invisible

Imagine going to an event to which only the VIP are invited. You find yourself on the red carpet leading to a diamond saloon. Once you enter the double door of metal detectors, all you see is the glamor of gems and accessories, each costing more than your paycheck, but then you don't think about this because after all you are present where only the best can. You are escorted to a staircase resembling diamonds, enter the saloon, and you are served first quality French champagne and Mediterranean finger food. After a little bit of chitchatting and networking with the exceptional participants, you are called to listen to a chanson concert, given by the country's leading singer, which is topped by a fashion show. All this magnificent performance takes you on a journey to travel through time, to the era of the Industrial Revolution, the Orient Express, and the French Millennium, in short, to a time of aristocratic opulence and elegance. 

 

Well, I got to be opulent and elegant -- and more importantly, aristocratic -- for one evening last week. How did she get there, you may wonder. I'm sorry to break it to you, I wasn't mistaken for Paris Hilton or Eva Rezešova, despite the obvious resemblances, but I was the interpreter of the event. Lucky bastard, you must think. Indeed, one big advantage of working with languages, especially as an interpreter, is that you get access to many (different) worlds which would otherwise be closed for you. It was interesting to see how a VIP event of this kind looks and feels like, but I must confess it is more pleasant to recall it as an experience than it was to be part of it. Interpreting -- and, for that matter, translating -- is extremely helpful in making you see not only what you are but also what you are not. 

Having just finished a human rights film festival in which the key topic was unimaginable poverty as a main factor that shuts a great number of people off from basic human rights, I found it hard to identify with an event in which even the cufflinks of any of the participants would have been enough to feed a starving family, not to mention the raffle prizes. And the difficult part of interpreting is that you are expected, especially in such an exclusive, thus, rigid, environment, to be invisible and neutral.

 

A couple of years ago I was the interpreter in a case study of Roma oppression in a notorious town in North Hungary. Those people, although they didn't have electricity and their house was falling apart, welcomed me and fed me, not for being a VIP, but for being a P, a person.

Neither of these is my world. But it was not hard to feel at home in the latter one, because it didn't call for role-play, just for compassion.