Coenraad Heijdemann

Bloody Geniuses

19/12/2014

Simultaneous interpreters are funny creatures. I always say that we must have some kind of strange twist in our brains, because how else would we be able to do our highly complicated and stressful job?

It’s an extremely intense activity, simultaneous interpreting. It has been calculated that you use more processes simultaneously in your brain than people in almost any other profession – although it has been said that air traffic controllers use nearly the same number of brain processes. (Ironic, then, that they make so much more money than interpreters, but I suppose that’s beside the point.)

When you’re interpreting simultaneously, you’re listening to the speaker, processing the meaning of what he says, converting it to another language, and speaking the translation while listening to the next thing the speaker says, and all of this in a continuous cycle.

It means that you’re doing so many things at the same time – constantly listening, translating, speaking, and making split-second decisions about language, sentence structure, meaning and more – that your brain is working at the very highest level of concentration, and you are using all of your physical and mental faculties to make the process work. Small wonder, then, that conference interpreters work in pairs, taking shifts of about thirty minutes. After half an hour their concentration is significantly diminished, their mental (and often physical) energy depleted, and they need a break from what they are doing. So then their colleague takes over for the next shift, and after another half hour they switch back again. This gives each interpreter enough time to re-charge the mental batteries and take his alertness back up to the highest level needed for his taxing job. And it is taxing indeed.

But ever since the very first time I was asked to interpret – which was long before I had my official training, got certified, etc. – I enjoyed the adrenalin that came with the job: the rush of doing something extremely intense with my language skills and brain capacity. Especially the more difficult assignments can be very satisfying.

Mind you, a little humility is needed when you’re an interpreter. As a translator, you can get a translation complete and perfect quite easily – if you’re good. But even the best interpreters don’t get their translations 100% complete and perfect – well, hardly ever. If you ever hear a conference interpreter claim that he worked all day and got everything 100% correct and complete, he’s either a big liar, or he just interpreted for the only series of speakers on earth who are not only relatively slow, but also perfectly understandable, don’t speak in any dialect, don’t swallow any words or syllables, don’t use any unexpected terminology, don’t slur, always articulate clearly, etc., etc. Or he had the complete text in advance and the speakers didn’t deviate from the text once.

Every single interpreter, even the very best, will slip up here and there – whether it’s mishearing something, not hearing something, forgetting something or simply not being able to come up with the right word at the right time, every working day of their lives there will be something that goes wrong. Even the best interpretations are about 99% right. But it’s not about the 1 percent they miss, it’s about getting that 99 percent right. It’s not a very exact science, interpreting: so much depends on so many circumstances and so many human factors on both sides.

There is something really special about matching the speed, voice intonation, emphasis, terminology and meaning of a speaker, especially if it is such a challenge that at times you don’t know where you’re getting the words from, possibly not just finding them in your brain, but pulling them up from your toes, in a manner of speaking. You feel the adrenalin rushing through your body, you’re almost in some kind of trance, and you feel as one with the speaker.

Imagine interpreting simultaneously for a highly educated speaker like a celebrated scholar who is trying to tell an audience about his life work in only ninety minutes, with a torrent of words coming out of his mouth at a speed that makes it clear that he’s determined to get all the information in, despite the limited time – and without ever having seen his speech or his powerpoint presentation you and your colleague manage to keep up with him, interpret his words with the right meaning, not missing anything significant, matching his intonation and emphasis. Believe me, there is nothing more satisfying than achieving that, switching off your microphone, and hearing your colleague – still completely hyped up – exclaiming:

We’re bloody geniuses!

You couldn’t have said it better yourself…

Undervalued Underlings

17/12/2014

I wrote the following many* years ago, and in view of what’s happened since then, it was very interesting for me to read it. I didn’t publish it at the time, but I've corrected that since then:

Do you ever have the feeling that you don´t get enough appreciation? Such a feeling is easy to get.

For instance, you work for someone for many years and he never ever tells you how much you mean to him as an employee, or how useful or good your work is.

Or you are a parent and a partner for twenty* years, and everything you do is taken for granted. Or, even worse: not only don´t you get any recognition, but you only get criticism. This is wrong, that’s not perfect, such should be improved, so is not up to scratch. Effort doesn’t seem to count. Industriousness, steadfastness, loyalty and integrity aren’t recognised. But people do stumble over your weaknesses. They do manage to find fault with anything you do that isn´t quite perfect. And there is nothing to balance out their criticism.

Who can live like this? Not many people. Not all their lives, anyhow. Some can take it for a while. Some will hold on to the little good they have, for some time. But eventually everybody needs respect.

Everyone needs appreciation. All of us need recognition. Every human being needs a compliment now and then, and some appreciation.

When my first child began to talk, I quickly found this out. If you only exhort and chastise a child, it has a negative effect. Whenever she would do something wrong, I would tell her off, and I would tell her that she was naughty. After some time, I noticed that she began to ignore my instructions. She would start doing things she shouldn’t, things she knew were not allowed, even in my presence. I didn´t understand. So I asked her why she did it, since I had told her many times she shouldn’t do that. And she replied: ‘I am naughty.’ Apparently, telling her that she was naughty whenever she did something that was not allowed, had finally convinced her that she was naughty in nature, and that there was nothing to be done about it. I quickly changed course and started to take a positive approach, which soon paid off.

We all need to hear something positive now and then. Everyone needs a pat on the back. All of us need to hear we are needed, that we are sweet, that we are good – any compliment that we deserve. With just criticism, there is no balance, there is only negativity. And negativity is the most destructive element in any relationship, be it a marriage relationship, a work relationship, or any other relationship.

* I wrote the above in 2003. I’d been married for over twenty years then, and worked for the same boss for 15 years. Both did what I described above: they undervalued me (and that’s the understatement of the century), and were a source of constant negativity for me.

Shortly after I wrote this, my boss retired and was replaced by someone who did show appreciation now and then. Almost immediately my health improved, as did my enjoyment of my work.

Eight years after I wrote this, I divorced my wife. And almost immediately my health, happiness and general feeling of well-being all improved.

Makes you think, doesn’t it.

The Constantly Changing Salad

17/12/2014

When I was living by myself, I wrote this:

Living alone, planning meals economically has become a bit more of a challenge. Although not being dependent on the likes and dislikes of others does help, there’s the risk of having to use relatively expensive small tins, jars, etc. After all, you can’t always buy every single ingredient fresh – and even if you can, you can’t always determine yourself how much you buy: the days of buying spinach by the leaf, single potatoes, etc., are mostly over.

So I often make my meals with bigger packages, and make enough for several days. It does sometimes mean that I’m eating the same thing for more than one day, but I really don’t mind that. Besides, I don’t cook anything I don’t like, so eating the same good meal for several days really isn’t a problem.

But if there is any risk of getting bored with the meals at all, my Constantly Changing Salad is the ideal solution. Do you want the recipe to see what I mean? You can’t, because it’s constantly changing! But I can give you an example.

The day before yesterday I started a salad with half a pack of wholemeal fusilli, sweetcorn, cherry tomatoes, ham, pineapple and tartare sauce. Simple, but nice. Far too much for one day, though, so I decided to make it last for several days. And in order to not eat exactly the same salad every day, I then add some additional ingredients on subsequent days. So yesterday I added hard-boiled eggs, peas and a little yoghurt mayo. Better, but it lacked crunch and punch. So today I added rocket, extra mature Gouda cheese and some kidney beans. I’m not sure if I’ll add anything tomorrow – after all, I do have to finish the salad one day soon, and by finish I don’t just mean considering the combination complete…

I rather like the idea that I’m having cheap meals all week this way, and that although they’re fundamentally the same, they’re also quite diverse!

I Said When

17/12/2014

First published in 2010. This blog post describes what went wrong in my first marriage.

(Disclaimer: Everything described below, is of course just my personal view, it’s how I felt and experienced it all myself. But there are at least two sides to each story, and this is mine, and mine alone. It’s not meant to be accusatory in any way: Everything that happened to me, after all, was in fact facilitated by me, or was at the very least allowed by me. It’s only meant to be a description of how things have been for me, which doesn’t mean that other parties may not have experienced things completely differently.)

When you’re pouring someone a drink, you may invite the other to tell you when he has enough by saying to him: “Say when.”

In Regarding Henry, Harrison Ford’s character, Henry, is a successful lawyer at a big law firm. When he gets shot in the head, his personality changes drastically. Finally he finds that he cannot bring himself to work with ruthless lawyers anymore. After he makes that decision, his secretary — who used to pour his drinks extending exactly that same invitation, “Say when” – asks: “Mr. Turner, what’s wrong?” And Henry replies: “Well, I had enough. So I said when.”

Sometimes it’s hard to know when you should say when. Take marriage, for instance. (There’s a reason why I’m using that as an example, and that reason should become clear quite soon, so do read on…) You marry someone because you’ve fallen in love with them. At least I hope that was the reason. But the trouble with falling in love, is that it makes you partially blind, somehow. I suppose you could say that you’re probably not just in love with a person, but also with being in love, because it’s such a great feeling. Anyway, you fall in love with someone, and if the feeling is mutual, there may come a time when you decide to marry. Or move in together, or whatever — but in my case it was a decision to marry.

So here you are, at twenty-three years of age, and what do you know? Nothing! So you marry. And you try to make the most of it, having accepted the notion that you have to work at a marriage to make it work, that relationships aren’t easy, and there has to be both giving and taking in order to achieve balance in the relationship. So you give a little, and a little more, and a lot more, and you don’t even notice that there’s hardly any balance — in fact, that over the years there is less and less balance in the relationship. Because both partners seem to be forgetting that if there has to be giving and taking, each of you has to do both! But it’s just a situation that grows bit by bit, until you’re so used to it that you don’t even notice anymore how lopsided it’s become. You don’t even notice that the situation is getting you really down. That the way you’re being treated is eating away at you on the inside. That the manipulation you’re subjected to because your partner has an irresistible urge to make you do what she wants, not what you want, is frustrating you endlessly.

Ironically, people around you have seen it. They’ve wondered for years and years how a relationship could become so unbalanced, and how you could survive in such a climate of manipulation and even blackmail. But you’re blind to it yourself, you’re completely submerged in an environment with a partner who says you have a disorder, and even when that is proven to be untrue, she still attacks your most noticeable traits, putting you down, stomping on you. You reach a point where you’re so down on yourself that you hardly have any feelings of self-worth and self-confidence left due to constantly being put down, and combined with the rest of the ever present negativity this brings you to the very brink of not seeing any point in living anymore.

And then, one day, it’s as if you wake up from a long, long emotional coma. You look at the world, you look at other people, you look at yourself and your partner, and suddenly you realise that all is not well. You realise that there are things that are very fundamentally wrong with your life and your marriage, and you take a long and hard look at the question what can be done to improve it. And although you do see your own failings, you realise that there is more, that other aspects of your relationship are totally wrong.

But now that you’ve woken up, now that you’ve looked up from the deep valley where you’d ended up, you’re seeing the peaks — and you see the light at the end of the tunnel. And although you were in a deep pit of despair, you’ve spotted the ladders that have been handed you, and you climb up out of the misery, towards the light.

You start improving things, giving up self-sabotage, getting rid of excess body weight, getting rid of unhealthy living habits. You start to get a grip on your life, becoming efficient, getting healthy. You start to ignore old hang-ups and start doing things you never even dreamed you’d do, but which turn out to give you joy and pleasure.

But with all those improvements, you start to leave your partner behind. She can’t understand any of these changes, and especially not why you don’t want to be manipulated anymore, why you’re not a fellow victim of negativity anymore, why you’re making your own decisions and taking your life into your own hands. She blames (because improvements do have to be blamed on someone, after all, right?) the people around you — your family, your friends: they must have caused this, because you are just not yourself anymore, and that must have come from somewhere!

Showdowns are the result, in which attempts are made to reverse the developments. In fact, your partner at one point claims that everything was better a year ago, and if only you and she could go back to that time, then all would be well. But you know that things were NOT better a year ago, you know that they were all wrong, all upside down and inside out! You were living in your own personal hell a year ago — your close friends and relatives could see that, and finally you saw that as well. And knowing this, you can’t go back.

You know that if you want to be true to yourself, you have to continue doing what you’re doing. You’re finally experiencing some joy in life, be it within the limitations of an unbalanced relationship, and you can’t let go of that joy, you just can’t. So you make it clear what it is that you need in order to make the relationship work and stay in it. Unfortunately, this is not received well — not at all well. And after having been blackmailed with the threat of divorce for some 26 years, and now again, you realise that the time has come to reverse roles. It's the only chance you can get to be happy.

There is a reaction of disbelief, despair, anger, and denial. And accusation. Especially the denial is obvious. Of course it isn’t the unbalanced relationship that caused you to make this decision, it has to be something else. Oh, got it: you must have fallen in love with someone else, it must be that person who kept handing you ladders to climb out of your pit of despair. Yes, that’s it, that must be it, because it can’t be anything else, can it? Surely you’re cheating on your wife, and that explains why you want to get out. You must be going through a mid-life crisis or something. Yeah, right. Dream on…

Wouldn’t it be nice if it was just a mid-life crisis. Nothing a motorcycle, a sportscar or a toupée couldn’t fix, right? And wouldn’t it be nice to know that once you started living alone, you had a lover. Sadly, the truth is that it isn’t like that at all. I happen to be a loyal and faithful man. But I suppose denial is an easy way of avoiding the truth, because they who deny the truth, don’t have to face reality.

And my own reality is that I now know what life should be like, and I can’t bring myself to go back to the misery I was in.

So I said when…

(This is the best description of what was going on in the relationship: link. If you recognise my description above at all, you may benefit from following this link and reading the explanation.)

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Bloody Geniuses

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