LJ Idol 9.7: Kostik's Law...
Before Godwin's Law ("As an online discussion grows longer, someone will almost surely make a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler") there was what I privately call Kostik's Law.
Kostik was one of our neighbors back in my childhood, a cantankerous old so-and-so who had an opinion about everything-invariably wrong, according to my stepdad-with rather peculiar notions as to what it was to be a "true Democrat," a "true capitalist," a "true Frenchman," and so on. In fact, I can't recall an instance, on those occasions when he and my old man discussed the events of the day, where Kostik wasn't eventually driven to sidestep the issue and observe that "no true [fill-in-the-blank] would [fill-in-the-action]," at which point my old man would smile and let the issue drop, since in his mind he'd won the argument.
Forty years later, I thought of Kostik and let a faint grin cross my face after a young man with short black hair and intense dark eyes-I'll call him Simon-looked at me and declared, "I don't care what the State Department thinks. No true interpreter takes notes, and I'm not going to do it." I had no time to smile, because two of the other more experienced interpreters at the meeting vigorously nodded their heads in support of what Simon had said. No outsiders were going to get away with telling them how to do their job, no sir!
What's an interpreter? It's a person who listens to what people say and repeats it in another language, working in both directions as two parties interact. Interpreters perform generally the same function as (and are often mistakenly called) translators-who reproduce written information in another language-but besides the obvious difference of working orally instead of in writing, the job of the interpreter requires a significantly different skill set.
For example, interpreters can't consult dictionaries on the job, so an excellent working vocabulary in both languages is a must. There's also no time to polish sentences, so interpreters must have the improvisational skills to quickly compose grammatically correct and accurate phrases, again in both languages. Interpreters must, to some extent, also have the presence of an actor on stage (because there is always an audience listening), and when working in "consecutive" mode-where speakers pause from time to time for the interpreter to interpret-the memory skills to recall what was said.
Simon's outburst was in response to the recommendations we had received from the State Department's Office of Language Services, which had been engaged by our space agency client to audit the performance of our company's interpreters, which was a factor in determining the size of the company's periodic contract bonus. Our team had received uniformly high marks, except in one area: taking notes.
Apparently, the standard procedure among interpreters at State was to scrawl marks of varying intelligibility (i.e., "notes") on paper while working to aid the memory, and as it turned out, none of us-from those of us who were self-taught interpreters, like me, to those who had been formally educated to do the job, like Simon-did so.
It was my job to call a meeting of the company's interpreters to let them know the results of the audit and maybe figure out how to deal with the State Department's comment about note-taking. In the course of the meeting, I told everyone that as a first step, the company was going to bring in an expert (someone from State, natch) to explain what note-taking was all about, but what Simon had just said-and the support it had elicited-told me my job was far from finished.
At the end of the meeting, I announced I was personally going to incorporate note-taking into my interpretation job performance, encouraged everyone to follow suit, and asked Simon and his two like-minded supporters to stay behind for a word after the meeting broke up. Simon apparently thought I had asked him to stay so we could argue the point, and he seemed eager to do so, but since (in my mind, according to Kostik's Law) he had already lost the argument, I had another goal in mind.
"Look," I began, after the door to the room closed and before Simon could fire his first volley, "I understand your point. You are the best interpreters on our staff and I don't remember the last time anyone across the street"-I pointed at the space agency buildings that could be seen from the window-"had a bad thing to say about your work. So having some visiting pukes from the State Department ding us for not taking notes while we work is, basically, so much horse pucky."
This was apparently not the direction in which the group had expected me to go. I was preaching to the choir. The conference room remained silent as I took a slow breath to continue.
"But not all of us are as good as you. Heck, I'm certainly not as good as you, even though my work got pretty high marks during the audit." That admission was definitely not what they expected to hear. "At any rate," I continued, "I recall a certain company party during which the argument was advanced that we self-taught people weren't 'true interpreters' anyway, because we lacked the training." This drew grins, including from Simon, whose opinion it was that I had just restated. "So, if there's a chance taking notes will give any of us an edge while working, I think it's worth a try, don't you?"
There was a general grumbling in reply, the tenor of which seemed rather equally divided between "I'm still not going to do it!" and "What do you expect us to do?"
After things had quieted down, I said: "As far as your work is concerned, I certainly have no complaints. Continue to do what you do so well. But the next time State audits us, I want you to 'take notes', even if such notes consist of doodled stick representations of the State guys with pins drawn through them, okay? Because our bonuses-yours and mine-depend on the audit results." I could see the point was not lost on my audience. "As far as note-taking in general is concerned, I'd appreciate your support of the idea, even if you choose not to practice it. Let's keep an open mind; the results may surprise us all."
In the months between audits, the State expert visited and imparted his knowledge, and I started taking notes while interpreting, as did a number of staff members. Simon continued to grumble, at first, but less as weeks passed. I kept my fingers crossed during the next audit and waited for the results.
At the next "debrief" of audit results, our interpretation grade had improved (to the extent that it could, as our previous score had been high to begin with). This was because-surprise!-interpreters were now taking notes. Frankly, I could not begin to guess the extent to which the notes taken were the result of straightforward effort and the extent to which they were made for show, the scrawled equivalent of so many "Potemkin villages," created to make the State auditors feel good about our work. Personally, I found note-taking to be a helpful tool while interpreting, and I use it to this day.
In the end, however, the most surprising result of this experience was finding out-completely by accident, mind you-that by the time that next audit had rolled around, the most diligent note-taking interpreter on the staff had become… Simon.
And that really didn't surprise me, you see, because no true fair-minded person can afford to keep a closed mind.
Kostik was one of our neighbors back in my childhood, a cantankerous old so-and-so who had an opinion about everything-invariably wrong, according to my stepdad-with rather peculiar notions as to what it was to be a "true Democrat," a "true capitalist," a "true Frenchman," and so on. In fact, I can't recall an instance, on those occasions when he and my old man discussed the events of the day, where Kostik wasn't eventually driven to sidestep the issue and observe that "no true [fill-in-the-blank] would [fill-in-the-action]," at which point my old man would smile and let the issue drop, since in his mind he'd won the argument.
Forty years later, I thought of Kostik and let a faint grin cross my face after a young man with short black hair and intense dark eyes-I'll call him Simon-looked at me and declared, "I don't care what the State Department thinks. No true interpreter takes notes, and I'm not going to do it." I had no time to smile, because two of the other more experienced interpreters at the meeting vigorously nodded their heads in support of what Simon had said. No outsiders were going to get away with telling them how to do their job, no sir!
What's an interpreter? It's a person who listens to what people say and repeats it in another language, working in both directions as two parties interact. Interpreters perform generally the same function as (and are often mistakenly called) translators-who reproduce written information in another language-but besides the obvious difference of working orally instead of in writing, the job of the interpreter requires a significantly different skill set.
For example, interpreters can't consult dictionaries on the job, so an excellent working vocabulary in both languages is a must. There's also no time to polish sentences, so interpreters must have the improvisational skills to quickly compose grammatically correct and accurate phrases, again in both languages. Interpreters must, to some extent, also have the presence of an actor on stage (because there is always an audience listening), and when working in "consecutive" mode-where speakers pause from time to time for the interpreter to interpret-the memory skills to recall what was said.
Simon's outburst was in response to the recommendations we had received from the State Department's Office of Language Services, which had been engaged by our space agency client to audit the performance of our company's interpreters, which was a factor in determining the size of the company's periodic contract bonus. Our team had received uniformly high marks, except in one area: taking notes.
Apparently, the standard procedure among interpreters at State was to scrawl marks of varying intelligibility (i.e., "notes") on paper while working to aid the memory, and as it turned out, none of us-from those of us who were self-taught interpreters, like me, to those who had been formally educated to do the job, like Simon-did so.
It was my job to call a meeting of the company's interpreters to let them know the results of the audit and maybe figure out how to deal with the State Department's comment about note-taking. In the course of the meeting, I told everyone that as a first step, the company was going to bring in an expert (someone from State, natch) to explain what note-taking was all about, but what Simon had just said-and the support it had elicited-told me my job was far from finished.
At the end of the meeting, I announced I was personally going to incorporate note-taking into my interpretation job performance, encouraged everyone to follow suit, and asked Simon and his two like-minded supporters to stay behind for a word after the meeting broke up. Simon apparently thought I had asked him to stay so we could argue the point, and he seemed eager to do so, but since (in my mind, according to Kostik's Law) he had already lost the argument, I had another goal in mind.
"Look," I began, after the door to the room closed and before Simon could fire his first volley, "I understand your point. You are the best interpreters on our staff and I don't remember the last time anyone across the street"-I pointed at the space agency buildings that could be seen from the window-"had a bad thing to say about your work. So having some visiting pukes from the State Department ding us for not taking notes while we work is, basically, so much horse pucky."
This was apparently not the direction in which the group had expected me to go. I was preaching to the choir. The conference room remained silent as I took a slow breath to continue.
"But not all of us are as good as you. Heck, I'm certainly not as good as you, even though my work got pretty high marks during the audit." That admission was definitely not what they expected to hear. "At any rate," I continued, "I recall a certain company party during which the argument was advanced that we self-taught people weren't 'true interpreters' anyway, because we lacked the training." This drew grins, including from Simon, whose opinion it was that I had just restated. "So, if there's a chance taking notes will give any of us an edge while working, I think it's worth a try, don't you?"
There was a general grumbling in reply, the tenor of which seemed rather equally divided between "I'm still not going to do it!" and "What do you expect us to do?"
After things had quieted down, I said: "As far as your work is concerned, I certainly have no complaints. Continue to do what you do so well. But the next time State audits us, I want you to 'take notes', even if such notes consist of doodled stick representations of the State guys with pins drawn through them, okay? Because our bonuses-yours and mine-depend on the audit results." I could see the point was not lost on my audience. "As far as note-taking in general is concerned, I'd appreciate your support of the idea, even if you choose not to practice it. Let's keep an open mind; the results may surprise us all."
In the months between audits, the State expert visited and imparted his knowledge, and I started taking notes while interpreting, as did a number of staff members. Simon continued to grumble, at first, but less as weeks passed. I kept my fingers crossed during the next audit and waited for the results.
At the next "debrief" of audit results, our interpretation grade had improved (to the extent that it could, as our previous score had been high to begin with). This was because-surprise!-interpreters were now taking notes. Frankly, I could not begin to guess the extent to which the notes taken were the result of straightforward effort and the extent to which they were made for show, the scrawled equivalent of so many "Potemkin villages," created to make the State auditors feel good about our work. Personally, I found note-taking to be a helpful tool while interpreting, and I use it to this day.
In the end, however, the most surprising result of this experience was finding out-completely by accident, mind you-that by the time that next audit had rolled around, the most diligent note-taking interpreter on the staff had become… Simon.
And that really didn't surprise me, you see, because no true fair-minded person can afford to keep a closed mind.