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Interpreters - or troubleshooters?
You hire an interpreter when your stay is brief & its importance vital. But -
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If you've planned your mission from abroad, you cannot have foreseen logistics or the accuracy of information. Difficulties come less from language (English is widely spoken) than from imperfections that you would take in stride at home...
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but that take on new dimension when the place is unfamiliar and the visit short.
Please scroll down for examples of how things went wrong - and how to make them go right.
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- Vulnerability: interpreters' accounts
•"A woman coming from New Delhi for tests and to see a doctor had to begin at the Georges Pompidou Hospital...
where the Information Desk is at the end of an enormous hall. She had trouble walking - in fact, she fell down as we went over there. Then the person at the desk gave the wrong directions. There was more walking and more falling down. We finally got to the right place when a doctor took us there personally. But the tests were made late and the visitor almost missed her appointment with the specialist she had come to France to see. I called several times, to say where we were and to beg him to remain, which he did. Staying on would have been extremely difficult for this patient, yet she could have been obliged to do so."
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•"An insurance broker from Cairo had a request for a $50-million life insurance policy from a Saudi billionnaire, who lived in Paris...
To make sure that the medical tests the insurance company required went smoothly, he made the personal investment of coming to Paris for 36 hours. The arrangements, which had been made from Cairo, were with a doctor who had not been told that special equipment was required and did not have it, and with a lab that charged 2500€ for tests that eventually came to 267€ ('It's an insurance company and it can pay,' I was told by phone when I questioned that sum.) At the last minute I was able to arrange with the American Hospital that everything take place there. Later, a paperwork snag and then the need to clarify examination results led me to return to the hospital twice."
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n these cases visitors made arrangements for an "intepreter" via their hotels on their night of arrival. They did not, of course, realize that obstacles would come less from language (most French professionals speak English) than to matters that are part of life, which in one's own city one takes in stride. But in a foreign place when one cannot extend one's stay...
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they can become dramatic.
Forewarning allows troubleshooters to personally check every element of the mission in advance. The additional cost is insignificant in the context of that of the trip itself and the importance of its success.
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- With or without forewarning, we go the extra mile
Our interpreters - "troubleshooters" is a more realistic term - are Parisians who know the city. They are either of foreign origin or, if French, have lived abroad and have experienced the difficulty of getting things done in an unfamiliar place. They invest themselves in the visitor's mission because they understand its importance. They also tie up loose ends, as the second example shows.
We can provide this help in most most widely-spoken languages.
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- Even when one is an interpreter only, the role can go beyond the technical
A Senegalese businessman came to Paris to meet his Scottish salesman and find out who was cheating, the salesman or a nephew. To be sure that there would be no language problem (the businessman spoke mainly French, the salesman, English), he asked for an interpreter.
"I could have formally translated the statements and left it at that, but at times the remarks seemed subject to misunderstanding. I'd ask for clarification or put in my "two cents" - of course saying that I was doing so. The meeting would have ended in a positive way in any case (documents proved the nephew at fault), but the understanding came more quickly because I was there. The businessman thanked me and when he called his wife in Dakar he passed me the phone."
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Drawings / Harald Wolff
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