Monday
First day of the heart conference, and I'm utterly drained.
Simultaneous interpreting is a peculiar kind of exhaustion: you sit perfectly still for hours, yet by lunchtime your brain feels as though it has run a marathon.
Nadia and I took turns in the booth every thirty minutes, which is standard practice, but even half an hour of turning English into Turkish in real time leaves me lightheaded.
The morning speakers were a breeze; they read from their slides and stuck to the script.
The trouble started after lunch, when a surgeon from Texas set his notes aside and began to improvise.
Within five minutes he had told the audience that a new device was“ not ready for prime time,” that the early results were“ a mixed bag,” and that his team had gone“ back to the drawing board” twice.
Idioms are an interpreter's quicksand.
Translate them word for word and you sound absurd; stop to hunt for an equivalent and you fall hopelessly behind.
Tuesday
Slept like a log, for once.
Over breakfast, Nadia shared a rule of thumb I wish I had learned years ago: when in doubt, keep the meaning and let the picture go.
Nobody in the audience needs to hear about drawing boards; they need to know that the team started over.
Today went far more smoothly, although the surgeon struck again with a baseball joke that I am convinced cannot be translated into any language on earth.
I settled for a polite paraphrase, and somewhere in the hall a few people laughed anyway.
Whether they were laughing at the joke or at my version of it, I will never know.