Stiff upper lip

Interpreters – like delegates – are generally unexcitable people. We use our knowledge, experience and our empathy to put across not only the proposition of the speaker, but also the spirit in which it’s made. We use tone, voice and style to remain faithful to the speaker, but guard against histrionics. A simple “good morning” should be just that, not a Shakespearean soliloquy or the Gettysburg address .

However, sometimes things happen that tilt us off our emotional even keel.

Sometimes a valedictory speech can catch you unawares, and you are caught up in the emotion of the moment when a person held in high esteem by his or her peers bows out.

Brave people working against overwhelming odds to do what they see as the right thing move us all as people, and we cannot completely shut off that very human part of our make-up when we render their words.

I’ll give you two examples.

I once worked in South Africa for Amnesty International, clearly a significant event for everyone involved in the meeting because of AI’s role in opposing apartheid. At the opening ceremony a local choir sang the national anthem “ Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika”, and the hair at the back of my neck stood on end.

At another meeting of human rights defenders, a delegate from DRC was to talk about life in the refugee camps at Goma, but the day before a volcano had erupted, causing widespread destruction and massive flight of the refugees in the camps. The delegate had experienced and seen things that no human should experience or see, and this volcano robbed him of speech. He told us all he could do was sing a lament. He did, his weak, cracked voice growing in power whilst we listened in rapt attention to this dirge, more eloquent than a written report could ever be.


Phil SMITH
Calliope member in the United Kingdom



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