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CAREERS WORKSH O P

Working as a Professional Interpreter

Marcus Broadbent (1975) left The Perse in 1968 to embark upon a long and highly distinguished career as an interpreter, working with famous figures like Jacques Chirac, John Howard, and even Nelson Mandela.

On 31 January this year, my professional career drew to an end and a new chapter began, during which I intend, amongst other things, to take a degree in Latin, learn basket weaving and write about my great-aunt who lived alone in Biafra in the 1930s. But I digress. I thought that, as I leave the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where I have worked for the last 10 years as a staff interpreter, it might interest readers to hear about my rather circuitous path to becoming a conference interpreter. It might also be reassuring to learn that many, like myself, only find their professional path in their thirties.

When I was at school, careers guidance pamphlets always mentioned interpreting dismissively as a nonstarter. The only path for those who loved languages was teaching, or careers where languages were simply an additional feather in your cap. I left Sixth Form with A levels in German, French and English. I studied Linguistics, German and Chinese at York University, which included a year in Leipzig.

When I obtained my BA in 1979, I gained a British Council scholarship to continue my Chinese in Beijing. It was a very different country from today: no telephones, no internet, no coffee, nothing! Students shared rooms, hot water was available only once a

day, and there was a night-soil man who collected the manure every morning. However it was a fabulous experience and I made lifelong friends.

I then spent four years working as a ChineseEnglish translator in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Eventually, I began to miss Europe – though not so much the United Kingdom, because I was gay, and the 1970s and 80s were difficult decades in which to be gay and out. So, I came to France in 1985 with my partner, a Frenchman, and worked as a journalist for seven years. However, I always had the nagging desire to train as an interpreter. I applied to take the Parisbased ESIT interpreting course with Chinese and German, but was told I needed French.

Fed up with my job in photojournalism, I applied again to train as an interpreter, this time to ISIT, which offered evening classes in those days to mature students who were in full-time employment. By that time my Chinese was flagging but my French was fluent. I hadn’t used my German for years so had to double-down to improve my comprehension but, equally important for interpreters, get a full grip on German, Swiss and Austrian culture. Half of interpreting is about context. If you know nothing of the country, even if you think you understand the language, you will not be able to interpret what native speakers say.

So, the career I had always dreamed of began at the ripe old age of 37. Paris was the ideal location to work as an interpreter. Many international organisations are based here – the European Space Agency, UNESCO, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

France considers interpretation to be a hardearned skill and it is remunerated accordingly. The only hitch is that no country has chosen to regulate the profession as is done with others such as the legal profession, medicine or airline pilots. However, an international organisation, the Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conference (AIIC), which I joined, is a guarantee of high-quality interpretation for international organisations.

I worked as a freelancer for 18 years. It involved an enormous amount of travel, which was sometimes fun, sometimes not. Interpreting can be an extremely stressful job, particularly in politics or high-level international negotiations. I took six months off in 2004 to teach interpreting in Monterey, California, mainly so my husband could improve his English. It was wonderful to hang up my headset and rest my ears for a while.

Ten years ago, a staff interpreter post became vacant at the OECD and I applied. I got the job and found myself, at 55, with a salary for the first time in my life. An odd but liberating feeling. Overall, it has been a wonderful experience. The OECD is not good at showing off, but it is thanks to that organisation that recent global agreements are now forcing Airbnb, Amazon and Facebook to pay tax where it is earned. Plus, thanks to their generosity, and in order to relieve some of the monotony of the work, I was able to learn Spanish, starting at the ripe old age of 56!

The world of conference interpreting that I have been fortunate enough to operate in is a very friendly, open-minded one. By definition interpreters are curious, eager to learn, open-minded and, importantly for me, gay-friendly. Most interpreters are women and many male interpreters are gay. I have no idea why, but that’s the way it is!

However, I have left, and “après moi, le deluge”. It has been a wonderful experience. I have been privy to fascinating negotiations (none of which I can reveal, of course), and my career has been punctuated by hilarious anecdotes. I was once locked in the lavatories of a French castle with the Princess of Nepal. Another time I was asked to interpret from Malay for the Sultan of Brunei at a Presidential lunch; the French President was not amused when I explained, red-faced, that the Palace Protocol Department had assumed the Sultan would speak English!

Although the UK has sadly left the EU, and so that door is closed to budding British interpreters, there are still numerous opportunities. Best languages to have? Well, English, obviously; French is very important; now Spanish, and perhaps Russian (still very much spoken in the UN system). Remember, very often one has a better chance of getting in and through the internationally recognised interpretation courses if you start as a mature student. You then already have some understanding of how the world works. I once heard a young student whom I was teaching interpret “Neanderthal” from German into English as “men from the Neander valley”. She had never heard of Neanderthals. I hope you have!

MARCUS WORKING IN HIS INTERPRETER’S BOOTH

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