered to give our project permission to use as many anecdotes and stories from her books as we would like (giving due recognition to the source, obviously.) You can visit her site by clicking here.

About the author: Valerie Taylor-Bouladon Barnes was born in England but lived most of her life in Switzerland, working for the United Nations in Geneva. She started work there in October 1948 as a trilingual reporter, became a translator (English, French, Spanish and Russian) and then a simultaneous interpreter (English, French and Spanish). She interpreted at UN conferences in India, most of the countries of Africa and Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, China, Korea, Japan, Iran, Kuwait and now Australia, Kuala Lumpur, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Rarotonga, New Caledonia and others.

While this post focuses on conference interpreting, since that is the field that Taylor-Bouladon Barnes worked in, I want to again emphasize that the From Our Lips to Your Ears project will include stories from all types of interpreting. All of these stories are important, meaningful and interesting